One of the things that has emerged from the coverage of candidate’s religious beliefs in this current election cycle has been the extraordinarily clumsy handling of religion and religious ideas by large swaths of the mainstream media. The focus of this comedy of errors is on Gov. Palin at the present but no candidate has been handled well. Misquotes and half truths abound, and context is often non-existent.

So many journalists seem genuinely startled at the idea that a candidate even has a religious belief they take seriously. I suppose this is what happens when your life is lived in horribly provincial places like New York and Washington D.C. and you travel in small circles of both friends and ideas. But a person doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry when you see grown up people, people who’ve supposedly traveled the world and possess a wide range of interest, stumble over themselves and stammer away at the thought that a politician prays and actually means it.

Where we these people born? Where did they go to school? Don’t they have family? Maybe as part of their journalism training they should be required to live in say, Kansas or Alaska, for a year so they get a little bit of grounding about life beyond the studio. Perhaps they should go to a real church or synagogue every so often to be reminded about how people in the “fly over country” really live. “You mean you really believe in God and that’s part of your life?” “How curious!” “How interesting!” “I can’t wait to get back to my people and tell them about this strange and different America I discovered.”

Well you get the point and the point is that the vast majority of the news you get about religion, especially the interplay of religion and politics will be flawed, folded, spindled, and mutilated by people who have lots of cameras but no clue. So be careful out there and take everything with a very large grain of salt. Ask the questions the journalists themselves are too ignorant of incompetent to ask and always remember “reader beware.”

September 14, 2008

The impetus of the Christian life is gratitude, the response of love to Love, of receiver to Giver, the gratitude of the lost who has been found, the wounded who has been healed, and the broken who has been made whole. But many, even those who spent their lives in the Church, have missed this, living for years under a shadow of untruth which robbed them of the vital joy, the dynamic, and the sheer awesomeness of this life to which we are called.

In his song “Only the Good Die Young…” Billy Joel states “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, the sinners have much more fun…” and the reason we understand those lyrics is because too often we’ve lived under an illusion, the idea that our Faith is about rituals, rules, regulations, and tasks all under the watchful and harsh eye of a god who uses fear to achieve his ends. In our world the free person, the person who is most alive, is portrayed as the one who has thrown off the chains of gods and rules and lives each moment to their own pleasure while the devout struggle in ignorance and slavery, doing what they do from some primal disturbance inside. And too often we believe it ourselves.

Now we won’t say it out loud but it comes out in our actions; the marginalizing of godly things in our lives, the sense that we’re doing what we do like a child who’s mom told him to finish his peas before he gets dessert. It’s amazing how we can travel for hours to make a game or concert and find a few minute’s drive to church tiresome. How is it that we can watch television for hours but not pray or read the Bible for even a few minutes? We spend thousands on toys and give God the lint from the inside of our wallet. So much of this is rooted in the fact that we see God like we see the worst boss we ever had and hope to do just enough to keep from getting fired, or in God’s case thrown into fire. So we keep the “rules” like the person who set his cruise control just enough above the speed limit to avoid getting a ticket and our faith withers because of it.

But that’s not our God and that is not our Faith. Our whole life as Christians is supposed to be about love returned to the One who loves us; a life lived in response to life given, the created responding to the Creator with the harmony of Eden’s first light. As we cherish those close to us on earth and give our lives to them so it should be with our life in God. The rules and the regulations, as it were, are not the ends but the means to assist us in what should be a life transforming love relationship with God. Yet this is too often a rare thing, the province of saints and ascetics even though this was not meant to be.

We need, as Orthodox Christians to rediscover the depth of the love of God for us, the unspeakable grace which flows to us from the very heart of His being, and if we truly catch this vision gratitude will rise from us in waves. We rattle off John 3:16 without pausing to think about it means to say that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…” but the implications of this are profound. The God of the universe burns with a holy love for us, as fallible and minute as we are, and in the distress of our brokenness has come to us to teach us how to live, to willingly bear all of our darkness, and even break the power of our greatest enemy, death.

