The Illusion of Perfection: thoughts on Sin, Redemption and Politics
“For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”
John 3:17 (NASB)
“A note to you, the reader: I would like to thank you for reading my ramblings. With all that is available online, I consider it an honor when anyone chooses to read my blog. I write as I am inspired, primarily about God’s grace and how this message challenges conventional ways of thinking. I write because writing is therapeutic, and also because I believe that the message and implications of God’s grace are just too life transforming and profound to keep to oneself. This particular essay is a two-part essay. It is dedicated to the men and women who are currently serving in our armed forced both home and abroad, to all those whom we have lost in the current war against terrorism. In our celebrity obsessed society, these soldiers are our real heroes. Thanks again for taking the time to read my essay and may God bless you!
1. Sin & Redemption
"Grace cannot prevail until law is dead; there is no way of seeing clearly the freedom to which we are being driven until morality has been bound, gagged, an stuffed unceremoniously in the trunk….Let me refine that a little. I said grace cannot prevail until law is dead, until moralizing is out of the game. The precise phrase should be, until our fatal love affair with the law is over--until, finally and for good, our lifelong certainty that someone is keeping score has run out of steam and collapsed. As long as we leave, in our dramatizations of grace, one single hope of a moral reckoning, one possible recourse to salvation by bookkeeping, our freedom-dreading hearts will clutch it to themselves."
~Robert Farrar Capon, “Between noon and Three”
“Put bluntly, the American church today accepts grace in theory, but denies it in practice. We say that we believe that the fundamental structure of reality is grace, not works – but our lives refute our faith. By and large, the gospel of grace is neither proclaimed, understood, nor lived. Too many Christians are living in the house of fear and not in the house of love”
~Brennan Manning, “The Ragamuffin Gospel”
I often feel that as Christians, we are caught between a rock and a hard-place; On one hand we are to be beacons of God’s grace to a perishing world, and on the another hand we are supposed to put on this “perfect front” that says, ”I may have been a sinner saved by grace, but since my salvation, I do not really struggle with sin anymore”. Any person who chooses to be authentic knows that the latter statement is false. Salvation does not shield us from the propensity to sin, because we still have fleshly patterns of independence that will follow us to our grave. As long as we are human and breathing, we will always have an inclination towards sin, even though we're spiritually redeemed from the eternal consequences & grip of sin. But how does this “perfect front” play itself out in the real world? And why do we Christians fall for the illusion of perfection that is so evident by the moral facades that we wear so delicately? How do we on one hand say that we are children of God’s grace, while simultaneously holding others to an impossible standard of “moral excellence”?
I was thinking about this dilemma as I thought about the Ted Haggard situation. Ted Haggard was the founder and former pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, until he confessed that he had been struggling with sexual sin for a better part of his life, this after a male prostitute came forward with allegations of having an inappropriate relationship with the former pastor. Ted Haggard was resultantly fired as pastor of his church, and resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals. What troubles me most about this situation is not that Mr. Haggard sinned, because if walls could expose the secret sins of every pastor in America, we would be stunned and may have to stop playing “church” altogether: this why I pray that Ted Haggard finds comfort and redemption from the grace of God that embraces us all (since going for an intense rehab program, Mr. Haggard says that he is now “completely heterosexual”. He has now chosen to pursue a career in psychology). What troubles me most about his situation is not his sin, but the fact that he probably had to struggle with this sin in silence for so long because he knew that if he had confessed to anyone in his church about his problem, the backlash would likely have been disastrous, especially considering that his besetting sin was homosexuality.
When we as church members continue to succumb to the lie that our leaders are somehow impervious to sin because they are anointed, or believe the lie that somehow “pastors cannot relate to the sin-struggle”, we fall into a dangerous trap of the enemy. If anything, pastors are probably more susceptible to temptation because the enemy would want nothing more than to make others think that their pastor’s sin disqualifies them for the task of ministry. I for one do not believe for one moment that pastors (mine included) are perfect. In fact, I know that all spiritual leaders are human just like the rest of us. I am reminded of a story that author and pastor Steve McVey tells of how one of his son’s friends came home with them after church service one Sunday, and when the young lad went home, he told his mom “They’re just like us!” Apparently, even kids sometimes believe the illusion that pastors and their families are perpetually walking on some spiritual cloud nine that makes them unique. No, ministers are just as human and imperfect as we are, but because of the job description, they are often compelled to hide those unacceptable areas of their lives to keep the marketing machine going. After all, no pastor wants to lose members because of perceived flaws. In this regard, the ministry is a unique job where character is being scrutinized 24/7, a fishbowl existence where some people are just dying to find out if and when the minister is going to mess up.
I wonder to myself almost every time I am in church, how many more people are struggling with issues that they would dare not tell a church member simply because of the self-righteous mentality that is rampant in modern circles. We tell ourselves lies like that say “real Christian don’t _____________” (you can fill in the blank). Real Christians don’t cuss, real Christians don’t struggle with sexual immorality, real Christians don’t drink, real Christians don’t struggle with addiction….etc etc. You get the picture. So in our attempts to live up to our ideal of what a real Christian does and does not do, we hide out secrets, we hide out hurts, we are inauthentic and in the process we reject the power of God’s grace and live by the creed of deception. In the end, instead of liberating us, this façade does more to hurt us. Meanwhile, other hurting people around us dare not expose their struggles for fear of being branded. Here’s a partial list of some of the struggles so common today:
· the sting of unrequited love or a painful divorce.
· the mental anguish and spiritual torment of addiction, whether it be socially-acceptable addictions like food, work or money, or unacceptable addictions like alcohol, cigarettes, illicit sex or drugs.
· spiritual bondage
· the effects of poverty and/or unemployment.
· hopelessness and helplessness, which often manifests itself in self-destructive ways.
· brokenness from the realization that the simple formulas that are supposed to make life work have failed to deliver.
I guarantee you that there are people struggling with one or more of these issues sitting in churches every weekend, people who look like all is well, but would dare not expose their pain because of the stigma associated with some of these issues. For this reason, others who are going through these trials may not even be in church and have no real desire to be there, because they are too exhausted to put on the “I’ve got my life together” masks. In the end, many of these people are left to “fend for themselves” until the situation implodes and then those amongst them who are Christian are exposed as “hypocrites” who never really were in an acceptable environment to talk about their struggles in the first place.
In recent days, the tragic death of 39-year old model Anna Nicole Smith’s has flooded the cable airways. I was really struck by the harsh rhetoric that was thrown at her by news commentator Bill O’Reilly on his popular TV show. He said that he was not surprised by her death because she was a “weak” person who “allowed herself to be used”. He went on to add that her irresponsible behavior and drug use ultimately led to her death. He would later receive several e-mails criticizing him for his harsh words, some of which he read on the air. In one regard, I get what he was saying: a valid argument can be made that she lived a reckless lifestyle, but we cannot ignore the fact that this was a very sad and depressed young lady who was desperately looking for love in all the wrong places. The kinds of callous comments that he made about her reflect the self-righteous society that we live in. Would we as a church community embrace the likes of Anna Nicole Smith if they came walking through our doors, especially knowing so many juicy details about her past? Can we take off our spiritual masks long enough to embrace the humanity of those who don’t conform to our neat little rules of character definition, or are we too scared that our images would be too tainted by such an act?
