The political season has descended, like I believe it ever really goes away. I enjoy the civics lesson elections and the process provide for my high school students. Freedom of speech reigns during election years, and political correctness can fly right out the window. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but too often candidates seem to think it's ok to push across the line and apologize later. This season is no different.
One hot issue that apparently separates Republicans from Democrats is abortion. Both sides feeling they serve as poster board for the opposing sides. As a Christian, I totally get the impression I should be a card carrying Republican. I am not. I was raised by Republicans. I joke that my mom used to study the issues and the candidates by checking the boxes with the "R" endorsement or next to their names. Almost true. I grew up with quite a few different ideas. One such difference is on the abortion issue
Perhaps being in college in the 1970's contributed to my feminist leanings. Certainly I found myself surrounded by women stepping forward to be noticed. I never believed in taking stands simply because I was a woman. For example I didn't become a youth minister because I thought the position needed a woman. I took the position because I felt strongly God wanted me to do so. As a result of having a traditionally male position, I formed a lot of opinions during the time, but certainly not all of my opinions came out of feminism.
Many years after the fact I learned one of the college students under my care had had an abortion. I learned about it from the woman who had gone with her to have the procedure. Though the young girl had felt close to me, she was afraid to tell me she was pregnant. She was afraid I would think less of her. And I think, at that time in my life, I probably would not have handled it well. Instead, she went to another woman who spent time talking through all the options, but when it became clear that the girl was determined to end the pregnancy, the older woman had the grace to accompany her so she wouldn't be alone.
That's what life's lessons continue to teach me - grace. God constantly responds to me in grace, I should do no less to the people I find around me. When I get on my high horse about someone else's behavior, I am only pointing out my own sin. As I said before, I believe in God's eyes sin is sin. There are no big sins or little sins. If abortion is a sin, it isn't any more heinous than my judging a struggling young person and leaving them to go through a terrible ordeal alone.
I believe God is a God of choices. He allows us to make our own decisions. There are consequences to most decisions, good and bad, but my choices have no affect on God's unconditional love and grace. The story of Jesus on the cross shows us that God's forgiveness for all sin was made at that time. The only thing left is to accept or reject it. We have the choice. He doesn't force himself on us.
I think God is pro-choice. I don't mean he celebrates abortion by any means.. But, he gives each of us the right to make the choices about our life. He doesn't force anything on us, including himself. If I choose God's plan for my life there are certainly expectations for a changed life, but even then, he allows me to make the choice. I also have to accept the consequences. The Bible is full of stories of God laying out his plan for people and then their taking a different route, making a different choice. And, in the end, if they choose to turn back to him, he is always there with open arms.
I had a pro-life phone call years ago asking me if I wasn't concerned about the millions of innocent children who had been killed by abortion through the years. I said I wasn't. I think that stopped the caller cold, and I don't remember if they stayed on the line or not. But I don't worry about those babies. They are with God, never having to have suffered a day of this life,,
If I could have had a conversation with the caller I would have gone on to say that I am more concerned with the millions of young women who get pregnant. Why is America the first world country with the highest teen age pregnancy rate? The highest abortion rate? Something is terribly wrong, and it's not abortion. Abortion is the symptom. The wrong occurs months prior when the woman choses not to use birth control to protect herself and stop a pregnancy. What would seem such a relatively simple choice, didn't happen. (And I'm not speaking of pregnancy as the result of rape; that's another topic all together)
Politicians should be focused on our millions of young people, struggling to make the right choices. Fear, poverty, ignorance, willfulness, love all figure into their decisions. Who talks with them? Who councils? Throwing health class at them and preaching abstinence has done no good at all. We need to rethink this issue and find away to throw our support at the women. Whose choosing them?
Friday, September 18, 2015
Friday, September 4, 2015
God in the room
I've lived the Christian world-view most of my life. My father was pastor of a protestant church and I spent a lot of time participating in church activities. But contrary to popular opinion, I don't believe that Christianity comes by osmosis. All that church experience did not make me a believer. It just made me a church goer (and an obedient child).