If we get this for even a moment, if we see the cross which we celebrate today and realize what’s been given to us, then the way we see God will change and our life of faith will stop seeming like an endless series of rituals and rules but rather that which would naturally arise from a profound gratitude. We’ll flee from sin not because we’re afraid of God but because it sullies the love we share. We’ll worship not because we feel such a thing will appease God but because our hearts cannot help but give praise to One who has given everything to us. We’ll give of ourselves not as some kind of bribe under eternal duress but rather as an expression of love with joy. When we realize who God truly is, come to terms with even a fraction of the depth of his love for us, and have our heart stirred by the reality of it all it will become impossible to remain stingy of soul, to live the minimal life of faith, to settle. Even the fasts will be filled with joy and our hearts will find rest. Gratitude is what makes this Christian life an easy yoke and in the shadow of the holy cross may such gratitude be stirred in our hearts today.

I pause in the business of this day to call to mind my brother, Paul.

Two years ago on this day a sudden heart attack took him from us at the age of 44 so this day is quiet, reflective, and probably always will be. At times I used to forget his birthday, was it the 26th or 27th of October, but this day is locked in, seared, and in a headline print too obvious to ignore.

Now I would like to tell you that faith has triumphed over death and loss as we bask in the power of the resurrection but for me, at least, it is not so and may never be. Only the eyes of eternity see the why’s and wherefore’s of that day. I have no clue. None of it makes sense and I still have not seen the good of it. I rarely cry, am basically never angry. I’m just numb and the every time I would like to speak there is only silence.

On the far edges of my faith there is a place of rest in all of this and I see it as I plod along but that’s just about the pace of things. I have no fear for my brother but I am silenced by the helplessness of it all. I don’t question God but we haven’t really spoken much about it either. The whole of it is like a bone stuck in my throat, not enough to strangle but easily enough to leave me with a perpetual cough.

I pray for his wife, for his children, for my mother who had to bury a child, and I hope for the best. Tonight I’ll visit his grave and light a candle. I’ll cry there and then spend the night awake in thought one step closer to home, one step closer to home.

I had the opportunity to speak with two old friends yesterday. One of them had a mother in the hospital on life support and the other was just someone with whom I had lost touch. Our friendships were formed in the crucible of high school, that place where people who don’t fit in find each other and hang on for the ride. Over the years we’ve been together, moved around the country, kept in touch and then drifted away. An email brought us together this time after a two year silence.

We’ve changed over the years. My tumultuous late teen life has long ago drifted away and I hardly remember the person I was when these friendships were born. I still love music, we’re all musicians, and still have a restless streak, but age is perspective. One of us left for the south and never came back. His mother is in the hospital and as we talked I was impressed with the depth of soul that had emerged in his life. Time and struggle has shaped him and the fire has burned away dross. The other was as I had left him some years ago, a core of personality and life that seemed locked in a coating of anger. Whatever else had happened along his path this had not changed, or at least my perception of it had not. I miss the happy fellow he was and even as we talked I realized that I still care for him even as I keep a cautious distance. The thread, at times, may be thin but it will stay intact.

One thing is certain. As time and distance have taken us apart and circumstances bring us together over the years there will always be something inside of us that holds us together. We pick up off right where we left, whether that place was good or bad, and we can still talk for an hour without coming up for air. Whether or not we can be together, or even want to be together at any one time, we are still connected, if by nothing else, by the past we have shared. A million miles away there will always be a place in my heart for these two guys.

Time always takes people away but I’m always amazed by the ability of friendship to span the gulf. it is one of the great wonders of being human.

I received a call this morning from a family member about one of their in laws who, some years ago, drove past a church and told everyone “This is the place where I rejected Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior…”

She died early this morning.

Here’s the link.