Fortunately, more and more churches are realizing the need for authenticity at all levels and there is a paradigm shift going on in many Christian circles today. From support groups, to counselors and mentorship programs, more and more churches are learning to meet people where they are. This is a great thing, as it provides help for people dealing with serious issues. Nonetheless, the phenomenon of having to put on a spiritual-front must be especially tough on ministers, whose lives are lived out in the public eye. Everyone is watching, waiting to see if and when he or she messes up. What kind of movies does he watch? Does he go to bars and if so what does he drink? Who is that lady he is talking to and why does it seem like he is hugging her a little too affectionately? That’s’ not a holy hug! I wonder what is on his computer hard drive, has he been surfing porn online? Going by today’s statistics, more and more male spiritual leaders than would like to admit it struggle trying to refrain from porn, the stuff is so readily available and even with filters some of it still gets through: the porn industry is one of the most profitable industries in America, not just available in the archaic print style in magazines, but it can be obtained through practically every major electronic device we use – from cell phones, cable TV, satellite TV, computers, I-Pods and other PDA’s. Not to mention the fact that sex is used as a marketing tool to sell practically everything underneath the sun. We expect everyone to be sexually pure, but Wall Street could care less, sex is good for the market. There is a reason why all of a sudden ED (Erectile Dysfunction) is no longer a problem for once-incompetent males, with all the products designed to keep libido going. And yet, ironically, we have all these contemporary programs in place designed just to deal with this growing epidemic of sex-addiction. But there is a flip side or secret of the financial market, a sort of “matrix” that blinds our eyes to subtle forces that drive us almost every day albeit subconsciously. This secret came to my mind a few months ago when I read a quote from Warren Buffet, one of the richest and most successful businessmen in the world, a man who has been in the top 10 of America’s richest people for the past few years. The quote dealt with how to create wealth and says, “make a product for a penny, you sell it for a dollar, and you sell it to addicts”. I thought about his statement for a long time after I read it, and realized that it is absolutely true, whether we admit it or not, corporate America loves the functioning addict (emphasis on the word "functioning"), especially if you are addicted to their product or service, because the addict by definition is a repeat customer, and addiction by its very nature requires that you not only come back for an encore, but for more than you did the first time. So on one hand, while we may say that “addiction is not good”, there are executives in the halls of power who don’t want you to be free from your addiction to their goods or services. Yeah, they may not want you to be a crack-fein, but as long as you keep coming back for their product, all is well. This has been the driving fact behind the success of numerous industries, from the taboo (like sex, drugs, gambling, tobacco) to the acceptable (fast food, certain prescription drugs, sodas etc). There is a reason why the top 2% of our population own more assets that the bottom 80% of the population, and it is not just due to the widely accepted myth that those at the bottom just don’t want to work hard enough to get to the top. I highlight this issue of how the Market works because it reflects on how societal greed is not only rampant, but is actually promoted. Greed is a great catalyst for wealth building. And it is under this cloud of temptation that ministers are expected to be “pure and moral”. No wonder the “health and wealth gospel” is so popular; it justifies the subtle but powerful forces of the economic market, which are based on one bottom line and one bottom line alone – profit margins. Ministers are no less susceptible to the trappings of greed and lasciviousness than the corporate executive.
Bottom line, if you look at anyone’s life closely enough, ministers included, you will find something you don’t like, you will find sin. This is the premise behind the Biblical reality of our spiritual fallibility and the often-used quote from Romans 3:23, “all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory”. I learned a long time ago that while I should respect my spiritual leaders and authority, I must not to put them on the same pedestal as Jesus, because I will be sorely disappointed. “Well”, one may argue, “are you saying that you should not hold your spiritual leaders to a high moral standard?” No, but what I am saying is that no matter how noble and anointed your leader is, he or she is not perfect, and we should always put this moral standard in the context of God’s grace, because once you forget the essence of the Gospel, you set yourself up to disqualify anyone with any degree of spiritual authority, because ultimately all people (ministers included) are saved the same way you were, by the precious blood of Jesus, not because of their “moral uprightness”.
How many sins does it take to disqualify a pastor or minister from a church? And what kinds of sins are they? If your pastor told you that he was a glutton, what would you say? Last time I checked gluttony was a Biblical sin, a form of greed. Would you justify it by saying, “No big deal, he’s not the first and won’t be the last”? What about greed, would that be a problem? Or in a society obsessed with success as an index of your financial portfolio, would you simply say “as long as he is growing the church and not directly stealing from the church’s treasury, greed is good, heck it motivates him.” What about telling white lies, you know embellishing the truth a little bit? I guess it would depend on the lie and whom he told it to, uh? What about if he has been divorced? Several years ago, Charles Stanley, the well known pastor and author, told the Atlanta Journal Constitution that if he ever got a divorce, he would resign. Well, it just so happens that he did get a divorce a few years later, but he is still the church’s pastor. I am glad that the church kept him, because that is an example of grace in action, but the fact remains that there was a time when a divorced pastor could not pastor a church (some churches still frown upon having a divorced pastor) but with the divorce rate practically identical for believers and non-believers alike, certain concessions have been made over the years. Even though we say we do not grade sin on the curve, we really do, because societal standards demand that we do so.
The sin that Ted Haggard struggled with, homosexuality, happens to be an instant disqualifier from ministry in most Christian circles because the issue is a political lightning rod and also because it carries a special stigma, it is the “abomination” sin. As one who grew up to under the macho cloud of homophobia, I realize why Haggard’s sin would cause such an immediate and drastic reaction from his church. Growing up, I used to think that almost anything was forgivable except for homosexuality, rape, child-abuse and murder; homophobia is rampant in most African-American households. It would take years of God breaking me before I would start to have compassion for anyone who had struggled with this sin, it would take God showing me the true implications of his grace as contrasted with my own sinful tendencies. God would have to show me that just because my sexual struggles are heterosexual does not give me the right to condemn homosexuals. As a youngster, I found my first pornographic images when I was around 8 years old, and porn quickly became my “fix” for the pain of existence, a fix that would fuel years of sexual immorality that would end up costing me dearly. It would be the brokenness from this struggle and the pain that fueled my addiction that would be the foundation for my empathy for others, even those whose lifestyle I did not approve of. Now I realize that homosexuals are no less objects of God’s grace than the heterosexual who is living a promiscuous lifestyle. Unfortunately, Christian circles have always been more forgiving of heterosexual immorality. That is how selective-moralism works.
“Don’t you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Don’t fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, or are thieves, or greedy people, or drunkards, or are abusive, or cheat people—none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God. Some of you were once like that. But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. 1 Corinthians 6:9-11
This passage tells us that God does not look lightly on sin – He can’t, because He is holy. It says that anyone who does wrong cannot be heaven bound, and doing wrong is not just a matter of sexual immorality, but anything, even just breaking what you may perceive to be the least of God’s laws (notice that the above Scripture lists other sins like drunkenness, stealing, adultery and greed). But more importantly, what this passage says is that there is hope for anyone, because it is not our behavior that determines our identity, it is Jesus who transforms our identity from “sinner” to “God’s child”. This is what is meant when the passage says “some of you were like that”, referring to our identity before salvation. You may or may not be totally free from all your bad habits, but you are Gods child because of Christ’s blood. No one who sins can get into heaven or be called God’s child. Yes, this is true, but if that were the end of the story, we would all have to close shop and give up hope. But because of God’s grace, there is hope for all. Ultimately, it is not behavior that defines who we are, it is who we are in Christ that marks our identity. This is a vital truth for spiritual freedom, which if ignored could literally lead to mental anguish. When we pervert the gospel by injecting self-righteousness into the grace equation, we set people up to fail. True spiritual freedom and redemption is a by-product of a full embrace of the gospel of grace, not just at the point of salvation, but throughout our lives. Even when dealing with issues requiring discipline, the discipline should always be aimed at drawing the person closer to the God of grace, not to crush the soul into anguishing condemnation. “Tough love” may sometimes be essential, but “tough love” without compassion or empathy can easily teeter on cruelty. We must always remember, God’s has shown us so much mercy, and this should be the impetus for us to show kindness towards others.
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God”
~2 Corinthians 1:3-4
2. Politics and Christianity in America
“No nation, ours or any other, is well served by illusions of righteousness. All nations make decisions based on self-interest and then defend them in the name of morality.”
~ Rev. William Sloan Coffin
They say that there are two things that you are not supposed to talk about it public: politics and religion. Well, since I am already dabbling in religion, I might as well add politics. This section of my essay is not a critique of anybody in particular, but is just based on certain observations that I have made about today's political landscape. Also, I am not trying to endorse one political party over another; I am just trying to highlight how we pervert the message of the gospel when we imply that one party is on God’s side while the other party is not. The Religious Right has become the most influential political block of the religious community in this country. And as a concerned Christian, I feel that some of the primary tenets of this group have done more to promote self-righteousness than uphold the gospel of grace.
America's current political climate is very vicious when it comes to character assassination. We have become a nation of ideologues where there is a pervading assumption that when it comes to the mix of God and politics, Republicans (or conservatives) represent righteousness or all that is good and moral, while Democrats (or liberals) represent all that is bad, immoral, lascivious, God-hating, and anti-American. Both parties resort to mudslinging at the other party to get the job done, this is true, but there is a general assumption that has been sold by the Religious Right that if you are not a card carrying supporter of everything that the Republican Party does, you are somehow not really a Christian.
Now hold your breath for what I am about to say: I consider myself an evangelical Christian but I did not vote for George W. Bush in either the 2000 or 2004 presidential election…..Gasp!! Hold on, don’t stop reading yet if you are a Republican……I realize that what I just wrote is akin to a crime of the highest degree in some evangelical circles, but that’s exactly what got me to wondering, “where did we get the assumption that Christianity in America equals the Republican agenda?” I do not dislike George W. Bush as a person. In fact, I consider him to be a very amiable president and a charismatic leader, and I pray for him regularly just like I pray for my pastor and other leaders. Whether you agree with Bush or not on the issues, you have to admire the way he stands by most of his convictions and is not easily swayed by public opinion. Personally, I just happen to disagree with some of his policies. In 2000, I was really attracted to his message of compassionate conservatism when he was running for office, but after listening to the debates, I decided to vote for Al Gore. In 2004, I really did not like the messages of either presidential candidate, I saw too many inconsistencies in John Kerry’s message, and yet I did not want to vote for Bush because I did not like the direction that the war in Iraq was taking. So I guess you can say that my vote was a matter of “the lesser of two evils” as some often call the voting process. I honestly wished there had been a viable third candidate, but there was none. But I could still not figure out for the life of me why many in the Religious Right consider it a sin against God to be a Christian and not vote Republican. One popular conservative minister said teh following in a recent HBO interview, “the Democratic party has gone to hell in a hand-basket.” I guess he was inferring that if you don’t vote Republican, well…you get the idea: Get ready for some steamy flames in the afterlife. How grateful I am that my place in heaven is not based on other people's judgment.
