I have had quite a few of the members of Mayflower come to me recently with questions about either Biblical passages or where to find a certain thing in the Bible.  Some of you just want the info for your own use but others are trying to find ammunition for a confrontation with a neighbor or co-worker, someone who is challenging your views.  And for those of you locked in such a struggle I have found that your battles are long and treacherous and don’t really bear much fruit.  In fact, if I have the opportunity, I tend to advise people not to even bother.  Not that our Biblical views aren’t important but rather that if you are engaging in a discussion about the Bible with someone whose entire structure is built upon the requirement that the Bible be the absolute word of God, infallible and absolutely true by any standard, then you really have no place to go.  You can’t win…and beyond the winning thing, you can’t even be heard.

As we say here at Mayflower, I take the Bible seriously, not literally.  But I realize more and more that this is not the case for almost everyone else one would encounter in this neck of the woods.  Even the so-called “megachurch” model that is so wildly popular in these areas pushes a Biblical literalism that is completely synonymous with the most hardcore fundamentalist teaching.  I am not in any way opposed to the Bible, Biblical literacy or the ample use of the Bible in one’s spiritual life.  But just like I would be opposed to using a power saw to open a can of soup, I know that people need some instruction on how to read the Bible, for there are many obstacles in our way – weakness of textual sources, translation problems or downright errors and problems with linguistic metaphors and context when translating from a dead language through several others and finally arriving at English.

But the honest truth is that we live in an atmosphere where people think that memorizing Bible verses gets them some reservoir of truth in their heads, as if the truth were “hard-coded” into the actual words of the Bible, never mind that our translations leave much depth to the original meaning lost in a wooden rendition.  Take, for example, one of the most commonly used pieces of scripture supposedly supporting the prominent role and inerrancy of the Bible – 2 Timothy 3:14-17.  It reads like this in the NRSV translation:

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.

That phrase “inspired by God” comes from the Greek word “theopneustos” which uses the roots for both “God” (theo) and “Spirit” (pneuma).  Iin Greek it might be better rendered as “God-breathed” because that word pneuma has a great depth to it.  It would evoke a sense of God as the creative force, as the one who breathed life into human beings at creation and spoke (breath-oriented creation) the world into being.  To say “inspired by God” seems to fall a bit short of what the Greek wants to evoke.  In either case, the meaning of the passage is not that the Bible is the actual word of God but that God is involved.

See, the real issue as far as I can tell is one of authority.  Where do we get it?  I’m influenced heavily in this entry by a book called “A Christianity Worth Believing” by Doug Pagitt.  It’s a great book from the field of so-called “Emerging Christianity” which means, as far as I can tell, people who are wanting to recapture that sense of being followers of Jesus in the most radical and subversive ways they can, including rejecting old models and theologies of the historical church AND recovery of some previously discarded ones too.  And Pagitt says this about our little topic for today:

“…this authority question is worth looking at, if only because it is such a hot button in Christian circles.  So, here’s how I see it: The Bible gains its authority from God and the communities who grant it authority.  Like many people, I believe in the Bible because I believe in God.  But I know plenty of people who think that it ought to happen the other way around, that a person needs to believe the Bible in order to believe in God.  So they’ll give a Bible to a non- Christian in the hope that by reading about God, that person will be enlightened.  Certainly that can happen, but it seems kind of backward to me.  I mean, what possible reason would someone have for believing this story if they didn’t already believe in God?”

I think that Pagitt is getting at my point, which is that the Bible is a reflection of people’s experiences of God – complete with the weakness, moral failures, limitations and self-serving interpretation of events that characterize human beings, then and now.  It is the record of people’s encounters with God, and that pre-supposes having encounters with God…many of which, in our Biblical record, change the hearts and minds of those people having them.

One of my (and Pagitt’s) main issues is that it seems far too often that people use the Bible to confirm their already held beliefs.  Whether that is the role of women in the church or homosexuality or even what day to worship on, the standard leanings on the Bible tend to confirm what I think that people already believe.  And that’s problematic for me.

See the Gospel is not that kind of confirmation – almost never does it reinforce someone’s existing position…especially those of us who live every day on the “top of the heap”.  In fact, most of the stories of Jesus have him tearing down people’s carefully constructed houses of belief and reversing their set in stone truths.  I get nervous when reading the Bible doesn’t challenge me or confront my comfortable position.  In fact, that old saying really is what I think that the Bible does – it comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable.

