The cost of indifference

Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison and did not help you?” He will reply, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life. (Matthew 25: 44-46)

What an irony: many social-activist Christians have rejected the doctrine of eternal punishment because they think it detracts from social concern. But if Jesus’ words are taught straight from the Gospels, social concern will become central to every Christian, since our eternal destiny hangs in the balance.

I scorched some eyebrows when I preached that racial prejudice and anti-Semitism could send a person to hell. the congregation knew I meant it. And they took it, because I was preaching the Word of God from a prophetic position of declaring God’s judgement against sin.

Via

Our wounded self

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him
and he will bring justice to the nations.

He will not shout or cry out,
or raise his voice in the streets.

A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.
In faithfulness he will bring forth justice; (Isaiah 42:1-3 NIV)

This scripture quotation above is taken from today’s mass readings. For me, this is the most powerful and enduring portrait of Christ. Knowing that God prizes our tiny faith is a very liberating reality to live in.

I am reminded of the words of Brennan Manning.

The sorrow of God lies in our fear of Him, our fear of life, and our fear of ourselves…God’s sorrow lies in our refusal to approach Him when we have sinned and failed…

‘This (brokenness) is what needs to be accepted. Unfortunately, this is what we tend to reject. Here the seeds of corrosive self-hatred take root. This painful vulnerability is the characteristic feature of our humanity that most needs to be embraced in order to restore our human condition to the healed state.’

The fourteenth century mystic Julian of Norwich said, “Our courteous Lord does not want his servants to despair because they fall often and grievously; for our falling does not hinder him in loving us.” Our skepticism and timidity keep us from belief and acceptance, however, we don’t hate God, but we hate ourselves. Yet the spiritual life begins with the acceptance of our wounded self….

Brennan Manning

Freedoms for everyone

A Catholic-run hospital faces a lawsuit for refusing breast augmentation surgery to a transgendered person, the San Jose Mercury News reports.

Charlene Hastings, a 57-year-old San Franciscan, inquired about the surgery at Seton Medical Center. According to Hastings, a surgical coordinator refused to allow the surgery. “She was saying, ‘It’s not God’s will,’ ” Hastings said. “I couldn’t believe it. It’s a blatant case of discrimination.”

Kristina Wertz, legal director of the Transgender Law Center in San Francisco, claimed Seton and other area hospitals put up “significant barriers” to care. Wertz believed the hospital’s policy violates the Unruh Act, a state law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation. “There’s simply no religious exemption in the Unruh Act,” Wertz said. “We’re talking about a type of care that’s OK for one class but not another.”

Full story

I defend the patient’s right to have whatever surgery they feel they need. I also feel that a religiously run hospital should be able to refuse medical treatments it does not agree with. After all, isn’t freedom for everyone?

Home sweet home

Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart. - William Shakespeare

Last weekend Tiff, the girls, and I went to the bookstore. My first stop is always the religion section when we go there, and this time was no different. I scanned and scanned the tomes in the Christian section looking for something interesting to read. I admit I was surprised at the sheer number of books that dealt with anger and frustration towards the church and scripture. Regular readers of this blog would probably expect that I was happy about this phenomenon. The reality is that I am over it.

The time comes for any movement when it must stop being about what it isn’t and figure out what it is. All the many people, myself included, who have railed against institutional Christianity have yet to come up with a real alternative. Most of the emergent churches that I have sampled first hand are nothing more than traditional church with dimmed lights and candles. There isn’t anything deeper under the surface that is new. Yes, the pastors and congregation are more open and welcoming, but I wonder how they would react to a “normal” Baptist preacher in three piece suit who wanted to join their worship?

The emergent movement hasn’t been all bad. I think it was a much needed stage in my faith development that I needed to go through. I have made friends in it and learned a great deal from the leaders of it. The emergent school of thinking made me hungry for a church that is filled with people from all racial and socio-economic backgrounds. It also made me desire a church that admits that the Christian faith is not easily defined. This church that embraces mystery and the ineffability of God.

