Vote Genuine Biblical Values

Tomorrow is Election Day. Many people have already voted, and many will vote tomorrow. Many more, it is safe to say, are so disgusted by the political system that there is little or no desire to vote. I am pretty disgusted myself—disgusted by the poor choices we have in some races, disgusted by the candidates that are more concerned about degrading their opponents than in giving me a reason to vote for them, and particularly disgusted in the belief that fidelity to God and Country must be defined in strict partisan loyalty.

I write today as a Christian, a pastor, a voter, and an American who is concerned for the future of our nation. I vote according to my prayerfully and faithful understanding of Biblical values and I encourage you to prayerfully vote according to yours as well.  More importantly, I encourage all of us to hold everyone who will be elected to office tomorrow to be accountable to Biblical values, even when many of them have chosen not to manifest those values in their campaign.

            In Micah 3:5-12, the prophet denounces corrupt leaders who base their moral, ethical, and religious decisions in terms of how those decisions will best support their own individualistic gains. These leaders, the prophet boldly warns, will become clouded in their misapprehension of God’s truth that their effectiveness to lead and capacity to further corrupt the people will be destroyed by God.  Their God-given gifts of leadership, vision, and power will be mired in the rubbish of their self-centered and power-hungry motivations.

            As a result of the failed leadership and reckless abandonment of God’s values in exchange for selfish gain, the whole community—not simply the leadership—will succumb to the destruction of its shared moral failure and religious apostasy.

            It does not require much imagination to understand how this ancient prophetic vision can vividly play itself out in the United States. In fact, in its own way, the vast majority of the political messages we have been hearing is intended to remind us that if we, as faithful Christians and loyal citizens, do not vote the right way, our whole way of life is threatened.

            Given a message of such stark warning, combined with the barrage of negative rhetoric that has permeated this election cycle, it is easy to pinpoint all the moral degradation, evil inclination, and outright demonic values that threaten to destroy our nation. As Christians, we generally have no problem railing against those forces that run contrary to our faith. There is, however, another side to Micah’s prophetic message that we may be a little more reluctant to address. It is the side that faces a mirror!

            That other political party may be all wrong, but ours is not necessarily all right! The fact that that church understands biblical values differently from your church does not mean that either has all the answers or that either is going to hell for their misguided beliefs. Micah’s stark prophetic warning calls all of us—you and me—to take a hard look in the mirror and allow ourselves to stand honestly before God and challenge our own motives, morals, and values.

            The church has not always been right—even when it fervently believed it was living in accordance to God’s holy word.  Wars, poverty, starvation, inequality, injustice, slavery, hatred, and murder are all a part of the Church’s presumed “righteous” history. In virtually every such failure, the Church stumbled when personal gain, power, or profit was placed ahead of God’s ministry of justice, equality, and righteousness.

            I recall Joshua in his farewell address to the Hebrew People in Joshua 24:15 when he challenged with the bold words, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” I remember Moses in his farewell address in Deuteronomy 30:19-20 with the call to choose life by deliberately choosing to live out of God’s love. As Christians, when we go to the polls, ours is to make a choice of faith that will either reflect genuine Biblical values of God’s love, grace, and peace or secular idols that advance personal wealth, power, prestige, and control. What will you be choosing in the polls?

            What do you hope to gain by casting your vote this election? What do those seeking the loyalty of your vote hope to gain should they win this election? Who stands to truly benefit from any given outcome at the polls? What forces, institutions, and entities have the most to gain by investing their time, energy, and money into the election process? How will those values affect the common good of all?

            Yet our obligation to live a Biblical choice transcend voting. We then have a sacred responsibility to uphold that choice in the way we live in the world and in the way we uphold the political process from this point forward.

            In 1 Timothy the Bible calls on the faithful to hold true to the divine training and live according to the life they learned in Christ Jesus. It is faith lived out in “love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.” We must question our own motives, as well as those of the men and women running for office, as well as those already serving and those who will be serving following tomorrow’s election.

            None of these are easy questions to ask and undoubtedly, many reading this post will vehemently disagree on how they should be answered. Yet the sacred responsibility remains for all Christians. Do we support God and all of God’s love, or do we support the preservation of our own distinctive institutional, religious, or partisan values?

            As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord by choosing life in ways that enhances all life, and hold fast to the sacred teachings rooted in God’s love.

(Author’s Note: A version of this originally appeared in the Carlsbad Current Argus, Saturday, November 1, 2014) 

Praying for the Peace of Israel

            “I stand behind Israel!”

            “America must bless Israel!”

            “Our Salvation is Israel!”

            “I will never turn my back on Israel.”

            “Those who bless Israel will be blessed and those who curse Israel will be cursed.”

            In light of the ongoing war in Gaza statements like these are again making their rounds in the political and religious discourse of America. Although well-intended and passionately believed, statements such as these are also frighteningly dangerous and Biblically inaccurate. As a Christian, I find the dangerously destructive Zionist mentality to be one of the most perverse distortions of God’s Word in our modern culture. Before we place a Christian label on the violence destroying Israel and Palestine, perhaps some prayerful perspective is order.