The Bible only makes sense when it relates to our own lives.  Trying to use it as a textbook or a word-for-word instruction manual is like using a hammer to paint a fence.  The Bible is a tool that has certain uses and trying to make it God or even the Spirit doesn’t do anyone any good.  It is only worthwhile when we live it, just as the writers of all of those stories did, and when we find in it not truth (at least in the way that we think of truth as verifiable and quantitative) but instead meaning, insight and the reinforcement of what really does need tending to – our trust in a God who is seeking to re-create the world with God’s breath and through God’s creation.

“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.  For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.” – Matthew 7:1-3

Shirley Sherrod has become the focal point of controversy but not, as it turns out, because of what she did but rather because of something she said taken out of context and edited for political effect and orchestrated for a particular outcome.  The spotlight turned on her because of the regular flow of what is called “news” and “information” these days.

The control of narrative is the central issue in our consumption of information today.  No longer can we just consider data, we must also consider the source of that data and judge (as best we can) intent, method and mechanism.  Even so-called “raw” data can be presented with slant and intent.

So as we have watched Ms. Sherrod live through her ordeal perhaps there is a chance for us to reflect on our soundbyte world where we make bold judgments and aggressive characterizations based on seconds of third-hand observation or, worse yet, the deliberate plot of opinion-driven news.

It is ironic that Ms. Sherrod’s full speech (you know the one that no one who judged, used or fired her could be bothered to watch) would be about redemption and how her initial opinionated reaction to a white couple who she had the capacity to help but initially gave the bare minimum to shifted…how her stereotypical reaction, based on a very real and horrific childhood which would give her little reason to like, trust or believe white people, changed to a realization that there is “those who have versus those who don’t” and that they could be “black, they could be white, they could be Hispanic”.

Sherrod found out that once she knew someone’s story – once she went beyond the soundbyte to a real demonstration of the place that people lived, the steps they walked daily…that she was seeing something very different.  She, unlike the men who murdered her father for being black in the 60s, walked a mile in someone else’s shoes…she used her power to humble herself and see the humanity present in front of her.

When Jesus tells his disciples not to judge for they will be judged as they are judging, he follows it up (in Matthew’s version) by telling them to remove the plank from their own eye before commenting on the speck in their fellow human beings’ eye.  Not judging people absolutely requires that we look at ourselves first and that we walk a mile in another person’s shoes before we pass any kind of judgment.

This morning as I waited at the pool for my sons to get done with swimming lessons, I observed a woman coming in late with her son.  He was about the same age as my oldest, maybe 7 or 8 and he came in the gate saying “NO” very forcefully to his mom.  She was pretty passive and just gently reminded him where to go and what it was time to do.  He got more and more belligerent and I looked at the woman sitting across the way from me and we exchanged “Geez, get control of your son” looks.  I thought to myself, “No kid of mine would ever get away with talking to me like that.”  She eventually ignored the tantrum and went and sat down.  It was then that I noticed the rapid arm movements and the distracted glances.  Then he began to play with a plastic toy and make loud noises to himself.  That’s when I felt like a jerk.  Recognizing the same behaviors I see from a cousin, I knew that the kid was autistic and here I am questioning his mother’s parenting skills.  Easy for me to judge when I’m not looking at the plank in my own eye.

All of this makes me think of where we find ourselves, culturally speaking.  I wonder what the man who said “judge not lest ye be judged” would think upon seeing what passes for a political process now, or what he would say to himself after watching a single episode of any “reality TV” show?  “Judge not” is built on the empathic imagination –being able to put ourselves in another person’s shoes and see something beyond a surface glimpse, a chance to see all other people, even those with whom we vehemently disagree as human beings.  The empathic imagination is a way to hear, even if we have to imagine it, what Paul Harvey would call the “rest of the story”, the thing that separates the edge of our actions from the depth of our beings, wounds and all.  Because what Jesus is really telling us is “don’t judge something until you know it well enough to feel what they’re feeling and experience what they have experienced…for if you judge by the soundbyte, you’ll find yourself in a shallow and superficial world built by your own hands.

There seems to be much press on the execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner, but not because executions are rare in this country. Quite to the contrary, the US is one of only 18 countries known to have carried out executions last year. We share that tragic distinction with such wonderful allies as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Vietnam and China. I think that what is remarkable to people is the method of Gardner’s execution. For the first time in 14 years, a man has been executed in this country by firing squad. And that seems to disturb people.