I am not saying that there is anything wrong with voting Republican if you are a Christian; this is a free country where everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I am saying that there is something inherently wrong with the notion that if you don’t support one party you are on the wrong side of righteousness or are an advocate for the devil. The beauty of American democracy is that we have the ability to disagree with our leaders and voice our opinion at the polls, which people did very clearly in the last mid-term election. Why must we resort to demonizing other professed Christians (or other people who are not Christians) simply because they disagree with the Republican Party on certain issues? I am still waiting for someone to show me the Bible translation that shows the 11th commandment which supposedly reads: “Once you profess Christ as Savior in the United States of America, you must become a lifelong Republican and agree with all the policies of the GOP, otherwise you may lose your salvation and go to hell.” I believe that there are Christians on both sides of the aisle, but the doctrine of self-righteousness has resulted in defining the term “Christian” based on certain issues, instead of whether or not a person has faith in Jesus; Christianity has become a function of our works and our stance on issues, instead of a product of Jesus’ sacrifice at Calvary. We seem to easily forget that our heavenly citizenship is a product of God’s grace and God’s grace alone.
Looking over the Pew Research Center statistics for the last presidential elections, it showed that 78% of white evangelicals voted for Bush, which is a sharp contrast to the 86% of black protestant Christians who voted for Kerry. I was curious as to why the statistical figures showed mostly white Christians as “evangelicals” while black Christians were called “protestants”. But that simply told me that whenever the media talks about the evangelical Christian vote in the last presidential election, they are referring primarily to the white Christian vote. This is not to imply that all white Christians voted for Bush, but majority of them did, especially those who are referred to as Evangelicals – which for the sake of political discussions, usually means a Christian who opposes both abortion and the so-called "gay agenda". The fact that most black Christians who are highly morally conservative did not vote for Bush is often swept under the rug and rarely ever mentioned. This just infers that the term “evangelical Christian” is almost unanimously seen as a political conservative who supports the Republican Party. For me, however, the term evangelical means a Christian who is passionate about the gospel; someone who spreads the message of Gods love for humanity through Jesus Christ. The implication from these poll results, however, is that there are rarely any black evangelicals, except for those who voted for Bush. But this is not true, in fact the real question from these poll results should be why most blacks don’t support the Republican Party if it is supposed to be the bastion of moral excellence? Could it be that considering the recent history of opposition to Civil Rights issues by the white conservative movement, most blacks in this country are still hesitant to embrace the Republican Party as their home? I know that it is not healthy for most members of a certain group to be beholden to one party in politics, because it promotes unhealthy stereotypes and makes healthy debate difficult, but this is what the American political landscape currently looks like. And we all know that even though churches are really not supposed to endorse candidates or political parties, it does happen, albeit very cleverly. No church wants to lose their tax-exempt status from the government.
Certain elements of the Religious Right have taken two issues [abortion and homosexuality] and used them as the rallying cry for their cause. It is widely assumed that all liberals, progressives and Democrats want nothing more than to kill unborn generations of babies while they endorse wild homosexual sex by promoting the homosexual agenda. Not only are these assumptions misleading, but they also ignore certain key constituents of the Democratic Party like most African-Americans who are highly morally conservative. Most blacks are not only against abortion, but are also against homosexuality. This hatred for homosexuality is so intense in some black circles that it borders on pure homophobia. These facts show that many of the assumptions made about all Democrats [in regard to their morality or values] are simply wrong.
So how did we get to this point of deep political discord in this nation? How did one party come to be seen as the “party of God” while the other one as the “secular-progressive Party of heathens"? After all, September 11, 2001 was a pivotal day in U.S. history. In the immediate aftermath of that tragic day, we united as a nation in a way that was truly beautiful. People nationwide put aside all their differences and humbled themselves in prayer. Although we had heavy hearts, we were united in our resolve to help each other as we confronted the people who committed those terrible acts. We targeted the terrorist cells in Afghanistan with one resolve, united as brothers and sisters. Six years later, however, the nation is deeply divided about our current “war on terror”. As it became obvious that we invaded Iraq using faulty intelligence based on the false premise of stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and an imminent threat of attack. It has become clearer as the war progressed that trying to bring democracy or “freedom” to a nation of different cultures and ideals is not as easy as it seems on paper. We must note that elected officials on both sides of the aisle voted to authorize this war (77 in all); and of the 23 votes against the authorization for war, one was a Republican and another an independent (see www.senate.gov). Since then, however, many prominent Democrats who voted for the war have since apologized for what they considered to be a serious mistake, Some Republicans have also started to voice their concern about the war and the direction that it has taken. To his credit, President Bush has humbly softened his once aggressive rhetoric, maybe because he is getting some opposition even from members of his own party. Nonetheless, it is nice to hear him say that just because you disagree with him does not necessarily mean that you are unpatriotic or less of an American. It is possible after all to support the troops and disagree with the fundamental basis of this war in Iraq. The fact is that the politicians who have now chosen to criticize our president even though they voted for the war themselves are just as responsible for the current crisis. What should concern us as much as anything else is how the most powerful nation in the world was able to fall for such misleading intelligence in the first place; there was obviously a serious breakdown in our intelligence community.
Two fundamentally different philosophies have emerged as to how to wage this war on terror: One camp suggests that aggressive military might alone is sufficient enough to bring stability to the Middle East and win the war on terror, by simply wiping out the enemy. The other camp feels that while military might will be the backbone of the fight, we must use it wisely and cautiously along with smart diplomacy; this second camp realizes that we must not think that we are going to win a war on terror by simply removing every dictator that walks the face of the earth. Are we going to, for instance, one-by-one try to engage in pre-emptive strikes to remove every dictator around the world based on assumptions that they may strike us? What about countries that are considered to be our allies – like Saudi Arabia – that are ruled by dictators? What do we do about them? These are the kinds of tough questions that this war presents, and it does not take a PhD to realize that military might alone is not sufficient enough to eliminate an enemy that is spreading ideological propaganda and teaching their offspring to kill by way of suicide missions. If every Muslim is a potential Islamic fascist, we would have to eliminate the estimated 1.6 billion Muslims all over the world. We must realize that even if we don’t call it a religious war, the ideologues that we are fighting see it as one. For Islamic fascists, there is absolutely no separation between church and state and the attack on one is seen as an attack on the other. But even with this in mind, while there is a time for raw aggression, it should always be a means of last resort if we are going to win this war, because we must realize that we are dealing with an enemy that is not defined by set borders; an enemy with a totally different mind-set than ours. How do you kill an enemy that is willing to kill themselves for their cause? I for one believe that we should not have gone into Iraq the way that we did, but now that we are there, we cannot leave without finishing the job, without some level of stability in the region. We opened Pandora’s box in a sense, but the ultimate question is going to be “how do we bring stability between the rival sections of the nation, the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds? This is why diplomacy and working with our allies is going to be as much of an asset as military might in this global war.
I don’t write these thoughts to be what some term a “Bush basher”, I simply ask them because I have realized that to voice any level of dissent about our current war tactics, you are deemed by some factions of the Religious Right as a heretic and an unpatriotic American who hates our troops and wants us to lose in Iraq; you are deemed a flaming liberal who loves the terrorists more than their own country. These kinds of words only divide our nation further. This is why the very nature of our political climate is not conducive to the doctrine of God’s amazing grace. Politics by its very nature is designed to preserve power and to demean your political opponents while making yourself look good. Politics is about selling the perception that your side is right while your opponents’ side is wrong; or even more emphatically, your side is righteous while your opponents are evil. Politics is about the illusion of perfection, and whichever side can perpetuate this image best usually wins.