Around the middle of high school I began to question Christianity as a valid belief. I didn't feel any of the things other people talked about, and I certainly knew I wasn't really all that in to religion and the daily demands of being a pastor's kid. Around this time I heard someone pray in a most astounding way - she just talked to God like he was in the room and responding. I thought she was a little weird. Then I went off to summer camp, and wouldn't you know, the speaker was equally weird. He talked to God like he was right there in the room. In addition, the speaker acted like belief in Jesus was something real, not just something you did but someone you knew. Never had I thought about faith in this way. I wanted what he had. So I took the leap and talked to God like he was in the room.
Nothing magical happened, I just knew I'd stepped out on a different path, and I've continued on it ever since. I started out a lot more rigid than I am today, but over time a lot of the rough edges have rubbed off. I've had a couple crises of faith in the ensuing years, and came through those crises believing even more. The most recent was when my mother died. I had this romantic notion that Jesus would come and carry her away to heaven. Instead it was a nightmare of panicked breathing and excruciating heart break. In the middle of it all I wondered if I'd been believing in a pack of lies, If God really never existed and I'd been skipping merrily down an ignorant path. And there in that moment was God. I can't explain it, but I know it. In my doubt he gave me certainty. When I was ready to throw in the towel, he was there to take me through the most awful experience of my life. He was there
I know that's one of the biggest obstacles for people, that step from rational thinking to belief. I read an autobiography of a man who shared his story of searching for God via his intellect. He spent a lot of time reading and talking to believers and came to the rational conclusion that God existed. He even believed that Jesus was more than a man. But he realized that beyond all his rational, factual, intellectual conclusions, there was still a more difficult step of accepting the things that can't be empirically proven, like someone dying in our place. He compared it to climbing up a mountain of research and arriving at the top only to discover the rest of the journey was on another mountain and the only way to reach it was to jump - and the gap appeared impossibly wide. He decided to return from where he'd come, but when he turned around he found there was no going back, he knew too much. So he jumped.
I consider my self a rational thinker who has rationally accepted the fact that I cannot know or prove all things. God, the tenets of Christianity, much of the human experience cannot be discerned by rational thinking. There is something more. Faith falls into the something more. Through my life experience I've found faith to be real and solid.
I believe that Christianity isn't a religion to be practiced. Christianity isn't about doing the right things and avoiding the wrong. Christianity isn't about seeking perfection by going to church or singing in a choir, Christianity isn't what you do, it's who you are.
I believe that humans are broken from the start. No one teaches little ones to bite you out of spite or say they hate you. It's wired in to us to be contrary and often downright hurtful. The world is full of brokenness, including war and cancer and bullying. This brokenness is the result of sin. But sin isn't breaking a law or rule. Those things are also the results of the brokenness. Sin, as defined in the Bible, is missing the mark. Whose mark? God's, his standard. And try as we can, we cannot hit the mark on our own, we are too broken. So God sent his Son to hit the mark for us, in our place. As a result, the issue isn't what I do or don't do (which rules I keep or break), the issue is what I do about Jesus. Do I accept his gift or reject it? My sins were forgiven way back on the cross. My sins are not forgiven by my doing good things. Nor is my salvation threatened by doing wrong things. It's all about what God did for us.
There is great freedom in that. Certainly not the freedom to go out and become a serial killer or even a lousy boss. There is an expectation of a different type of lifestyle, but that lifestyle (or lack thereof) does not make one a Christian. A Christian is someone who follows Christ, and that following begins when someone accepts God's work on a cross some 2000 years ago. And therein lies that faith thing.
A lot to take in. But believe it or not, I want you to know that the idea of earning salvation by a series of Brownie points is not Christianity, at least not what the Bible teaches about Christianity. I'll give you that it's how many Christians live, but unfortunately it's because they don't really understand what they've gotten themselves in to. The freedom and grace Christianity actually offers is scary stuff too. Rules and tradition are much more comfortable. That gets in the way of Christians as well.
But you do have to agree that a God who would do this for us, as a gift free for the asking, isn't the ogre God often presented in discussing deity. God is a God of grace and free choice. Why doesn't he just make us all Christians? Because he wants us to choose. Coerced love is never really love. So he did all the work and left it up to us to accept or reject. Whether we believe or not, God is in the room and he'd love to get to know you.
Enough for now. I intend to post more ramblings now and then and look forward to any comments you might send a long my way. I'd love to answer questions and respond to your thoughts on the ideas I present.