I think that this concern originates from the fallacy that there are humane ways to execute people. Even here in this execution-friendly nation, the Supreme Court stayed all executions for periods of 2007 and 2008 while it considered the constitutionality of lethal injection, widely considered to be the most “friendly” form of murder. We are indeed left with a handful of states who still practice the death penalty – our fair state chief among them. Last year, 52 executions were known to be carried out in the US. Texas had the most executions, with 24. Alabama had 6, Ohio 5 and Georgia 3. And lest we think that this is barbaric Utah that still does this, Utah is the only state in the US other than Oklahoma that lists the firing squad as a possible means of execution, offering condemned men the choice between that and the lethal injection.

As Mark Tran points out in an article for the Guardian newspaper, “While 58 countries retained the death penalty in 2009, most did not use it. Eighteen countries were known to have carried out executions, killing a total of at least 714 people. However, this figure does not include the thousands of executions that are likely to have taken place in China, which does not give out figures on its use of the death penalty. Iran last year executed at least 388 people, while Iraq executed about 120. Methods of execution in 2009 included hanging, shooting, beheading, stoning, electrocution and lethal injection.”

My issue is that while the method debate might be a nice distraction, it does nothing to address the real issue – the morality of the death penalty regardless of method. While I appreciate the shock effect that a firing squad has, and certainly in the case of a man convicted of killing someone by shooting the firing squad is the ultimate “eye for an eye” retribution, I am called by the teacher who refuted that ancient Hebrew code from Leviticus, Exodus and Deuteronomy. Executions do nothing to help us achieve a higher moral goal, the one that Dr. King expressed when he said that “The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral; returning violence with violence only multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.”

I mourn the death of Gardner, as I mourn the deaths of Melvyn Otterstrom and Michael Burdell, victims of the same kind of violence from Mr. Gardner. Murder does not resolve murder. Regardless of the method, the death penalty serves only to foster an atmosphere that says violence is an acceptable method of retribution, for real or perceived crimes. As that old bumper sticker slogan goes, “Why do we kill people who kill people to show people that killing people is wrong?”

One of the most famous scenes of romantic literature is the scene from Romeo and Juliet in which Juliet yearns for her true love and says, “O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name. Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love and I’ll no longer be a Capulet.”  It is the great bard Shakespeare’s contribution to the skewing of love and the misconceptions of romance, and this scene is like a gateway drug for starry eyed young lovers who think that love is all about butterfly stomachs and warm fuzzies.

Like my friend Barbara, a member of Mayflower and recent graduate of Phillips Theological Seminary…soon on her way to even more school, I make a connection between juvenile ideas about romance and the libertarian notions of government and social structure.  Here’s what Barbara says in a recent blog post:

I can understand libertarian values and can even support them up to a point — but for me, that point has always been called “reality.” There is something quite romantic about the ideal of the self-made person, someone who relies totally upon himself, makes his own way and doesn’t cause any drain on public funds — which shouldn’t be there because we should all be taking care of the others in our own groups. This is, anyway, the way I’ve always understood libertarianism, and it’s quite romantic. Which means, of course, that, like most romances, it fades away when the harsh light of the day hits it.

She has a very salient and poignant point to make about this topic.  The further that the extreme right pushes us into the myth of the individual, the more damage is done to any sense of community, the essence of Christian life.  Jesus called his followers to a radical new community and the apostle Paul did the same.  We simply are not fully Christian as individuals, we must live our faith in connection to one another.  One of the most damaging forces at work today is the idea that we don’t need one another or that some are expendable.  We are not island who happen to encounter one another periodically, we are woven into a luminous web of mutuality.

I do not wish to say that we are all one homogeneous blob of humanity.  We are diverse and should recognize and celebrate that diversity, but not in the name of individualism…diversity in the name of community.  We don’t gather together because we are the same, but because we need each other…every single other.

Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath…”   – Mark 2:27

Arizona’s new law about immigration has not created new problems or proposed “solutions” that haven’t been stated before.  It is not generating new issues, only feeding old ones and ushering in a new environment in which fear rules over compassion and in which we confuse our safety with our comfort.

The main thrust of support for this immigration bill is, as far as I can tell, built on the idea that illegals bring crime and that something must be done about that.  As Daniel Griswold points out on his blog, this may not be completely accurate:

“The crime rate in Arizona in 2008 was the lowest it has been in four decades. In the past decade, as the number of illegal immigrants in the state grew rapidly, the violent crime rate dropped by 23 percent, the property crime rate by 28 percent. (You can check out the DoJ figures here.)”

