Tag Archives: 2 cor 5:17

March 8, 2010 · 03:40

A War Crime Denier, an American Terrorist in Karachi, a Christian Bully and thoughts on Grace and Reconciliation on a Lenten Sunday

Molly Checking My Facts

Well sports fans I sit up with my little Papillion-Dachshund mix Molly musing tonight after watch a replay of a pre-season baseball game.  Today of course I have been dealing with the pain caused by Adolf my large and well dug in kidney stone who evidently will resist until the end and have to be blasted by a laser on Tuesday.  I didn’t sleep well last night and woke up in pain this morning and look to be doing the same tonight, hopefully the pain and sleep meds will kick in and I will get some sleep.  As I wait I shall write as Bucky Katt once said “you can wordify anything if you just verb it.” So tonight I shall spend some time with a war crime denier, an American traitor, an allegedly “Christian” political pundit and muse on grace and reconciliation, which are key themes in my Lenten journey this year.

So anyway….today was a weird day.  I had an irate Japanese “Rape of Nanking” denier comment on my article about that subject.  Sorry, the truth hurts war crimes and atrocities committed against civilians by any nation are immoral and to defend the indefensible or try to deflect criticism by referring to other nations that have done similar acts is simply being an accomplice to evil.  That goes for any nation including the United States and unfortunately our history is not always as pristine as some would make it out to be.

Moving on… there are conflicting reports that one of the great traitors in modern United States history, Adam Gadahn the chief spokesman for Al Qaeda was apprehended by Pakistani security forces in Karachi yesterday. A day after Gadahn urged Moslems in the US to emulate the Fort Hood terrorist Major Malik Hasan and attack high value targets in the United States Pakistani officials announced that he had been captured. However later reports that the Al Qaeda member captured may not be him after all.  This guy is a slime bag of the biggest order and I hope that if we didn’t get him this time that he will catch a Hellfire missile between his eyes so he can be the martyr that he urges others to be.  Lead by example Adam, its called leadership but then it is always easier to urge people that you don’t know or care about to do the dying for you.  Don’t worry someday you will get your 70 Virginians and they will kick your sorry ass for eternity.  If the Hellfire doesn’t get you Adam I hope that you get captured and sent to prison here in the US with the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN or the Terrible Blond Network) piped into your jail cell 24/7, an unending supply of Chick tracts and Gordon Klingenschmitt as your Chaplain, a fate worse than a fate worse than death.

While the aforementioned idiots are simply idiotic at least they don’t attempt to rationalize illegal or dishonorable activity by citing scripture and invoking Jesus like Townhall.com columnist Doug Giles did on Sunday.  Giles likes to fancy himself a defender of American and Christian values but is simply a bully whose imbecilic theological rants are about as Christian as those of Adam Gadahn, the American born Al Qaeda spokesman.  Giles prostitutes the Christian faith and wraps it around the flag so that the Gospel is indistinguishable from right wing politics.  The fact that he uses Jesus and says that Jesus would approve of such behavior is blasphemous and the fact that he has a degree from a seminary puts him on the same level as religious leaders of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard clerics in camouflage.  I do believe that Christians should not divorce their faith from politics and that faith can inform and guide a Christian in life and even in politics but Giles and his radicalized followers are dangerous and will be the death of the Evangelical church.  His justification of the use of methods including deception and violence that in times past would have been denounced by the church are simply heretical and not a part of the Christian faith, even if he can “proof text” by citing disjointed and unrelated scriptural texts and by drawing false analogies to justify or prove his point.  While he as a conservative pundit may well oppose and even rightly criticize his political opponents it is wrong to use God or Scripture to justify unseemly and dirty politics even if one is tackling equally unseemly opponents.  I think this is why so many theologians, pastors and church leaders throughout history going back the Apostles and early Church Fathers distained politics and felt that Christians and their faith could only be corrupted by involvement in political movements.  The actions and words of Giles and his fellow travelers may make them feel better but only undermine their witness as Christians as they prostitute the faith for short term political advantage.

Though I did not get to Church today because of not sleeping and being in pain I was able to celebrate Eucharist at home with the Abbess.  If you have read my Lenten meditations you might notice the theme of reconciliation.  Such was the case in the lectionary readings for today, the Gospel being the parable of the Prodigal Son out of Luke Chapter 15 and the New Testament lesson being 2 Corinthians 5: 17-21, the latter which has been a major part of my theological journey since my return from Iraq.  I post the passage below because it speaks volumes about the ontological change that should be part of the Christian life imparted in the waters of Baptism and how that change should be a major part of how we relate to others in the world.  I think it stands in stark contrast to those of any political party who use Scripture and the faith for political gain and power.

“17So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 18All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; 19that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,* not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. 20So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (NRSV)

As Karl Barth said “Grace must find expression in life, otherwise it is not grace.” I dare say that Giles and other “Christian” radicals have forgotten the grace of God or somehow do not think that applies to their opponents.  In their zeal they misuse Scripture and justify hatred forgetting the great commandments to love God and love our neighbor and the witness of Christians who lived in truly evil times like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who said “Our enemies are those who harbor hostility against us, not those against whom we cherish hostility… As a Christian I am called to treat my enemy as a brother and to meet hostility with love. My behavior is thus determined not by the way others treat me, but by the treatment I receive from Jesus.”