My church must have room for quietness and contemplation and a liturgy that brings you closer to God. Oh, and I must admit that I am tired of the concept of the masculine God. It devalues the female gender and allows us to create a God who is a macho warmonger. My church must believe that God is neither male or female. God is God and transcends our human concepts of gender.

The more I searched, the greater my surprise, when I realized that there is indeed a church that affirms all of these ideas. Even more shocking is the fact that this church is one in which I have spent a great deal of my life. This church is the Roman Catholic Church.

A call to prayer

The Vatican has called on Catholics to atone for the sex abuse scandals that have engulfed their church in recent years by taking part in what may be the largest global prayer initiative ever seen.

Cardinal Cláudio Hummes told the Vatican’s official daily, L’Osservatore Romano, that every diocese in the world should name a priest to work full-time on the arrangements for the “perpetual adoration” of the eucharist. This would involve parishioners taking turns to keep a round-the-clock vigil in front of a consecrated host representing the body of Jesus.

The initiative has all the hallmarks of the thinking of Pope Benedict, and would certainly not have been launched in this way without his full support.

Hummes, the head of the Vatican ministry for the clergy, said a letter had gone to “dioceses, parishes, rectories, chapels, monasteries, convents and seminaries” calling on them to organise groups of “adorers”. The aim was “to make amends before God for the evil that has been done and hail once more the dignity of the victims”, who had suffered from the “moral and sexual conduct of a very small part of the clergy”. He did not indicate how long he saw the adoration continuing.

Full story

Great before the Lord

Suddenly he was struck by a thought. What if glory were to be found where it was least suspected? What if in order to be great before the Lord one had to be just the opposite before men? What if the enemies were not outside him, but within? What if true wealth were poverty, true glory contempt, true love death? – from The Peace of St. Francis by Maria Sticco page 51

The gospel according to Olsteen

Indeed, if you bracket all the scary, irresponsible health-and-wealth cheerleading that jolts through Become a Better You, this exurban image of God the indulgent dad is among the more troubling features of the gospel according to Osteen. For it turns out that the divine hand turns up everywhere, at least in Joel Osteen’s life. God upgrades his reservations to first class on a long international flight; God spares his car in a water-planing wipeout on the Houston interstate; God allows Osteen and his wife/co-pastor, Victoria, to flip a property “for twice as much as we paid for it” in a once-sketchy Houston neighborhood; God swings a critical vote on the Houston zoning board to permit Lakewood to move to its mammoth Compaq Center digs—and God even saw fit 35 years earlier to ensure the engineer who designed the ramps leading to the Compaq Center provided easy parking access for Lakewood. This is a long, long way down the road from the inscrutable, infant-damning theology of this country’s Calvinist forebears—it is, rather, a just-in-time economy’s vision of salvation, an eerily collapsible spiritual narcissism that downgrades the divine image into the job description for a lifestyle concierge. Lakewood and Osteen seem to keep God so preoccupied it’s a wonder He can ever find the time to stock his fridge or whip out His wallet.

There’s, of course, nothing inherently suspect or dishonorable about seeking uplift and consolation in the Bible. But the point of those “deep theological doctrines” that Osteen seems to deride is to leaven that quest with the less agreeable features of life—pain and suffering, the persistence of evil, the fleeting quality of all endeavor, the cosmic insignificance of the human self, let alone that self’s subordinate chosen modes of expression in body posture or a near-pathological penchant for smiling. After all, the same Bible that Lakewood’s arena full of believers champion as a handbook for what they can do and be also contains these words, in Revelation 3:17: “Thou sayest, I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing: and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.”

Full article

Happy new year everyone

Happy new year! Today’s mass contains a reading that seems very appropriate.

The LORD said to Moses,

“Tell Aaron and his sons, ‘This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them:

” ‘ The LORD bless you
and keep you;

the LORD make his face shine upon you
and be gracious to you;

the LORD turn his face toward you
and give you peace.” ‘

“So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.”

May God’s blessing be upon you throughout 2008.