A wife invited some people to dinner. At the table, she turned to their six-year-old daughter and said, ‘Would you like to say the blessing?’ ‘I wouldn’t know what to say,’ the girl replied. ‘Just say what you hear Mommy say,’ the wife answered. The daughter bowed her head and said, ‘Lord, why on earth did I invite all these people to dinner?’

A study of who “hates” more, those on the political left or the right.

I think the results extend to the theological as well. From my own experience going through seminary with the evangelical/liberal American Baptist Churches and then moving towards historic Christian faith while in Clinical Pastoral Education I can at least anecdotally say that I have encountered more derision from those who claim a theology of “tolerance” than any other kind of person, even those who weren’t Christian. I suspect that many conservative or traditional Christian students who have run the gauntlet of life in a mainline seminary or CPE would say a silent “amen” as well.

I remember Clinical Pastoral Education and a discussion about the historic position of the Church regarding gender and ordination. I explained where I was moving and began to explain some of the reasons when a UCC student got a snarl on her face and said “That’s just bull****”.” So much for listening and responding to ideas with ideas. What was worse was that the director of the CPE program, a Lutheran clergy, was too cowardly to intervene, having been so cowed by years of feminist rhetoric that he could not even stand up for civility in disagreement.

In seminary I remember being called out by a female professor for the crime of not adding the word “sisters” to a Bible passage that read ironically, “How good it is for brothers to dwell together in unity…” Never mind that as Baptists we were supposed to have the freedom of handling the Scriptures for ourselves, or even that it was clear, and had been since those words were first penned that they included everyone. Those were logical, thoughtful, arguments that were met with anger justified (from a white woman who had graduated from both Wheaton and Harvard) by her “oppression. “

The truth is when people come to Orthodoxy they often discover the first place in their whole careers where they can breathe free air and not have to tip toe around the politically correct and emotionally brittle hardliners that dominate so many Christian communities today. It can be just a relief to hear God described as “Father” without anyone scrunching up their faces. Imagine believing what the Church has always taught without fear of a hysterical attack. It’s why so many have come, why it takes them a while to understand they have nothing to fear, and why they think they’ve discovered the haven of their souls after years of voyaging on stormy seas.

Here’s a link to another article about historic information in the Bible validated by archaeological discovery. The list just keeps on growing as does the list of 1800’s vintage “higher critics” of scripture spinning in their graves.

Our current director of the CIA is proposing having our government expand its capacity and gain the ability to monitor all US internet traffic. Is anyone getting the irony of such things?

We always, as Christians, strive to be loyal to our government, to pay our taxes and give honor to its laws. But it’s never an unthinking allegiance, an allegiance without understanding. The threat of terror is real, but is expanding the reach of the government into every nook and cranny of our lives the solution? Can one defend a society by ignoring, even betraying, its original principles?

These are important questions that even Christians, who in this country are often inclined to give our government the benefit of the doubt, need to ask. Like those who designed this country we need to trust those who lead, but with our eyes wide open.

I had the day off to visit the chiropractor regarding my headaches and discovered the return of an old acquaintance from 2000.

That was the year I was struck by a drunk driver and thrown off from my motorcycle while it was stopped at a traffic light. For the most part the injuries have subsided but every now and then a reminder from that time returns in the form of neck pains, headaches, numbness in the arms, random pain. They gave me money in the settlement but I would rather have never been there in the first place and avoided all of this.

Anyway, it looks like aspirin and ice packs on the neck with special exercises for a while to get all of this under control. It also means an extra wide strap for my mandolin and a reminder for me every time I look at a motorcycle with that old familiar longing.

The day after Christmas I began to have headaches, migraine type headaches, and off and on they’ve been with me since then with the added touch of nausea and dizziness. At first I thought it was about a change in diet and then perhaps about a side affect of medication. Not so, apparently, as I’ve made the investigatory changes and the headaches continue. Tomorrow I’ll be off from work and visiting various medical folks to check up on things.

This is not the first time I’ve had a series of headaches. In 2000 I was on a motorcycle at a stop light and a drunken driver hit me and sent me to the pavement. On occasion after that I’ve had times when a cluster of headaches has hit and I either ride it out or go to the chiropractor and get my neck adjusted. Perhaps this is another of these times.