And so to you my friends I wish you a good night.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

Leave a comment

Filed under Loose thoughts and musings

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

March 2, 2010 · 18:02

Faith, Hope and Identity a Mid-Lent Meditation

“If it is hope that maintains and upholds faith and keeps it moving on, if it is hope that draws the believer into the life of love, then it will also be hope that is the mobilizing and driving force of faith’s thinking, of its knowledge of, and reflections on, human nature, history and society. Faith hopes in order to know what it believes. Hence all its knowledge will be an anticipatory, fragmentary knowledge forming a prelude to the promised future, and as such is committed to hope.” Jürgen Moltmann- Theology of Hope

When someone goes through a spiritual crisis or loss of faith it is a chilling time.  Even when you are trying to believe there is always a time that you really take stock of exactly what you believe and why.  Without regurgitating the crisis in my life and faith that came after my return from Iraq and near physical, emotional and spiritual collapse that came with my PTSD I wanted to just take a few paragraphs to meditate on the grace, mercy and love of God that is a central theme of the Gospel.

I have talked about the miracle that embraced me during the season of Advent and Christmas.  I call it my “Christmas miracle” because the year prior I had spent Christmas Eve walking in the dark and cold wondering if God even existed even as most of the Christian world was celebrating the Incarnation of Christ the Lord.  Since that time my faith has continued to be renewed and restored and with the exception of battling Adolf Von Grosse Schmertzen my very painful and very big Kidney Stone have come to feel like my old self for the first time since Iraq.

As I have entered Lent it has been a time of renewal.  Part of that renewal has been being able to believe again and as the Psalmist says, “be still and know that I am God.” This has been a refreshing time as I have continued to experience God’s grace as well as grown in my faith which is founded on the Anglican Triad of Scripture, Tradition and Reason.  That actually has helped me as I have experienced some measure of healing and recovery from what I experienced.

My time in Iraq was meaningful and I loved my Marines, Soldiers and other advisers as well as our Iraqi allies.  When I came back I felt alone and a lot of that came as my church had endured a series of scandals and splits and even before Iraq I had been thrashed by some of the people at the center of the storm who have all since left the church for other places that they can afflict.  Coming home to that was disillusioning, as isolation that I felt from many in the chaplain community.  I have found that my experience is not uncommon and that others have had similar experiences upon their return from Iraq.

For me this meant a period of almost two years where it seemed that God himself had disappeared from my life.  I struggled to even pray.  That is no longer the case, I seem to be on the rebound and God is real again.  So things have changed, I think that my faith has matured in some ways, I don’t need to go argue points of doctrine that saints, theologians and philosophers much smarter than me have legitimate disagreements about for centuries.  Nor do I need to push my views on people in my church or anywhere else as if I had the latest and last word from the Almighty.  I used to seek approval and want to have input on denominational theological or liturgical committees and I would write in the hope that my “brilliance” would be recognized and that my opinion would be sought after. When I write something now it is because I believe it and to stimulate interest and discussion and occasionally to answer or critique those who use faith as a weapon to bludgeon or intimidate those that they are against.  I do not expect to change anyone’s mind and since I have no position where I can enforce my beliefs on anyone else (nor would I want to thank you) my thoughts are simply that.  I hope that they edify and encourage and if someone has a “wow I could have had a V-8 moment” reading something that I write I’m okay with that.

Hans Kung once said: “Time and again we see leaders and members of religions incite aggression, fanaticism, hate, and xenophobia – even inspire and legitimate violent and bloody conflicts.” I guess to some this will sound “liberal” but I came back different from Iraq and I have seen too many people suffer from those that would use religion as a weapon to control others. In Iraq I had Iraqi officers; including Generals tell me that they did not trust their Islamic clergy Sunni or Shi’a because they by their words and actions had caused so much suffering during the insurgency that followed the US invasion of Iraq.  Unfortunately I am seeing the same kind of attitude that the Iraqi officers describe grow exponentially in this country, especially among the farthest right of the religious right. The use faith and religion to enforce their particular understanding of the Bible on people who are not Christians is troubling and something that our often very secular and not very Christian “Enlightenment” thinker founders understood. Some now declare anyone who doesn’t agree with them 100% as enemies not only of them, but of God and often over things that are not even Biblical like economics, gun control, taxes and a host of other conservative political issues. Now there are those on the far left that do the same thing but most do not use the Christian faith as justification for their intolerance of opposing views.  Somehow while I don’t think God sees things that way that the extremes see them I know that the Al Qaida Iraq, the Taliban and other groups think much in the same way.   However, such speech is protected and even if disagree with it would not support attempting to silence those who hold beliefs that I disagree with be they religious or political. Debate, dialogue and even disagreement on issues are important in both the Church and society in order that we don’t become a tyranny of the right or left, religious or secular.

As such my faith has grown in that I have no agenda other than to care for the people that God allows me to have contact with.  I’m certainly not perfect at this and at times my default setting of being an ass can re-emerge but I know that Christ is working in my life again.  I have emerged from what Saint John of the Cross called “the dark night of the soul.”  My faith is in God and in Christ crucified who in the words of St Paul who said “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.” (2 Cor 5:19 NRSV) I like what Chrysostom says about this passage: “For had it been His pleasure to require an account of the things we had transgressed in, we should all have perished….” The fact that God has condescended to reach out to his creation in this manner is evidenced also in 1 John 2:1-2 where the Apostle writes: “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for[the sins of the whole world.” For me this Lent is about reconciliation and the forgiveness of sins in an age where so many are drawing lines in the sand and preparing for war, be it religious, social or ideological.

So anyway, it has become more important to me after having gone to war and seeing its effects on people as well as having looked into the abyss of hopelessness to be an advocate for reconciliation, peace and hope for the future especially in my own country where the anger, division and even hatred between the political and religious right and the political, religious and secular left seems to rise to new heights every day.

My identity is not in a political leader, party or ideology, it is in Christ crucified. My optimism is based on him and the creation that he reconciles unto himself and I cannot give up hope or be silent about God’s love and reconciliation .  As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said: “The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.”

Peace,

Padre Steve+

2 Comments

Filed under faith, philosophy, Religion

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,