First off I would say that being an “immigrant nation”, which is what we have been, are and will be, is an inherently risky venture.  Anytime there is free flow of anything (ideas, capital, human beings, etc.) you risk something.  And I also think that Texas, New Mexico and Arizona share an undue burden as far as immigration support goes.  But New Mexico, for some reason, seems not to share its neighbors’ concerns or policy decisions.  New Mexico’s government officials, including Governor Bill Richardson, have largely spoken out against Arizona’s legislation.  So this is not a universal opinion for border states.

But what troubles me more than the law itself is the manner in which people are being labeled and how that allows us to “other” them.  What concerns me is the generic “illegal” label that gets applied with no acknowledgment of the complexity of this issue.  And what troubles me even more is that such an issue is being raised over the status of “illegal” immigrants who are guilty of what is, for a single offense, a misdemeanor.  Just for the record, depending on the jurisdiction, examples of other misdemeanors include: public intoxication, disorderly conduct, trespass, vandalism, reckless driving, and other similar crimes…hardly the kind of activity that motivates people to build miles of fencing or separate families for years or interrogate children.

So this leads me to think that perhaps something is going on behind the movement against “illegals” beyond just a sudden interest in law enforcement.

The truth is that I am not really worried about what the common reaction to this law will be.  I happen to know and trust many law enforcement officers as just like all the rest of us – decent, fair-minded people who are not geared towards violence or wishing to inflict harm or pain on anyone, least of all the innocent.  Still, they will have a duty and perhaps some tough decisions to make in the coming months.

What I am worried about are the very few who would engage in racial profiling because they believe in it, or xenophobic slants to their enforcement of the laws because they harbor their own racist ideologies.  This law enables those people.  Archbishop Desmond Tutu said it best in a recent blog commentary on the Arizona law:

“Abominations such as apartheid do not start with an entire population suddenly becoming inhumane. They start here. They start with generalizing unwanted characteristics across an entire segment of a population. They start with trying to solve a problem by asserting superior force over a population. They start with stripping people of rights and dignity – such as the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty – that you yourself enjoy. Not because it is right, but because you can. And because somehow, you think this is going to solve a problem.

However, when you strip a man or a woman of their basic human rights, you strip them of their dignity in the eyes of their family and their community, and even in their own eyes. An immigrant who is charged with the crime of trespassing for simply being in a community without his papers on him is being told he is committing a crime by simply being. He or she feels degraded and feels they are of less worth than others of a different color skin. These are the seeds of resentment, hostilities and in extreme cases, conflict.

Such “solutions” solve nothing. As already pointed out, even by people on the police force, Arizona’s new laws will split the communities, make it less likely that people in the immigrant communities will work with the police. They will create conditions favorable to the very criminals these laws are trying to disarm.”

This has been partially addressed.  In the latest version of the bill, amended recently, the language has been changed, supposedly to “remove fears about racial profiling”. The original law said that police can conduct an immigration status check during any “lawful contact,” if they have reasonable suspicion a person is an illegal immigrant. The amendment replaces “lawful contact” with “lawful stop, detention or arrest,” clarifying that police may not stop people without cause.

But here’s the catch.  A police officer can pull anyone over for any reason.  I know what the law says, but I also know that “driving while black” is a very real situation and that “driving while brown” will be just as real.  If we’re talking about the “few bad apples”, then the law gives them every window they need.  They can say the person was speeding or jaywalking or they thought they saw them shoplifting and had to pull them aside.  That is an elephant-sized loophole for the right (or wrong) kind of person.

This is the next wave of human and civil rights debate in this country.  We want free trade, but closed borders.  We want a global economy but a national identity.  These things cannot work together – something has to give.  Perhaps Arizona is the Selma of our time – the front lines of the next question in the ongoing debate – who is in, who is out?  Who counts?

This is a very complicated issue with many sides I have not portrayed or even accurately described most likely, but if we don’t start from a perspective in which we value human life and the dignity of human beings, even at the most basic of levels, I shudder to think of what we are capable of creating.

What this law really accomplishes, as far as I can tell, is the spreading of the same fear that caused its inception in the first place.  Until we begin to see human beings, especially in the case of illegal immigration, instead of people guilty by existence, we may be living legally but that doesn’t bode well for our morality.  The borders we have drawn on the world God created are ours, God doesn’t see them…God sees human beings.