Regardless tomorrow will be a day of rest, a sabbath for someone who should probably have a few more of them. I need it to find out what’s making my head hurt and get some rest.

These are the images, published some time ago in Denmark that have spawned riots around the world and have at least one person in Canada brought before a “human rights tribunal” in Alberta for publishing them. People have died because of these images. In some places in the world I could be killed simply for posting them.

Christians around the world, of course, will be suprised at how tame these pictures actually are compared to the constant barrage of pornographic images of Christ and Christianity regularly presented in all kinds of media and sometimes supported by government agencies funding the “arts”. Caricatures of Christians, obscene works of art based on Christian themes, jokes and put downs directed at things we as Christians hold sacred are more common then ever and in certain parts of our culture are considered evidence of spohistication and educated cynicism.

So why did I post those pictures?

I don’t hate Muslims. I disagree with some of the claims of Islam but I don’t hate those who practice the faith and have interacted with Muslims all my life without incident. I plan to keep it that way. This is America and people have the right to practice any religion or none and to convince others, if they can, to do the same. This is how it should be in all the world.

And part of that freedom is that sometimes faith is ridiculed and people and things close to us are held up to critique and mockery. I don’t enjoy it when people say ridiculous things about Jesus and make fun of my Savior. It hurts. But the freedom that allows this to happen is still important. For every unkind word said about Jesus I can counter because I have the freedom to speak a rebuttal. Freedom is messy sometimes, rough and tumble, and people and feeling get damaged. Outrages happen and we all, in some ways, have to swallow and take it for the sake of the larger principle. Frankly, as well, there are times when our critics are actually more honest about us then we are and their arrows stick in us because they reflect a truth we’d rather not see. But even if they’re just malicious fools I’d still rather put up with them and preserve basic freedom then live in a world where only one idea was allowed and all dissent was crushed. After all, no one is ever in charge of anything forever, and today’s emperor is tomorrow’s slave.

Now I would like to speak to those who are Muslim and may view this blog from places around the world. You may be very offended by those pictures or you may care less. But to be in a free society means that you’ll sometimes have to face uncomfortable things. Freedom comes with the risk of being offended, sometimes daily, and sometimes by people who are just doing it because they get their kicks that way.

But it’s still good to be free. We have discovered in this country that faith unconstrained by the state is actually deeper and more fervent then faith coerced by the authorities or maintained by social fear. People in this country, with all its faults, still have the right to choose their belief and because they do its often more precious to them because it belongs to them by a commitment of their will.

Yet in some places in the world there are people who want to control you, to gain power and influence by pandering to your basest fears, by exagerating and demagoguing and playing your emotions so they will have what they crave. It happens everywhere, even among Christians, but right now in the Islamic world they have, in some places, tremendous authority. They want to rule you and use your faith as a tool to bend you towards their dreams. And you have a choice to make.

If you are confident in your faith and its values then all the critique in the world, whether justified or not, won’t make a difference, in fact it can’t make a difference. You may not like the pictures I’ve posted any more than I would enjoy looking at a picture of the Virgin Mary covered with feces but the truth is that such a thing has no effect on my faith, not even a bit, and never will, and I refuse to give power to any man who would use such a thing for his own aggrandizement.

If you truly believe that Mohammed was a prophet of God then what difference does what some person puts in a paper make in relation to that belief? Does it change it? Is he less of who you believe he is simply because somebody drew a cartoon image of him? Is the deepest belief of your heart so flimsy that one man in Denmark can unsettle it? What could that man do that would threaten God? And what idolatry is it to give him that power by virtue of your response?

The truth is that you and I and every person of faith can choose what we do when faced with provocative, even offensive, words, images, and ideas directed at us and at our God. And when you or I or anyone else succumbs to violence we reveal that our faith is shallow, our belief brittle, and our actions unworthy of the higher good we claim to seek in our faith. In fact the person who makes such scandalous things actually achieves victory because of our reaction.

Right now its a pretty chaotic world out there and we’re in desperate need of clearer and calmer heads to keep us from turning our earth into a never ending conflagration. We will probably never agree on the details of theology, but if we do agree, whatever faith we have, to not give way to our darker sides, even if provoked, we will go a long way towards making the peace and sending those whould manipulate us for their own ends into history’s rubbish.