If as a Party you pursue with Senator Obama and Speaker Pelosi some clarity about the status of the human embryo (a question they both consider important), you will eventually have to make a decision. You will either decide pre-born babies have rights because modern embryologists say they, too, are unique human individuals, or you will be forced to take the very hard line of saying some human individuals just don’t deserve human rights, for whatever sordid reason.

The feelings expressed by this, I presume, Roman Catholic Priest are many of my own.

What say you?

Another reason why the mainstream media doesn’t get religion, especially Christianity, and more especially people, like Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, who actually practice their faith.

Expect it, because mainstream media often work in their own echo chamber doing what they do for people almost exactly like themselves and, despite their advocacy of tolerance and diversity, rarely able to grasp folks they don’t meet at cocktail parties.

This, by the way, is another good reason why you should get your religious news from Get Religion where the coverage is critiqued in a fair way and rumors, like Governor Palin naming her kids after witches, go to die.

An article from First Things on political rhetoric and violence.

I do worry that the rhetoric coming from the political fringes has the potential to one day move into the mainstream and then provoke violence. Violent words always seem to be the precursor to violence itself. One must dehumanize the enemy to allow the conscience the freedom to kill and it appears this has already begun.

In times past we’ve had difficult political campaigns with harsh words but there was always an ethic in place that confined the struggle to words. That ethic, that Judaeo-Christian framework, is largely disappearing and without it politics has become all there is and for many the stakes have become a matter of life and death.

One day the trigger may be pulled. Lord have mercy.

This past week over 80 thousand people and nearly 40 million via television watched as Sen. Barack Obama accepted
the nomination of his party for the Presidency.

Some, I suppose were curious, some wanted to see history in the making; some were looking for points to critique. But among the people there were many looking for a message, the kinds of words that would transform their lives. People from across the country have attended the Senator’s campaign events and often become overwhelmed with emotion. Oprah Winfrey, who called Obama the “One”, spoke of how her time in Denver was the most powerful thing she had ever experienced and musician Kanye West said his attendance at the speech changed his life forever. They join the many stories of that type which have come from the campaign, people not interested necessarily in the specifics about how things will run or who will pay for them but seeking a message of hope and change. Those words and what they represent have carried a formerly little known Senator from Illinois to the pinnacle of power in our country and whatever one thinks about the actual politics it’s important to note how people have reacted to even the idea that someone could deliver them to better things.

This is the genius of Sen. Obama’s campaign. Deep inside of all us we know that our world, personally and collectively, is broken and while the Senator’s stands on some issues put him at distinct odds with the witness of historic Christianity he has skillfully tapped into that larger Christian narrative, the reality of our brokenness and the longing for salvation. His promise, like the promises of all politicians, is for a political revival, a secular salvation, the rearranging of the culture through the power of the state and by it the creation of a utopia where everyone has enough, justice is always done, and there is perpetual peace. He has successfully tapped into the innate human desire for Eden lost and shaped it to his message.

We know, of course, this is never going to happen. The day after an inauguration is the day when reality sets in and the promises, regardless of who makes them, fly away like smoke in the cold January wind. We hope for better but people are still the same and it’s not long before the new wears off and business returns to usual. The people who cheer and weep at rallies and events become cynical and bitter again as their heroes, and their message, are revealed as all too human. The Eden we hoped for, like the first, will slip, again, from our grasp.

The saddest part of this, though, is that we who actually do possess an authentic message of truth and change and hope in Jesus Christ have over the years largely been silent. We huddle in our church walls, or our witness has been so compromised by our own attachments to this broken world that what we have and who we are is never revealed. Politicians at best can change laws but Christ can change hearts yet the people who line up for hours to see a politician speak of hope and change will often never know of the One, Jesus Christ, who embodies hope and the transformation of each person and the world into its glorious potential.