It is this type of mentality that has pervaded the discussion when it comes to the ever-combustible discussion of religion and politics in America. This is where the assumption that conservatives-are-more-righteous-than-liberals comes from. And even though you may probably not hear it put this bluntly, this is the subtle implication that many would like you to believe. But is this assumption accurate? May I submit to you that this is nothing more than sheer delusion. Of course, those who argue in favor of that statement would sight the “endless” moral failings of “liberals”, Bill and Hillary Clinton being their favorite targets. They will go on to tell you that no one who supports abortion could possible be a child of God, as if to imply that only people on the left have had an abortion or like all liberals are just dying to get pregnant so that they can have an abortion. We all know that this is not true. No lady in her right mind makes such a decision casually and is usually compelled to do so for the very reasons that I highlighted at the beginning of this essay, the fear of being ostracized by the self-righteous, or it could be due to prevailing poverty in her family making her wonder “how I am going to take care of the baby?” I know how I felt when I was in college and considered asking my then-girlfriend to get an abortion when we feared that she may have been pregnant (yes, I know I had no business having pre-marital sex in the first place). Thank goodness she was not pregnant, but I will never forget the terror I felt of the possibility of having a child at such a young age when my dad had emphatically taught me not to have sex before marriage and to “not bring any grandbabies home” before I finished my education. Later, in my mid-20s I would date a single mother who had had an abortion in her teens. She said it was the most terrifying and heart-wrenching decision that she ever had to make, but she felt that her mother would kill her if she found out that not only had she been having sex, but was also pregnant. She still wondered at the time of our relationship if God had forgiven her for the abortion, but she told me that she felt that she had no other choice. I bring these examples up just to show that even as one who opposes abortion, I understand that there are serious issues that usually compel a woman to go that route. We may think that banning abortion would deter unwanted pregnancies, but studies have shown that this is not the case. In regions of the world where abortion is illegal, women still have them anyway, but the abortions then become very high risk where they often endanger themselves. Abstinence is the best form of “safe sex”, but we kid ourselves when we don’t realize that many young people are having sex outside the confines of marriage. It’s time to get our heads out of the sand. Talking about sex in church circles is not easy, but as we saw with the sex scandals in the Catholic Church, just because you don’t talk about it does not mean that it is not going on. We need to be real if we are going to heal.
The bottom line is that these political labels that we use to describe people: “liberal”, “conservative”, “progressive”, “libertarian” etc – do nothing more than give us a chance to make stereotypical assumptions about people without having to form meaningful and authentic relationships with them. We dehumanize people into slogans and caricatures without remembering that God loves all people. Have you watched a cable primetime news show on TV lately? It is like a shouting match with each side simply trying to prove the validity of their points while demonizing the other side. We can’t even engage in healthy debate anymore in this country because the political climate is so bitterly vicious and hell-bent on gaining or retaining power. And you tell me that one party is supposed to be the party of God while the other one if the party of the enemy. Give me a break, there are compelling arguments to be made for different issues on both sides of the aisle, but neither side has a monopoly on righteousness, because righteousness is not about who agrees with what issue, it is about the person of Jesus the Messiah.
I was reminded of these facts recently when the issue of homosexuality came up recently in the political news sphere. The subject was Mary Cheney – our vice president’s daughter – and her gay lifestyle. Mary Cheney is a staunch conservative and was even active in her father’s re-election campaign in the last presidential elections. She has a dilemma, however, she is actively gay and has a life partner. She has also chosen to have a child and is pregnant with that child. James Dobson’s organization, Focus on the Family, recently criticized Mary Cheney for choosing to have a child outside of the traditional family setting. In a recent interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Mary Cheney's dad, Dick Cheney, was asked to comment on Focus on the Family's criticism of her daughter. Dick Cheney, visibly upset and livid by the question, responded by saying that he thought that the Blitzer was “out of line’ by asking him that question. Here’s what I took from that interview: The Republican Party touts themselves as the “party of moral and family values” and to hear them say it, the only people who live gay lifestyles are liberals and Democrats. Mary Cheney is not a Democrat, she is a faithful Republican, but she does not support president Bush’s constitutional ban on gay marriage. This is very ironic considering that the Republican Party gives the impression that it is Democrats trying to pervert our society with the “gay or homosexual agenda” as if there are no gay Republicans. This is how politics work, demean the other side, while you steadily rise up the ladder of self-righteousness. And both sides do it very well.
All people in this country, regardless of their political party affiliation, have different issues that they deal with. Take away God’s grace and none of us, and I mean none of us, would be able to call ourselves God’s children. Either side can easily use selective-moralism to take certain Scriptures out of context to justify their agenda, but the real question is whether we consider ourselves God’s children because we are on the right side of the political issue de-jour or whether we realize that we are all products of God’s love. True spirituality is not tied to a political ideology, because ultimately when religion is used primarily as a political tool, its tenets are perverted by the subtle appeals of power and totalitarianism. The genius of the American Democratic experiment is that we are free to express our spiritual beliefs without the Government telling us what religious doctrine we need to believe. You visit any nation that is wrapped in the ideals of theocracy – Christian, Muslim or otherwise – and you will really appreciate why America is so great. No one wants to be told what to believe, because in reality you cannot force true spirituality, it has to come from the inside out, not the other way around. The genius of American democracy is not freedom from religion, it is freedom of religion, and this also means that if a person does not want to believe they are free to do so.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America
You can put state sanctioned prayer back in schools, completely ban abortion, and have the Ten Commandments back in every public space in America, but you still can’t force a person to accept Christ as Lord Savior. Even Jesus does not operate by coercion, that’s why he said that he stands at the door of our hearts knocking, and when you choose to open the door, he will come in and dine with you (see Revelations 3:20). He does not break down the door, he waits for you to open it. The government may not be able to sanction a teacher leading a prayer in a public school, but I am still free to pray quietly in school or wherever I am in this country. Besides, making a public spectacle of prayer should never be our intent; Jesus himself said that the most effective prayer is done when we are in our prayer closets (see Matthew 6:5-7). This why the Bible says that Jesus “often withdrew to lonely places and prayed” (Luke 5:16). For Jesus, prayer was not a public spectacle, but a time of deep intimacy with the Father, God.
There are so many denominational brands of Christianity, and politically they range in extremes from the liberal views of the Tony Campolo, Jim Wallis and Jesse Jackson, to the conservative views of Tim LaHaye, John Hagee, James Dobson and Pat Robertson; there are several different strains in between, and people of other faiths, some of no real religious affiliation whatsoever as they are not interested in their politics being colored by religion at all. The friction is always a result of the fact that spiritual ideologues always feel that they are always right and that their brand of religion [or Christianity] is the best. When this frame of mind plays itself out in the political arena, you have the kind of deep divisions that you have in the country today. But when placed in the context of God’s standard, neither side is as moral as they would like you to believe; whatever righteousness either side has is based on God’s grace.
I personally believe that the best role that my Christian faith plays in influencing my decisions – political ones included – is for it to be a prism through which I look at humanity, to enhance the quality of my relationships, not to demonize others. Regardless of your political views, both sides have something to learn from the other and neither side has a monopoly on truth. The fact is that both sides love to filter facts through the filter of their political ideology to boost their agenda. This is why I agree with the sentiments of Randall Balmer when he said:
“The lesson of both mainline Protestantism in the 1950s’ and the Religious Right in the 1980s’ and beyond is that religion functions best when it is not tethered to particular political parties or ideologies. Religion works best when it operates from the margins of society and not at the center of power and when it remains true to the faith and refuses to allow political interests to shape – or commandeer its doctrines. But the reverse is also true: Political movements and politicians who seek to cloak themselves in the mantle of religious legitimacy invariably fall prey to self-righteousness, intolerance, and fanatism.”
~Randall Balmer, “Thy Kingdom Come – An Evangelical’s Lament”
While Christianity has been a source of tremendous good in the world, you can look throughout world history and see how people have used an ideological brand of "Christianity" to justify all kinds of oppression; from the oppressive brand of Constantine’s Christianity during the 4th century, to other dagmatic acts and institutions like: the Inquisition, the Crusades, the Klu Klux Clan, slavery, segregation, white-supremacy, aggressive militarism etc. Christianity itself is the source of genuine hope, because it is all about love flowing from God through his Son, Jesus. The fact remains, however, that throughout history Christians have often perverted the message of the Gospel for selfish reasons. This is why you have people say stuff like, “I like Jesus, it is his followers [or so-called Christians] that I have a problem with”. Mahatma Gandhi once echoed such a sentiment in his popular quote, "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." Very true words from a great and humble leader. We are unlike Christ primarily because we have substituted the gospel of God's grace & love for a self-serving gospel of self-righteousness.
If we are to be reflections of the Jesus whom we talk about so much, we must stop preaching ourselves and get back to preaching Jesus and his sacrifice. We will never be able to do this if we are not in touch with our own sinfulness which begs the need for God's grace in the first place. I can now better empathize with atheists and agnostics who often have serious problems with organized religion. I can empathize with them because I have had similar qualms with the way people have perverted the Gospel to oppress others. For this reason, Sam Harris, a well known athiest, is one of my favorite authors. He warns us of the dangers in using religion to dogmatically justify political ideology.
In conclusion, let me just say that God is not a Republican, nor is he a Democrat, Libertarian or whatever other third party you may have in mind. The real issue is that He loves people regardless of their political affiliation, and it is our job as Christians to convey this message as best as we can in a world where everyone is searching for genuine hope.
“Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins.” ~1 Peter 4:8
Stephen O. Akinduro
February 2007
“For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”
John 3:17 (NASB)
“A note to you, the reader: I would like to thank you for reading my ramblings. With all that is available online, I consider it an honor when anyone chooses to read my blog. I write as I am inspired, primarily about God’s grace and how this message challenges conventional ways of thinking. I write because writing is therapeutic, and also because I believe that the message and implications of God’s grace are just too life transforming and profound to keep to oneself. This particular essay is a two-part essay. It is dedicated to the men and women who are currently serving in our armed forced both home and abroad, to all those whom we have lost in the current war against terrorism. In our celebrity obsessed society, these soldiers are our real heroes. Thanks again for taking the time to read my essay and may God bless you!
1. Sin & Redemption
"Grace cannot prevail until law is dead; there is no way of seeing clearly the freedom to which we are being driven until morality has been bound, gagged, an stuffed unceremoniously in the trunk….Let me refine that a little. I said grace cannot prevail until law is dead, until moralizing is out of the game. The precise phrase should be, until our fatal love affair with the law is over--until, finally and for good, our lifelong certainty that someone is keeping score has run out of steam and collapsed. As long as we leave, in our dramatizations of grace, one single hope of a moral reckoning, one possible recourse to salvation by bookkeeping, our freedom-dreading hearts will clutch it to themselves."
~Robert Farrar Capon, “Between noon and Three”
“Put bluntly, the American church today accepts grace in theory, but denies it in practice. We say that we believe that the fundamental structure of reality is grace, not works – but our lives refute our faith. By and large, the gospel of grace is neither proclaimed, understood, nor lived. Too many Christians are living in the house of fear and not in the house of love”
~Brennan Manning, “The Ragamuffin Gospel”
I often feel that as Christians, we are caught between a rock and a hard-place; On one hand we are to be beacons of God’s grace to a perishing world, and on the another hand we are supposed to put on this “perfect front” that says, ”I may have been a sinner saved by grace, but since my salvation, I do not really struggle with sin anymore”. Any person who chooses to be authentic knows that the latter statement is false. Salvation does not shield us from the propensity to sin, because we still have fleshly patterns of independence that will follow us to our grave. As long as we are human and breathing, we will always have an inclination towards sin, even though we're spiritually redeemed from the eternal consequences & grip of sin. But how does this “perfect front” play itself out in the real world? And why do we Christians fall for the illusion of perfection that is so evident by the moral facades that we wear so delicately? How do we on one hand say that we are children of God’s grace, while simultaneously holding others to an impossible standard of “moral excellence”?
I was thinking about this dilemma as I thought about the Ted Haggard situation. Ted Haggard was the founder and former pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, until he confessed that he had been struggling with sexual sin for a better part of his life, this after a male prostitute came forward with allegations of having an inappropriate relationship with the former pastor. Ted Haggard was resultantly fired as pastor of his church, and resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals. What troubles me most about this situation is not that Mr. Haggard sinned, because if walls could expose the secret sins of every pastor in America, we would be stunned and may have to stop playing “church” altogether: this why I pray that Ted Haggard finds comfort and redemption from the grace of God that embraces us all (since going for an intense rehab program, Mr. Haggard says that he is now “completely heterosexual”. He has now chosen to pursue a career in psychology). What troubles me most about his situation is not his sin, but the fact that he probably had to struggle with this sin in silence for so long because he knew that if he had confessed to anyone in his church about his problem, the backlash would likely have been disastrous, especially considering that his besetting sin was homosexuality.
When we as church members continue to succumb to the lie that our leaders are somehow impervious to sin because they are anointed, or believe the lie that somehow “pastors cannot relate to the sin-struggle”, we fall into a dangerous trap of the enemy. If anything, pastors are probably more susceptible to temptation because the enemy would want nothing more than to make others think that their pastor’s sin disqualifies them for the task of ministry. I for one do not believe for one moment that pastors (mine included) are perfect. In fact, I know that all spiritual leaders are human just like the rest of us. I am reminded of a story that author and pastor Steve McVey tells of how one of his son’s friends came home with them after church service one Sunday, and when the young lad went home, he told his mom “They’re just like us!” Apparently, even kids sometimes believe the illusion that pastors and their families are perpetually walking on some spiritual cloud nine that makes them unique. No, ministers are just as human and imperfect as we are, but because of the job description, they are often compelled to hide those unacceptable areas of their lives to keep the marketing machine going. After all, no pastor wants to lose members because of perceived flaws. In this regard, the ministry is a unique job where character is being scrutinized 24/7, a fishbowl existence where some people are just dying to find out if and when the minister is going to mess up.
I wonder to myself almost every time I am in church, how many more people are struggling with issues that they would dare not tell a church member simply because of the self-righteous mentality that is rampant in modern circles. We tell ourselves lies like that say “real Christian don’t _____________” (you can fill in the blank). Real Christians don’t cuss, real Christians don’t struggle with sexual immorality, real Christians don’t drink, real Christians don’t struggle with addiction….etc etc. You get the picture. So in our attempts to live up to our ideal of what a real Christian does and does not do, we hide out secrets, we hide out hurts, we are inauthentic and in the process we reject the power of God’s grace and live by the creed of deception. In the end, instead of liberating us, this façade does more to hurt us. Meanwhile, other hurting people around us dare not expose their struggles for fear of being branded. Here’s a partial list of some of the struggles so common today:
· the sting of unrequited love or a painful divorce.
· the mental anguish and spiritual torment of addiction, whether it be socially-acceptable addictions like food, work or money, or unacceptable addictions like alcohol, cigarettes, illicit sex or drugs.
· spiritual bondage
· the effects of poverty and/or unemployment.
· hopelessness and helplessness, which often manifests itself in self-destructive ways.
· brokenness from the realization that the simple formulas that are supposed to make life work have failed to deliver.
I guarantee you that there are people struggling with one or more of these issues sitting in churches every weekend, people who look like all is well, but would dare not expose their pain because of the stigma associated with some of these issues. For this reason, others who are going through these trials may not even be in church and have no real desire to be there, because they are too exhausted to put on the “I’ve got my life together” masks. In the end, many of these people are left to “fend for themselves” until the situation implodes and then those amongst them who are Christian are exposed as “hypocrites” who never really were in an acceptable environment to talk about their struggles in the first place.
In recent days, the tragic death of 39-year old model Anna Nicole Smith’s has flooded the cable airways. I was really struck by the harsh rhetoric that was thrown at her by news commentator Bill O’Reilly on his popular TV show. He said that he was not surprised by her death because she was a “weak” person who “allowed herself to be used”. He went on to add that her irresponsible behavior and drug use ultimately led to her death. He would later receive several e-mails criticizing him for his harsh words, some of which he read on the air. In one regard, I get what he was saying: a valid argument can be made that she lived a reckless lifestyle, but we cannot ignore the fact that this was a very sad and depressed young lady who was desperately looking for love in all the wrong places. The kinds of callous comments that he made about her reflect the self-righteous society that we live in. Would we as a church community embrace the likes of Anna Nicole Smith if they came walking through our doors, especially knowing so many juicy details about her past? Can we take off our spiritual masks long enough to embrace the humanity of those who don’t conform to our neat little rules of character definition, or are we too scared that our images would be too tainted by such an act?
Fortunately, more and more churches are realizing the need for authenticity at all levels and there is a paradigm shift going on in many Christian circles today. From support groups, to counselors and mentorship programs, more and more churches are learning to meet people where they are. This is a great thing, as it provides help for people dealing with serious issues. Nonetheless, the phenomenon of having to put on a spiritual-front must be especially tough on ministers, whose lives are lived out in the public eye. Everyone is watching, waiting to see if and when he or she messes up. What kind of movies does he watch? Does he go to bars and if so what does he drink? Who is that lady he is talking to and why does it seem like he is hugging her a little too affectionately? That’s’ not a holy hug! I wonder what is on his computer hard drive, has he been surfing porn online? Going by today’s statistics, more and more male spiritual leaders than would like to admit it struggle trying to refrain from porn, the stuff is so readily available and even with filters some of it still gets through: the porn industry is one of the most profitable industries in America, not just available in the archaic print style in magazines, but it can be obtained through practically every major electronic device we use – from cell phones, cable TV, satellite TV, computers, I-Pods and other PDA’s. Not to mention the fact that sex is used as a marketing tool to sell practically everything underneath the sun. We expect everyone to be sexually pure, but Wall Street could care less, sex is good for the market. There is a reason why all of a sudden ED (Erectile Dysfunction) is no longer a problem for once-incompetent males, with all the products designed to keep libido going. And yet, ironically, we have all these contemporary programs in place designed just to deal with this growing epidemic of sex-addiction. But there is a flip side or secret of the financial market, a sort of “matrix” that blinds our eyes to subtle forces that drive us almost every day albeit subconsciously. This secret came to my mind a few months ago when I read a quote from Warren Buffet, one of the richest and most successful businessmen in the world, a man who has been in the top 10 of America’s richest people for the past few years. The quote dealt with how to create wealth and says, “make a product for a penny, you sell it for a dollar, and you sell it to addicts”. I thought about his statement for a long time after I read it, and realized that it is absolutely true, whether we admit it or not, corporate America loves the functioning addict (emphasis on the word "functioning"), especially if you are addicted to their product or service, because the addict by definition is a repeat customer, and addiction by its very nature requires that you not only come back for an encore, but for more than you did the first time. So on one hand, while we may say that “addiction is not good”, there are executives in the halls of power who don’t want you to be free from your addiction to their goods or services. Yeah, they may not want you to be a crack-fein, but as long as you keep coming back for their product, all is well. This has been the driving fact behind the success of numerous industries, from the taboo (like sex, drugs, gambling, tobacco) to the acceptable (fast food, certain prescription drugs, sodas etc). There is a reason why the top 2% of our population own more assets that the bottom 80% of the population, and it is not just due to the widely accepted myth that those at the bottom just don’t want to work hard enough to get to the top. I highlight this issue of how the Market works because it reflects on how societal greed is not only rampant, but is actually promoted. Greed is a great catalyst for wealth building. And it is under this cloud of temptation that ministers are expected to be “pure and moral”. No wonder the “health and wealth gospel” is so popular; it justifies the subtle but powerful forces of the economic market, which are based on one bottom line and one bottom line alone – profit margins. Ministers are no less susceptible to the trappings of greed and lasciviousness than the corporate executive.
