pranks the city slickers. In a world where people can be famous for, well, being famous, this was bound to happen.
Category: Culture
In One Sense…
President Obama was correct in his “You didn’t build that…” comments. If you read around the sound bite for context you’ll discover that he was talking about all the larger things that make individual success possible. There’s truth there.
Individuals have ideas. Individuals have plans. Individuals have dreams. Individuals take risks. Yet all of that is surrounded by all kinds of resources, people, infrastructure, and community that allow those individual things to flourish. You may be the founder and boss but you need others, employees, buyers, sellers, water pipes, roads, phone lines, a lot of things to make what you envisioned happen.
I think the rich and powerful often forget this. No one is self made, one way or another we need each others. One way or another we have some kind of responsibility to each other. There is a common good and not simply a collection of individual goods that have somehow agreed to live with each other.
Yet, at the same time, I don’t think its the state’s task to enforce that understanding, to pick winners and losers and artificially create identical outcomes. When the state does this some people feel entitled and others become resentful. Everyone sees their success in terms of power, of manipulating the state to their advantage, of making the system work for them and excluding others.
What’s really needed is something beyond politics, something much more difficult. What’s needed is a moral and spiritual sea change and frankly we’ve got our work cut out for us. Those who have need to understand the reality behind what they have acquired and understand that much is required from those to whom much has been given. Their hearts need to be warmed to the common good, to the least of these, and the reality that everything is actually on temporary loan from the Giver and there will be an accounting. Those who have less need to be given more to industry, to supporting each other in good habits and life that make for betterment and less to envy and anger.
Yet we do have our work cut out for us because the Christian impulse that would call the rich to philanthrophy and the poor to industry has nearly disappeared. We increasingly ask the government to do what we should be doing. We ask our leaders to make the changes we need to make. We’re always one election away from our utopia even as we fail to understand that the world is always going to be the product, for good or ill, of its inhabitants. While our eyes are glued to the television the solution is in our mirror.
Until we get this, and act on it, everything will remain the same and the same means going nowhere.
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From Time to Time…
I’ve been watching “The Office” on TV and I think the show has been a success because almost everyone works with one of the characters on the show or in that office. The whole thing treads the line between being hilarious and tragic.
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Snicker…
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A Modest Proposal…
Who says Lutherans don’t have wit?
Tuesday, December 15, 2009, 5:38 AM
Last summer, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America voted to accept actively homosexual persons as members of their clergy and to condone gays and lesbians living in “lifelong, monogamous same-gender relationships.” This has caused a firestorm of controversy in that church body. In response, the American Lutheran Publicity Bureau, an independent pan-Lutheran organization that produces a magazine called Lutheran Forum, and a newsletter Forum Letter, published an article titled “Temple Prostitution: A Modest Proposal” by the Associate Editor of Forum Letter, Pastor Peter Speckhard, nephew of the late Father Richard John Neuhaus. I asked for permission to share this brilliant piece of satire here and they kindly granted it. And so, here is the article printed in the December 2009 issue of Forum Letter. Copyright 2009 American Lutheran Publicity Bureau. All rights reserved. For further information about Forum Letter, visit www.alpb.org. [Editorial warning: May be unsuitable except for mature readers]
Temple prostitution: a modest proposal
by Peter Speckhard, associate editor
November 2009 Forum Letter
Every now and then a new way of looking at things not only solves a problem but opens up unexpected opportunities for that one solution to lead to a whole host of related solutions. The recent decisions of the ELCA regarding homosexuality solved the problem faced by gay couples seeking church weddings. But even better, the new way of looking at the issue could solve several more perennial problems in the church with one grand innovation.
Facing our problems
What are the biggest problems, practical and theological, that Lutheran churches in America face today? I would submit the following:
—Inability to retain or reach out to young, single people, especially men. Think about it—on a typical Sunday in a typical Lutheran church, how many 28-year-old single men are sitting in the pews? How might we draw them in? What are their felt needs?
—Failure to use the gifts of the laity. Sure, it is easy to use the gifts of creative, educated, energetic, talented people. But many Christians are none of those things. Like the Little Drummer Boy, they have not much to offer. But if they sincerely, humbly, and faithfully offer whatever gifts they’ve been given, shouldn’t they expect their offering to meet the approval of their God?
—Declining revenue. Especially in a tough economy, we need new and creative ways to raise money if we’re adequately going to fund critical ministries such as feeding the hungry or blanketing Africa with condoms.
—Legalism. We can’t be a gospel-centered church with a do-this, don’t-do-that mentality. Legalism, a focus on rules and moralistic preaching have always threatened the freedom of the gospel.
