Anti-(fill in the blank)

I realize some people say things just to get a rise out of others.  Sometimes a person will say something from a defensive, ignorant position.  Still others open themselves to a certain element of transparency, but they seem to always be thrown back into the pot of saying-it-just-to-get-a-rise kind of folks.

Below, I’ve posted an excerpt from the formerly Christian author Anne Rice.  Now, I don’t know too much about her, but as I mentioned in my post last week, I relate to many of her sentiments.  I am also firmly convinced that she doesn’t fall into the group of saying certain things just hoping to rub someone raw, but of course we could probably say that is at least partially true of Jesus.  But, as last week, I’ll save that for another post.  Possibly next week.

All that to say, below is Anne’s quote.  I contend that it’s worth some serious consideration for those of us who claim we fall under the Christian umbrella.

Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten …years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.

As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of …Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

Now, I know all the arguments, because I’ve heard them before.  ”That’s a brash generalization.”  ”Not every Christian is like that.”  Both arguments, if we stretched them out a little bit are probably at least partially true, but that’s the problem.  Us evangelical  Christians are awesome at pointing the finger at other people and making brash general statements, so this one really isn’t too far out of the park.

So, there’s quite a bit to say on this matter.  I’m rather interested in what others have to say, so feel free to offer any thoughts, experiences, feelings sentiments that might help us move more toward being more fully human and making our short existence here a better one for everyone.

As the prophets of scripture were known to do, I’d like to offer a bit of a scathing commentary.  I along with Anne, would argue that if indeed God created, and it was good, he’s likely not going to be anti anything.  Besides that, if anyone can name anything that Jesus was “anti,” as it pertains to the realm of God being realized here and now, for everyone, feel free to clue me in.  I also feel somewhat immobilized by evangelical Christianity and I am convinced Jesus didn’t live as he did, teach as he did and socialize as he did to found a new institution to imprisons its members, binding them in a biblical straight jacket of rules.  I much prefer living life to its fullest than moping around worried about the last twenty sins I committed, or better yet, the sins everyone else around me is committing because they haven’t set up camp next to me…

More on this as the conversations continue.

Me and God

As I begin this post, I must admit that in many ways I’m just playing with words, manipulating them to make my point.  But the thing is, isn’t that what we do?  I mean, words are probably one of the most essential tools we’ve got to express ourselves.  With that short intro, I want to ask a question, or statement, whichever comes out…

(spoiler warning.  I’m probably going to be playing the devil’s advocate this morning.  Or maybe a better label would be that I’m expressing my thoughts and concerns which have, in turn, called into question many, if not all, of those things that I just accepted as “that’s just what we’ve always done it.”)

So, my first thought is as follows.  Growing up in an unfortunately conservative branch of evangelical christianity, one of the most popular phrases I heard went something like this: My relationship with God is something deeply personal.  It’s about me and God and my walk with him. Now, as I ignore all the amens in the crowd, I’ve got a question.  If my relationship with God is so personal, confined within my own heart, however I choose to define my grasping and clinging to it as my own, why go to church?  And yes, I can hear the arguments: we go because we are commanded.  ”Do not give up meeting together…”  We are the first century church in the 21st century (hogwash by the way).  The books of Acts is clear that we are to meet on the first day of the week.  It’s in the Bible. Blah, blah…

Continuing on, it seems that I’ve been contradicting myself for who knows how long, which is most likely a product of the religious prison we’ve accepted as status quo.  And either we know and simply refuse to address the issue, or we have chosen ignorance, which is just as destructive in my mind.  My feeling is that often we don’t really take the time to really listen to what it is we are saying.  Otherwise, we might check our words before we just let them fly.  As Derek Webb says, “if you really believe what you say you believe you wouldn’t be so d*** reckless with the words you speak.”

Here’s an example from this past Sunday morning.  I’m working through some of the parables that we have recorded in scripture.  And it just so happens that the story we were studying was not an original Jesus story, which outside of many of the one liners and other aphorisms, is probably much more prevalent than we know.  Anyway, I posed the question, “does the fact that Jesus didn’t tell this story make it any less true or give us any reason to doubt its credibility?”  Surprisingly, the majority answer was that it totally changes both credibility and truth if in fact Jesus wasn’t the original creator.  (Keep in mind that this story is printed in red ink in our Bibles, which gives the illusion that everything in red are Jesus originals.)

Even still, let’s think about the implications of that conversation.  I said, just because Jesus didn’t say it, is it any less true.  And the answer was, Jesus has to say it for it to be true.  This coming after a roughly 8 weeks study about the bible and how it is overwhelmingly a human document.  But if we just accept the norm or refuse to think about what we say, we make ourselves out to look like morons.  In