Around the middle of high school I began to question Christianity as a valid belief. I didn't feel any of the things other people talked about, and I certainly knew I wasn't really all that in to religion and the daily demands of being a pastor's kid. Around this time I heard someone pray in a most astounding way - she just talked to God like he was in the room and responding. I thought she was a little weird. Then I went off to summer camp, and wouldn't you know, the speaker was equally weird. He talked to God like he was right there in the room. In addition, the speaker acted like belief in Jesus was something real, not just something you did but someone you knew. Never had I thought about faith in this way. I wanted what he had. So I took the leap and talked to God like he was in the room.
Nothing magical happened, I just knew I'd stepped out on a different path, and I've continued on it ever since. I started out a lot more rigid than I am today, but over time a lot of the rough edges have rubbed off. I've had a couple crises of faith in the ensuing years, and came through those crises believing even more. The most recent was when my mother died. I had this romantic notion that Jesus would come and carry her away to heaven. Instead it was a nightmare of panicked breathing and excruciating heart break. In the middle of it all I wondered if I'd been believing in a pack of lies, If God really never existed and I'd been skipping merrily down an ignorant path. And there in that moment was God. I can't explain it, but I know it. In my doubt he gave me certainty. When I was ready to throw in the towel, he was there to take me through the most awful experience of my life. He was there
I know that's one of the biggest obstacles for people, that step from rational thinking to belief. I read an autobiography of a man who shared his story of searching for God via his intellect. He spent a lot of time reading and talking to believers and came to the rational conclusion that God existed. He even believed that Jesus was more than a man. But he realized that beyond all his rational, factual, intellectual conclusions, there was still a more difficult step of accepting the things that can't be empirically proven, like someone dying in our place. He compared it to climbing up a mountain of research and arriving at the top only to discover the rest of the journey was on another mountain and the only way to reach it was to jump - and the gap appeared impossibly wide. He decided to return from where he'd come, but when he turned around he found there was no going back, he knew too much. So he jumped.
I consider my self a rational thinker who has rationally accepted the fact that I cannot know or prove all things. God, the tenets of Christianity, much of the human experience cannot be discerned by rational thinking. There is something more. Faith falls into the something more. Through my life experience I've found faith to be real and solid.
I believe that Christianity isn't a religion to be practiced. Christianity isn't about doing the right things and avoiding the wrong. Christianity isn't about seeking perfection by going to church or singing in a choir, Christianity isn't what you do, it's who you are.
I believe that humans are broken from the start. No one teaches little ones to bite you out of spite or say they hate you. It's wired in to us to be contrary and often downright hurtful. The world is full of brokenness, including war and cancer and bullying. This brokenness is the result of sin. But sin isn't breaking a law or rule. Those things are also the results of the brokenness. Sin, as defined in the Bible, is missing the mark. Whose mark? God's, his standard. And try as we can, we cannot hit the mark on our own, we are too broken. So God sent his Son to hit the mark for us, in our place. As a result, the issue isn't what I do or don't do (which rules I keep or break), the issue is what I do about Jesus. Do I accept his gift or reject it? My sins were forgiven way back on the cross. My sins are not forgiven by my doing good things. Nor is my salvation threatened by doing wrong things. It's all about what God did for us.
There is great freedom in that. Certainly not the freedom to go out and become a serial killer or even a lousy boss. There is an expectation of a different type of lifestyle, but that lifestyle (or lack thereof) does not make one a Christian. A Christian is someone who follows Christ, and that following begins when someone accepts God's work on a cross some 2000 years ago. And therein lies that faith thing.
A lot to take in. But believe it or not, I want you to know that the idea of earning salvation by a series of Brownie points is not Christianity, at least not what the Bible teaches about Christianity. I'll give you that it's how many Christians live, but unfortunately it's because they don't really understand what they've gotten themselves in to. The freedom and grace Christianity actually offers is scary stuff too. Rules and tradition are much more comfortable. That gets in the way of Christians as well.
But you do have to agree that a God who would do this for us, as a gift free for the asking, isn't the ogre God often presented in discussing deity. God is a God of grace and free choice. Why doesn't he just make us all Christians? Because he wants us to choose. Coerced love is never really love. So he did all the work and left it up to us to accept or reject. Whether we believe or not, God is in the room and he'd love to get to know you.
Enough for now. I intend to post more ramblings now and then and look forward to any comments you might send a long my way. I'd love to answer questions and respond to your thoughts on the ideas I present.
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