—Biblicism. Too often we use selective proof-texts merely to maintain traditional opinions rather than really listening to the Spirit.
—Irrelevance. We need to address the real social needs in and of the world as it exists around us, not as it supposedly was in the 1950’s or how we might wish it were. We must face the joyful challenges of today.
—Worship without impact. Too often our worship is only a matter of words and music rather than an expression of radical freedom that encompasses the whole person.
Prostitution solution
Now imagine all those problems solved with one simple innovation. The answer: temple prostitution.
I know, I know. Outrageous and offensive. I can hear readers already dismissing the idea out of hand. And I admit that we may not be ready for it quite yet. But please hear me out on this.
First off, let’s address the common objections. Sure, there are a handful of Bible verses that might seem to condemn the practice. But all the condemnation of temple prostitution involves pagan practices or worship of false gods. The objectionable thing is the idolatry, not the physical act itself. Sanctified, faithful prostitution in service of the true God is a new thing. The Biblical writers never foresaw or contemplated sanctified, faithful, God-pleasing prostitution in the churches and thus never wrote about it. Attempts to find a Biblical injunction against the practice therefore fall short.
Interpretive nuance
Secondly, let’s not cherry-pick verses selectively. We don’t stone disobedient children to death. We don’t refrain from pork or sodomy merely because this or that verse says we should. We have to look at the whole Biblical witness in light of the freedom we have in Christ. For example, God ordered Hosea to marry a prostitute. Such Biblical precedent offers interpretive nuance to seemingly black-and-white prohibitions.
Thirdly, Jesus himself seemed to have a soft spot for prostitutes. Many reputable scholars today think he may have been married to one. And Jesus showed radical inclusivity, breaking taboos by hanging out with prostitutes. So he would want us to celebrate and affirm their prostitution and give them a venue for making it their true vocation, a way of serving God by serving man—selflessly and with their whole being.
Fourthly, some primarily Lutheran nations in Scandinavia have already legalized prostitution. Left-hand kingdom legalities need not stand in the way of the general idea of sanctified, faithful, God-pleasing, church-sponsored prostitution.
Science tells us
Lastly, the idea that church prostitution would cause any harm has been put to rest by a host of studies. The opportunity for a woman to explore her sexuality in a controlled, churchly environment surely beats the back seat or back alley. She would have the mutual trust of knowing her client is a fellow faithful Christian. There would be proper testing, protection, and hygiene standards in a suitably sterilized environment. What she might have done in service to the devil, the world, and her own sinful nature she would now do in service to God, whom we serve by serving our fellow man.
No more living a lie
And for the client there are similar advantages. Think of the number of single males who would be saved from living a lie concerning their deepest emotional and psychological desires. The plain fact is that most of the unmarried men in the congregation are sexually attracted to women. Right now their cruel alternatives are to deny those urges and live a lie, carry out those urges in secretive and destructive ways, or leave the church because their desires are not welcomed and affirmed. But with temple prostitution available, they could avoid dangerous, destructive behavior, help the church raise money, use the gift of sexuality in a God-pleasing way, and sit in the pew focusing on spiritual things without all that pent up desire and frustration getting in the way.
Love conquers all
So there are no valid objections to sanctified, faithful, God-pleasing prostitution in the churches apart from tradition and conservative morality, which are surely trumped by love.
Furthermore, even if there are some controversial points, they do not touch the heart of the gospel. This plan does not eliminate John 3:16; it exposes more people to John 3:16 on Sunday (or, more likely, the Saturday night service). And if there is some Biblicist objection that such behavior could be considered immoral according to traditional, puritanical mores, well, everyone is a sinner, right? Salvation by grace through faith says nothing specifically about prostitution, right? And Jesus never explicitly addressed the issue, either. Do we think we’re saved by proper sexual behavior? I think not. Nor are we saved by our interpretations of a few non-gospel related verses of the Bible.
Benefits abounding
Now think of the benefits. This program would attract the very demographic we have had such trouble reaching (young men). It would end our fiscal woes. Think of the money we could raise to feed the hungry! Or do you want them to starve because of your puritan hang-ups? It would also provide a teaching opportunity against the age-old heresy that the body is evil. God made us with perfectly natural sexual urges. Why are you so hung up on sex?
The Law is fulfilled in Christ; we are a free, gospel-centered people. We can serve Christ via sanctified, faithful, God-pleasing, church-sponsored prostitution.
Needn’t be church-dividing
But hey, I understand we’re all in different places on this. This needn’t be church-dividing. We can live together with diverse views on this. Some traditionalists may not be comfortable having temple prostitutes in church. They don’t necessarily hate prostitutes; they might just need time. They don’t have to offer it themselves; besides, what seems crazy at first might, with several years of repetition and refining, become perfectly acceptable. Must those of us who are in favor of it be written out of the body of Christ?