Bottom line, if you look at anyone’s life closely enough, ministers included, you will find something you don’t like, you will find sin. This is the premise behind the Biblical reality of our spiritual fallibility and the often-used quote from Romans 3:23, “all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory”. I learned a long time ago that while I should respect my spiritual leaders and authority, I must not to put them on the same pedestal as Jesus, because I will be sorely disappointed. “Well”, one may argue, “are you saying that you should not hold your spiritual leaders to a high moral standard?” No, but what I am saying is that no matter how noble and anointed your leader is, he or she is not perfect, and we should always put this moral standard in the context of God’s grace, because once you forget the essence of the Gospel, you set yourself up to disqualify anyone with any degree of spiritual authority, because ultimately all people (ministers included) are saved the same way you were, by the precious blood of Jesus, not because of their “moral uprightness”.
How many sins does it take to disqualify a pastor or minister from a church? And what kinds of sins are they? If your pastor told you that he was a glutton, what would you say? Last time I checked gluttony was a Biblical sin, a form of greed. Would you justify it by saying, “No big deal, he’s not the first and won’t be the last”? What about greed, would that be a problem? Or in a society obsessed with success as an index of your financial portfolio, would you simply say “as long as he is growing the church and not directly stealing from the church’s treasury, greed is good, heck it motivates him.” What about telling white lies, you know embellishing the truth a little bit? I guess it would depend on the lie and whom he told it to, uh? What about if he has been divorced? Several years ago, Charles Stanley, the well known pastor and author, told the Atlanta Journal Constitution that if he ever got a divorce, he would resign. Well, it just so happens that he did get a divorce a few years later, but he is still the church’s pastor. I am glad that the church kept him, because that is an example of grace in action, but the fact remains that there was a time when a divorced pastor could not pastor a church (some churches still frown upon having a divorced pastor) but with the divorce rate practically identical for believers and non-believers alike, certain concessions have been made over the years. Even though we say we do not grade sin on the curve, we really do, because societal standards demand that we do so.
The sin that Ted Haggard struggled with, homosexuality, happens to be an instant disqualifier from ministry in most Christian circles because the issue is a political lightning rod and also because it carries a special stigma, it is the “abomination” sin. As one who grew up to under the macho cloud of homophobia, I realize why Haggard’s sin would cause such an immediate and drastic reaction from his church. Growing up, I used to think that almost anything was forgivable except for homosexuality, rape, child-abuse and murder; homophobia is rampant in most African-American households. It would take years of God breaking me before I would start to have compassion for anyone who had struggled with this sin, it would take God showing me the true implications of his grace as contrasted with my own sinful tendencies. God would have to show me that just because my sexual struggles are heterosexual does not give me the right to condemn homosexuals. As a youngster, I found my first pornographic images when I was around 8 years old, and porn quickly became my “fix” for the pain of existence, a fix that would fuel years of sexual immorality that would end up costing me dearly. It would be the brokenness from this struggle and the pain that fueled my addiction that would be the foundation for my empathy for others, even those whose lifestyle I did not approve of. Now I realize that homosexuals are no less objects of God’s grace than the heterosexual who is living a promiscuous lifestyle. Unfortunately, Christian circles have always been more forgiving of heterosexual immorality. That is how selective-moralism works.
“Don’t you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Don’t fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, or are thieves, or greedy people, or drunkards, or are abusive, or cheat people—none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God. Some of you were once like that. But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. 1 Corinthians 6:9-11
This passage tells us that God does not look lightly on sin – He can’t, because He is holy. It says that anyone who does wrong cannot be heaven bound, and doing wrong is not just a matter of sexual immorality, but anything, even just breaking what you may perceive to be the least of God’s laws (notice that the above Scripture lists other sins like drunkenness, stealing, adultery and greed). But more importantly, what this passage says is that there is hope for anyone, because it is not our behavior that determines our identity, it is Jesus who transforms our identity from “sinner” to “God’s child”. This is what is meant when the passage says “some of you were like that”, referring to our identity before salvation. You may or may not be totally free from all your bad habits, but you are Gods child because of Christ’s blood. No one who sins can get into heaven or be called God’s child. Yes, this is true, but if that were the end of the story, we would all have to close shop and give up hope. But because of God’s grace, there is hope for all. Ultimately, it is not behavior that defines who we are, it is who we are in Christ that marks our identity. This is a vital truth for spiritual freedom, which if ignored could literally lead to mental anguish. When we pervert the gospel by injecting self-righteousness into the grace equation, we set people up to fail. True spiritual freedom and redemption is a by-product of a full embrace of the gospel of grace, not just at the point of salvation, but throughout our lives. Even when dealing with issues requiring discipline, the discipline should always be aimed at drawing the person closer to the God of grace, not to crush the soul into anguishing condemnation. “Tough love” may sometimes be essential, but “tough love” without compassion or empathy can easily teeter on cruelty. We must always remember, God’s has shown us so much mercy, and this should be the impetus for us to show kindness towards others.
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God”
~2 Corinthians 1:3-4
2. Politics and Christianity in America
“No nation, ours or any other, is well served by illusions of righteousness. All nations make decisions based on self-interest and then defend them in the name of morality.”
~ Rev. William Sloan Coffin
They say that there are two things that you are not supposed to talk about it public: politics and religion. Well, since I am already dabbling in religion, I might as well add politics. This section of my essay is not a critique of anybody in particular, but is just based on certain observations that I have made about today's political landscape. Also, I am not trying to endorse one political party over another; I am just trying to highlight how we pervert the message of the gospel when we imply that one party is on God’s side while the other party is not. The Religious Right has become the most influential political block of the religious community in this country. And as a concerned Christian, I feel that some of the primary tenets of this group have done more to promote self-righteousness than uphold the gospel of grace.
America's current political climate is very vicious when it comes to character assassination. We have become a nation of ideologues where there is a pervading assumption that when it comes to the mix of God and politics, Republicans (or conservatives) represent righteousness or all that is good and moral, while Democrats (or liberals) represent all that is bad, immoral, lascivious, God-hating, and anti-American. Both parties resort to mudslinging at the other party to get the job done, this is true, but there is a general assumption that has been sold by the Religious Right that if you are not a card carrying supporter of everything that the Republican Party does, you are somehow not really a Christian.
Now hold your breath for what I am about to say: I consider myself an evangelical Christian but I did not vote for George W. Bush in either the 2000 or 2004 presidential election…..Gasp!! Hold on, don’t stop reading yet if you are a Republican……I realize that what I just wrote is akin to a crime of the highest degree in some evangelical circles, but that’s exactly what got me to wondering, “where did we get the assumption that Christianity in America equals the Republican agenda?” I do not dislike George W. Bush as a person. In fact, I consider him to be a very amiable president and a charismatic leader, and I pray for him regularly just like I pray for my pastor and other leaders. Whether you agree with Bush or not on the issues, you have to admire the way he stands by most of his convictions and is not easily swayed by public opinion. Personally, I just happen to disagree with some of his policies. In 2000, I was really attracted to his message of compassionate conservatism when he was running for office, but after listening to the debates, I decided to vote for Al Gore. In 2004, I really did not like the messages of either presidential candidate, I saw too many inconsistencies in John Kerry’s message, and yet I did not want to vote for Bush because I did not like the direction that the war in Iraq was taking. So I guess you can say that my vote was a matter of “the lesser of two evils” as some often call the voting process. I honestly wished there had been a viable third candidate, but there was none. But I could still not figure out for the life of me why many in the Religious Right consider it a sin against God to be a Christian and not vote Republican. One popular conservative minister said teh following in a recent HBO interview, “the Democratic party has gone to hell in a hand-basket.” I guess he was inferring that if you don’t vote Republican, well…you get the idea: Get ready for some steamy flames in the afterlife. How grateful I am that my place in heaven is not based on other people's judgment.