One day our Lord will ask of American Christians “I gave you wealth and freedom unlike any other culture and what have you done with it?” And our only answer will be to put our hands in our pockets and stare at our feet. Because all around us are people who need something greater then themselves, something to rescue them from their own lives, something to believe in, and a core to hold them steady in the ups and downs of existence. We, by grace, have been given all this and more and commanded to share it but we have not. At the very moment when our friends and neighbors and family need us to point them to true light, living water, and eternal hope we are silent, our minds set somewhere far from forever.

These precious children of God, souls wandering from one dry well to another, looking to everything our culture can produce, good, bad or otherwise are in need of Jesus Christ and without him they’ll be lost, not just in some eternity to come but in every waking moment of their lives. They’ll follow one person or another for the sake of the possibility of hope. They’ll spend money on meaningless things. They’ll chase experiences. They’ll seek comfort in a stranger’s arms. They will drink until they disappear. They’ll pursue power, fame, ageless beauty, and celebrity. They’ll do anything for a moment of peace, for a fleeting glimpse of rest for their souls, for some light at the end of their tunnel, even if it never comes. And if they never encounter Jesus they will walk the earth empty and leave the same.

Yet what have we, as Orthodox Christians, done?

After the worship of God there is no greater act any Christian can do then to proclaim, in word and deed, the true message of hope, the true haven, as our liturgy says, for the storm tossed, the true light that has come into the world and cannot be extinguished by any night. This is not just the single greatest act of Christian charity but also our own loving response to the one who commanded us to go into all the world with the reality of Christ and transform it one person at a time, a task that will end only when God decides history as we know it is closed. Our lights, as Jesus says, are to shine and not be hidden. Our good works are to be real and tangible and draw praise to God. Our hope is to be shared with any who will receive it and the life that has been given to us must overflow us like living water gushing from a deep and pure well.

To do this we must accomplish two things.

The first is that we as Orthodox Christians must be converted ourselves to the message and person of Jesus. There is much discussion about “cradle” versus “convert” Orthodox but the truth is that we are all converts every day of our lives whether we’ve been in Orthodoxy 80 years or two weeks. We must grow in our faith, our zeal, our knowledge, our love, our sanctification, our holiness, and joy every day of our lives and even into eternity. We cannot give others something we do not have ourselves yet for all too often we have been more a convert of this broken world then of the life giving Christ. It’s well past time for Orthodox Christians to take their faith seriously, to know it, to love it, and to have it be the very cor
e of their lives, the source from which all of our thoughts and actions flow.

The second thing we need to do is to see the world and everyone who lives in it through the eyes of Christ. Where there is brokenness, pain, struggle, sin, injustice, and harm we must see in all those things a call on us to enter into the human arena with the message and the reality of Christ, the only source of resolution to the darkness of the world. Yes we are called to worship within these walls and quite frankly every day of our lives wherever we are, but our life of worship, is supposed to flow out of us as well, every act of charity, every gift we give, everyone we bless, every time we speak on behalf of Christ is a continuation of worship, which by the root of the English word means declaring the “worthiness” or the “worth-ship” of God. Worship, then is not simply a thing we do but the way we are.

The Church was never designed to be a static entity catering to the needs of those inside but rather a living thing, an extension of the Kingdom of God, a collection of worshipping activists who become light, salt, and yeast, in the transformation of themselves and the world wherever it finds itself and to the optimal level of its ability. Anything less, no matter how nice the physical plant, the music, the preaching, and the ambiance, is just not the Church.

It’s time for we Orthodox Christians to be who we were baptized and chrismated to be. It’s time for this parish and every Orthodox church to hear in every bit of sin and struggle in the world a call to get out of our comfort zones, relearn and re-celebrate our Orthodox Faith, and leave these walls to bring the real hope and change that will always and only be found in Jesus Christ to a world of wandering hearts seeking something, someone, anything, to fill their empty hearts.

Never forget, God is taking note, the angels are watching, the saints are praying, and we have the souls of our friends, our families, our communities, and our nation in our hands. Bend your knees, roll up your sleeves, and lets get to the real work of hope and change.

On the decline of the mainline Protestant churches and their America.