Some of us are ready now. I certainly don’t insist that anyone become a temple prostitute or worship God with the help of one. But I do say that there have always been willing prostitutes and willing clients who have been marginalized by traditional sexual mores, and the time has come to change that. And the way to change it is to stop the marginalizing. We’ll all benefit from being a healthier, more inclusive, more faithful, more forgiving, and more satisfied church body if only we’ll be open to the idea of God doing something new.
—by Peter Speckhard, associate editor
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Smile…
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From the Middle East…
This is more or less what is happening today. The state of Israel is now the “Western out-post” in the Middle East (parallel to the old Crusader states) and Western geo-political and economic (i.e. oil) interests far out-weigh religious affiliations. The West has shown again and again that their “Christian brothers” in the east are expendable. Even among the Religious Right in the USA the safety and priorities of the state of Israel are far more important than the welfare of eastern Christians. Saddam Hussein had to go – he was a threat to Israel. Never mind that the new regime in Iraq does nothing to protect its Christian minorities. Syria is the same story. The Assad government has protected the ancient Christian communities in Syria. That counts for nothing. More important is the fact that Assad is anti-Israeli. In Reuters news this morning the Assad government was described as “the most oppressive regime in the Middle East.” Really? Then try being a Christian in Saudi Arabia! Right across the Middle East in this ‘Arab Spring’ the West is supporting “regime-change” that will install murderous anti-Christian Islamists to power. This is not a new turn in Western realpolitik. The West has shown that it is prepared to jettison its Christian façade when power and influence are at stake. It seems that not much has changed since the Crusades. No one really cares about the Christians in the east – least of all Christians in the West.
Read more here.
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I Think Canada…
is an inconsequential country and I mean that as a compliment. Nobody much cares what Canada thinks about any issue, what it does, or how Canadian policy will affect their situation. Canadians may hate to hear that, but its true.
And I admire that.
In the US we’re all over the place, a cultural, economic, and military titan. People in little countries in Africa have to think about us and we always seem to be on someone’s horizon. The truth is there are a lot of people who wouldn’t know where Canada is if it weren’t riding our northern border.
But what a cost.
Morally, financially, in lives, energy, and just plain soul being the US is very expensive and getting more so every day. We’re everywhere and nowhere. People have to pay attention to us, and yes, fear us, but we’re getting to be more and more like a punched out fighter. We pay everyone’s bills but our own. We take care of everyone’s problems but our own. We’re on the world’s stage every minute of every day but the act is getting old.
I think Canada has it right. Live within your borders. As best you can live within your means. Be out there in the world but not in everyone’s face. Do good things when you can and be careful about picking fights. Realize it’s not always important to be number one in everything there is to be number one.
Oh, Canada is hardly perfect. Too politically correct. Given to defining themselves by how they are different from the US. Sometimes unsure or unwilling. Yet I think they’ve got something up there, at least a direction that we just south might want to look at. Eat the fruit, spit out the seeds, and not be enraptured with the idea of being a world power all the time.
It has its benefits.
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An Entire Generation…
perhaps more has been raised with the idea that the validation of any idea, proposition, or theory is firmly rooted in the emotions. Evidence is irrelevant. Logic is unimportant. The precedents of history are meaningless. If I “feel” something then it is true to me and the larger culture is obligated to endorse and support my convictions. The problem with this is that emotions are unreliable, easily manipulated, and subject to frequent change. Of course they’re important but when elevated to the level of deity they are a compass with no true north, an anchor with no rope leaving the person who lives their lives solely on them perpetually adrift.
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A Thought…
The mind of a utopian needs a scapegoat, something or someone other than the failure of their own ideas to explain away the difficulties in their perfect world. Increasingly in this culture that role is being assigned to observant Christians who are considered to be enemies of progress, people whose quaint ideas and regressive lifestyles stand in the way of achieving, in real life, the utopian world of the imagination. Words like “tolerance” and “diversity” in this utopian realm have become, over the years, detached from their normal meaning and instead have become an ideology of exclusion, a marker of those who belong to the new order and a tool for the marginalization of those who for whatever reason disagree. The idea is that if these people are rendered marginal, ineffective, or become objects of cultural scorn that the hoped for ideal world will emerge. It won’t, of course, because the core of a utopian world view is a primal selfishness and eventually consumes itself but many may have to experience extreme hardship until the people who have ignored history relearn its very basic lessons.
The Beautiful Path 