I am not saying that there is anything wrong with voting Republican if you are a Christian; this is a free country where everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I am saying that there is something inherently wrong with the notion that if you don’t support one party you are on the wrong side of righteousness or are an advocate for the devil. The beauty of American democracy is that we have the ability to disagree with our leaders and voice our opinion at the polls, which people did very clearly in the last mid-term election. Why must we resort to demonizing other professed Christians (or other people who are not Christians) simply because they disagree with the Republican Party on certain issues? I am still waiting for someone to show me the Bible translation that shows the 11th commandment which supposedly reads: “Once you profess Christ as Savior in the United States of America, you must become a lifelong Republican and agree with all the policies of the GOP, otherwise you may lose your salvation and go to hell.” I believe that there are Christians on both sides of the aisle, but the doctrine of self-righteousness has resulted in defining the term “Christian” based on certain issues, instead of whether or not a person has faith in Jesus; Christianity has become a function of our works and our stance on issues, instead of a product of Jesus’ sacrifice at Calvary. We seem to easily forget that our heavenly citizenship is a product of God’s grace and God’s grace alone.
Looking over the Pew Research Center statistics for the last presidential elections, it showed that 78% of white evangelicals voted for Bush, which is a sharp contrast to the 86% of black protestant Christians who voted for Kerry. I was curious as to why the statistical figures showed mostly white Christians as “evangelicals” while black Christians were called “protestants”. But that simply told me that whenever the media talks about the evangelical Christian vote in the last presidential election, they are referring primarily to the white Christian vote. This is not to imply that all white Christians voted for Bush, but majority of them did, especially those who are referred to as Evangelicals – which for the sake of political discussions, usually means a Christian who opposes both abortion and the so-called "gay agenda". The fact that most black Christians who are highly morally conservative did not vote for Bush is often swept under the rug and rarely ever mentioned. This just infers that the term “evangelical Christian” is almost unanimously seen as a political conservative who supports the Republican Party. For me, however, the term evangelical means a Christian who is passionate about the gospel; someone who spreads the message of Gods love for humanity through Jesus Christ. The implication from these poll results, however, is that there are rarely any black evangelicals, except for those who voted for Bush. But this is not true, in fact the real question from these poll results should be why most blacks don’t support the Republican Party if it is supposed to be the bastion of moral excellence? Could it be that considering the recent history of opposition to Civil Rights issues by the white conservative movement, most blacks in this country are still hesitant to embrace the Republican Party as their home? I know that it is not healthy for most members of a certain group to be beholden to one party in politics, because it promotes unhealthy stereotypes and makes healthy debate difficult, but this is what the American political landscape currently looks like. And we all know that even though churches are really not supposed to endorse candidates or political parties, it does happen, albeit very cleverly. No church wants to lose their tax-exempt status from the government.
Certain elements of the Religious Right have taken two issues [abortion and homosexuality] and used them as the rallying cry for their cause. It is widely assumed that all liberals, progressives and Democrats want nothing more than to kill unborn generations of babies while they endorse wild homosexual sex by promoting the homosexual agenda. Not only are these assumptions misleading, but they also ignore certain key constituents of the Democratic Party like most African-Americans who are highly morally conservative. Most blacks are not only against abortion, but are also against homosexuality. This hatred for homosexuality is so intense in some black circles that it borders on pure homophobia. These facts show that many of the assumptions made about all Democrats [in regard to their morality or values] are simply wrong.
So how did we get to this point of deep political discord in this nation? How did one party come to be seen as the “party of God” while the other one as the “secular-progressive Party of heathens"? After all, September 11, 2001 was a pivotal day in U.S. history. In the immediate aftermath of that tragic day, we united as a nation in a way that was truly beautiful. People nationwide put aside all their differences and humbled themselves in prayer. Although we had heavy hearts, we were united in our resolve to help each other as we confronted the people who committed those terrible acts. We targeted the terrorist cells in Afghanistan with one resolve, united as brothers and sisters. Six years later, however, the nation is deeply divided about our current “war on terror”. As it became obvious that we invaded Iraq using faulty intelligence based on the false premise of stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and an imminent threat of attack. It has become clearer as the war progressed that trying to bring democracy or “freedom” to a nation of different cultures and ideals is not as easy as it seems on paper. We must note that elected officials on both sides of the aisle voted to authorize this war (77 in all); and of the 23 votes against the authorization for war, one was a Republican and another an independent (see www.senate.gov). Since then, however, many prominent Democrats who voted for the war have since apologized for what they considered to be a serious mistake, Some Republicans have also started to voice their concern about the war and the direction that it has taken. To his credit, President Bush has humbly softened his once aggressive rhetoric, maybe because he is getting some opposition even from members of his own party. Nonetheless, it is nice to hear him say that just because you disagree with him does not necessarily mean that you are unpatriotic or less of an American. It is possible after all to support the troops and disagree with the fundamental basis of this war in Iraq. The fact is that the politicians who have now chosen to criticize our president even though they voted for the war themselves are just as responsible for the current crisis. What should concern us as much as anything else is how the most powerful nation in the world was able to fall for such misleading intelligence in the first place; there was obviously a serious breakdown in our intelligence community.
Two fundamentally different philosophies have emerged as to how to wage this war on terror: One camp suggests that aggressive military might alone is sufficient enough to bring stability to the Middle East and win the war on terror, by simply wiping out the enemy. The other camp feels that while military might will be the backbone of the fight, we must use it wisely and cautiously along with smart diplomacy; this second camp realizes that we must not think that we are going to win a war on terror by simply removing every dictator that walks the face of the earth. Are we going to, for instance, one-by-one try to engage in pre-emptive strikes to remove every dictator around the world based on assumptions that they may strike us? What about countries that are considered to be our allies – like Saudi Arabia – that are ruled by dictators? What do we do about them? These are the kinds of tough questions that this war presents, and it does not take a PhD to realize that military might alone is not sufficient enough to eliminate an enemy that is spreading ideological propaganda and teaching their offspring to kill by way of suicide missions. If every Muslim is a potential Islamic fascist, we would have to eliminate the estimated 1.6 billion Muslims all over the world. We must realize that even if we don’t call it a religious war, the ideologues that we are fighting see it as one. For Islamic fascists, there is absolutely no separation between church and state and the attack on one is seen as an attack on the other. But even with this in mind, while there is a time for raw aggression, it should always be a means of last resort if we are going to win this war, because we must realize that we are dealing with an enemy that is not defined by set borders; an enemy with a totally different mind-set than ours. How do you kill an enemy that is willing to kill themselves for their cause? I for one believe that we should not have gone into Iraq the way that we did, but now that we are there, we cannot leave without finishing the job, without some level of stability in the region. We opened Pandora’s box in a sense, but the ultimate question is going to be “how do we bring stability between the rival sections of the nation, the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds? This is why diplomacy and working with our allies is going to be as much of an asset as military might in this global war.
I don’t write these thoughts to be what some term a “Bush basher”, I simply ask them because I have realized that to voice any level of dissent about our current war tactics, you are deemed by some factions of the Religious Right as a heretic and an unpatriotic American who hates our troops and wants us to lose in Iraq; you are deemed a flaming liberal who loves the terrorists more than their own country. These kinds of words only divide our nation further. This is why the very nature of our political climate is not conducive to the doctrine of God’s amazing grace. Politics by its very nature is designed to preserve power and to demean your political opponents while making yourself look good. Politics is about selling the perception that your side is right while your opponents’ side is wrong; or even more emphatically, your side is righteous while your opponents are evil. Politics is about the illusion of perfection, and whichever side can perpetuate this image best usually wins.
It is this type of mentality that has pervaded the discussion when it comes to the ever-combustible discussion of religion and politics in America. This is where the assumption that conservatives-are-more-righteous-than-liberals comes from. And even though you may probably not hear it put this bluntly, this is the subtle implication that many would like you to believe. But is this assumption accurate? May I submit to you that this is nothing more than sheer delusion. Of course, those who argue in favor of that statement would sight the “endless” moral failings of “liberals”, Bill and Hillary Clinton being their favorite targets. They will go on to tell you that no one who supports abortion could possible be a child of God, as if to imply that only people on the left have had an abortion or like all liberals are just dying to get pregnant so that they can have an abortion. We all know that this is not true. No lady in her right mind makes such a decision casually and is usually compelled to do so for the very reasons that I highlighted at the beginning of this essay, the fear of being ostracized by the self-righteous, or it could be due to prevailing poverty in her family making her wonder “how I am going to take care of the baby?” I know how I felt when I was in college and considered asking my then-girlfriend to get an abortion when we feared that she may have been pregnant (yes, I know I had no business having pre-marital sex in the first place). Thank goodness she was not pregnant, but I will never forget the terror I felt of the possibility of having a child at such a young age when my dad had emphatically taught me not to have sex before marriage and to “not bring any grandbabies home” before I finished my education. Later, in my mid-20s I would date a single mother who had had an abortion in her teens. She said it was the most terrifying and heart-wrenching decision that she ever had to make, but she felt that her mother would kill her if she found out that not only had she been having sex, but was also pregnant. She still wondered at the time of our relationship if God had forgiven her for the abortion, but she told me that she felt that she had no other choice. I bring these examples up just to show that even as one who opposes abortion, I understand that there are serious issues that usually compel a woman to go that route. We may think that banning abortion would deter unwanted pregnancies, but studies have shown that this is not the case. In regions of the world where abortion is illegal, women still have them anyway, but the abortions then become very high risk where they often endanger themselves. Abstinence is the best form of “safe sex”, but we kid ourselves when we don’t realize that many young people are having sex outside the confines of marriage. It’s time to get our heads out of the sand. Talking about sex in church circles is not easy, but as we saw with the sex scandals in the Catholic Church, just because you don’t talk about it does not mean that it is not going on. We need to be real if we are going to heal.
The bottom line is that these political labels that we use to describe people: “liberal”, “conservative”, “progressive”, “libertarian” etc – do nothing more than give us a chance to make stereotypical assumptions about people without having to form meaningful and authentic relationships with them. We dehumanize people into slogans and caricatures without remembering that God loves all people. Have you watched a cable primetime news show on TV lately? It is like a shouting match with each side simply trying to prove the validity of their points while demonizing the other side. We can’t even engage in healthy debate anymore in this country because the political climate is so bitterly vicious and hell-bent on gaining or retaining power. And you tell me that one party is supposed to be the party of God while the other one if the party of the enemy. Give me a break, there are compelling arguments to be made for different issues on both sides of the aisle, but neither side has a monopoly on righteousness, because righteousness is not about who agrees with what issue, it is about the person of Jesus the Messiah.
I was reminded of these facts recently when the issue of homosexuality came up recently in the political news sphere. The subject was Mary Cheney – our vice president’s daughter – and her gay lifestyle. Mary Cheney is a staunch conservative and was even active in her father’s re-election campaign in the last presidential elections. She has a dilemma, however, she is actively gay and has a life partner. She has also chosen to have a child and is pregnant with that child. James Dobson’s organization, Focus on the Family, recently criticized Mary Cheney for choosing to have a child outside of the traditional family setting. In a recent interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Mary Cheney's dad, Dick Cheney, was asked to comment on Focus on the Family's criticism of her daughter. Dick Cheney, visibly upset and livid by the question, responded by saying that he thought that the Blitzer was “out of line’ by asking him that question. Here’s what I took from that interview: The Republican Party touts themselves as the “party of moral and family values” and to hear them say it, the only people who live gay lifestyles are liberals and Democrats. Mary Cheney is not a Democrat, she is a faithful Republican, but she does not support president Bush’s constitutional ban on gay marriage. This is very ironic considering that the Republican Party gives the impression that it is Democrats trying to pervert our society with the “gay or homosexual agenda” as if there are no gay Republicans. This is how politics work, demean the other side, while you steadily rise up the ladder of self-righteousness. And both sides do it very well.
All people in this country, regardless of their political party affiliation, have different issues that they deal with. Take away God’s grace and none of us, and I mean none of us, would be able to call ourselves God’s children. Either side can easily use selective-moralism to take certain Scriptures out of context to justify their agenda, but the real question is whether we consider ourselves God’s children because we are on the right side of the political issue de-jour or whether we realize that we are all products of God’s love. True spirituality is not tied to a political ideology, because ultimately when religion is used primarily as a political tool, its tenets are perverted by the subtle appeals of power and totalitarianism. The genius of the American Democratic experiment is that we are free to express our spiritual beliefs without the Government telling us what religious doctrine we need to believe. You visit any nation that is wrapped in the ideals of theocracy – Christian, Muslim or otherwise – and you will really appreciate why America is so great. No one wants to be told what to believe, because in reality you cannot force true spirituality, it has to come from the inside out, not the other way around. The genius of American democracy is not freedom from religion, it is freedom of religion, and this also means that if a person does not want to believe they are free to do so.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America
You can put state sanctioned prayer back in schools, completely ban abortion, and have the Ten Commandments back in every public space in America, but you still can’t force a person to accept Christ as Lord Savior. Even Jesus does not operate by coercion, that’s why he said that he stands at the door of our hearts knocking, and when you choose to open the door, he will come in and dine with you (see Revelations 3:20). He does not break down the door, he waits for you to open it. The government may not be able to sanction a teacher leading a prayer in a public school, but I am still free to pray quietly in school or wherever I am in this country. Besides, making a public spectacle of prayer should never be our intent; Jesus himself said that the most effective prayer is done when we are in our prayer closets (see Matthew 6:5-7). This why the Bible says that Jesus “often withdrew to lonely places and prayed” (Luke 5:16). For Jesus, prayer was not a public spectacle, but a time of deep intimacy with the Father, God.
There are so many denominational brands of Christianity, and politically they range in extremes from the liberal views of the Tony Campolo, Jim Wallis and Jesse Jackson, to the conservative views of Tim LaHaye, John Hagee, James Dobson and Pat Robertson; there are several different strains in between, and people of other faiths, some of no real religious affiliation whatsoever as they are not interested in their politics being colored by religion at all. The friction is always a result of the fact that spiritual ideologues always feel that they are always right and that their brand of religion [or Christianity] is the best. When this frame of mind plays itself out in the political arena, you have the kind of deep divisions that you have in the country today. But when placed in the context of God’s standard, neither side is as moral as they would like you to believe; whatever righteousness either side has is based on God’s grace.
I personally believe that the best role that my Christian faith plays in influencing my decisions – political ones included – is for it to be a prism through which I look at humanity, to enhance the quality of my relationships, not to demonize others. Regardless of your political views, both sides have something to learn from the other and neither side has a monopoly on truth. The fact is that both sides love to filter facts through the filter of their political ideology to boost their agenda. This is why I agree with the sentiments of Randall Balmer when he said:
“The lesson of both mainline Protestantism in the 1950s’ and the Religious Right in the 1980s’ and beyond is that religion functions best when it is not tethered to particular political parties or ideologies. Religion works best when it operates from the margins of society and not at the center of power and when it remains true to the faith and refuses to allow political interests to shape – or commandeer its doctrines. But the reverse is also true: Political movements and politicians who seek to cloak themselves in the mantle of religious legitimacy invariably fall prey to self-righteousness, intolerance, and fanatism.”
~Randall Balmer, “Thy Kingdom Come – An Evangelical’s Lament”
While Christianity has been a source of tremendous good in the world, you can look throughout world history and see how people have used an ideological brand of "Christianity" to justify all kinds of oppression; from the oppressive brand of Constantine’s Christianity during the 4th century, to other dagmatic acts and institutions like: the Inquisition, the Crusades, the Klu Klux Clan, slavery, segregation, white-supremacy, aggressive militarism etc. Christianity itself is the source of genuine hope, because it is all about love flowing from God through his Son, Jesus. The fact remains, however, that throughout history Christians have often perverted the message of the Gospel for selfish reasons. This is why you have people say stuff like, “I like Jesus, it is his followers [or so-called Christians] that I have a problem with”. Mahatma Gandhi once echoed such a sentiment in his popular quote, "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." Very true words from a great and humble leader. We are unlike Christ primarily because we have substituted the gospel of God's grace & love for a self-serving gospel of self-righteousness.
If we are to be reflections of the Jesus whom we talk about so much, we must stop preaching ourselves and get back to preaching Jesus and his sacrifice. We will never be able to do this if we are not in touch with our own sinfulness which begs the need for God's grace in the first place. I can now better empathize with atheists and agnostics who often have serious problems with organized religion. I can empathize with them because I have had similar qualms with the way people have perverted the Gospel to oppress others. For this reason, Sam Harris, a well known athiest, is one of my favorite authors. He warns us of the dangers in using religion to dogmatically justify political ideology.
In conclusion, let me just say that God is not a Republican, nor is he a Democrat, Libertarian or whatever other third party you may have in mind. The real issue is that He loves people regardless of their political affiliation, and it is our job as Christians to convey this message as best as we can in a world where everyone is searching for genuine hope.
“Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins.” ~1 Peter 4:8
Stephen O. Akinduro
February 2007
posted by Stephen O. | 10:29 AM
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