1.     The modern nation of Israel is largely supported by the United States because of political convenience and nationalistic fear. The religious incorporation of supposedly biblical priorities for blessing Israel were developed out of political ideologies largely rooted in Cold War Era fears and nationalistic pride. Lest we find ourselves worshipping at the idol of political correctness and sacrificing to the false god of partisan priorities, blindly supporting Israel out of presumed religious priority is a dangerously destructive path.

2.     Israel presumes to be a democracy, and thus an important ally to the United States in the Middle East, but it operates as a quasi-apartheid government with token democratic leanings. Additionally, Israel is a secular State with diverse religious factions and traditions. Nothing in the modern structure or constitution of Israel is defensible as genuine fulfilment of Biblical priority, prophecy, or Divine providence.  

3.     Blessing Israel is very Biblical, but turning a blind eye to Israel’s atrocities is not. By virtue of blessing, it must be noted that the blessing God gave to Israel was that it would be a light to the nations, not a brutal military regime and nuclear power that creates absolute enmity with much of the world. Throughout the Bible God demanded that Israel live up to its blessing by promoting justice, mercy, equality, and positioning itself as a light to the nations. Sadly, for all its greatness, Israel also fails tremendously in living into God’s definition of blessing.

4.     Israel has a right to exist as a free, sovereign, and protected nation. This does not mean that Israel has the right to hold entire populations in permanent refugee status, forced into perpetual concentration camps, and oppressed to the point of desperation. Such disregard for human dignity and equality is not to be blessed.  

5.     Israel has a right to self-defense and is perfectly justified in wishing to end the evil and indiscriminate rocket attacks and terrorist activities of Hamas.  Yet, before bombing Gaza and further destroying the lives of innocent Palestinians as if they were all less than human, Israel need look into the mirror and see the atrocities it has committed for over a half-century: illegal occupation, extreme racist and classist segregation, unwarranted settlements, military brutality, economic persecution, and over a half-century of indiscriminant violence against the Palestinian people. Such history is not to be blessed.

6.     Hamas is wrong. Just as Israel is wrong in their history of apartheid-like abuses of the Palestinian people, Hamas is equally wrong for their indiscriminate provoking of Israel and through the brutality of terrorist attacks. It is as the old saying goes, “Two wrongs do not make a right.” Yet, until one side takes a new approach at transcending the violence and hatred by true repentance and righting the wrongs of the past, both sides will be locked in mutual self-destructive sin and violence. Such a catastrophic failure of God’s peace is not to be blessed.

7.     Peace in Israel will never come by a sword (or rocket, or RPG, or terrorist attack, or military incursion, or through the destruction of tunnels). Peace in Israel can only come through the people of Israel and the people of Palestine laying down their arms, repenting of their long-held hatred, and seeking the true and genuine humanity of both sides. Calls for the United States and Christians to bless the violence of warfare in “blessing” and “standing with” Israel is as destructive to genuine peace as are the terrorist activities of Hamas. It was Jesus Christ who said that those who chose to live by the sword will die by the sword. Therefore, the idea of peace through military destruction is not to be blessed.

            I do seek to bless Israel, just as my God commands and the Bible I love so clearly records. Let my blessing of Israel never be called into question! Yet, rather than ascribe to a populist pseudo-blessing that only fuels the unholy violence, further distorts the authenticity of Scripture, and assaults the very people God loves, my blessing is in the form of prayers for peace—a genuine and Godly peace—for the Holy Land. Prayers that Israel stop conducting business as the regional bully and start living the blessing called for in scripture. I pray for the day when Israel may repent of its sins, truly live the sacred covenant of scripture, and finally become a light to the nations.

Quite frankly, this is a bitter and difficult path to take. A half-century of brutality is not erased overnight. Centuries of animosity, hatred, and mistrust do not evaporate quickly. Yet the peace of Israel is worth working for; worth praying for; worth sacrificing for. Now is the time to work and pray for the true Peace of Israel! 

Reflections on Racism, Immigration, America, and Christian Faith

                Many years ago I was having a conversation with my supervisor. She was sharing with me her personal story of living in a very racist community that had absolutely no tolerance for anyone who was not white. Her employment brought her and her young son to live in that community but it proved to be a major mistake. She could not truly live. Every day she was assaulted with racial statements, denied service at restaurants or the grocery store, and her son, the only black child in entire school, was the victim of rampant bullying and hateful discrimination. After about a year, she requested an emergency transfer under hardship circumstances and was quickly moved to a new community and workplace. This is where I came to work for her.

                Upon hearing her story of being victimized by such blatant racism, I was shocked as I tried to conceptualize what that must have been like. It was—and still is—so far beyond anything that I have personally experienced, that could not really come to terms with how to empathize with her ordeal. So, in my ignorance, I told her that it must be a real blessing to live where we did so that she did not have to put up with racist people.

                She slammed her fist down on the counter and angrily challenged me, “Are you kidding me?” In shock, I just stood there wondering what I had said to offend her. She then went on to say that she was glad to be away from that other community, but nothing would change the fact that she was black and there were people who looked down on her for that reason. The only difference, she went on to say, was that those people in the other town knew they were racist and were at least honest about it. They hated her and everyone agreed on that fact. What angered her was that where she and I lived and worked, she found the racists were too ignorant to know that they were racist, too caught up in their own selfish worldview to see their own hatred, too shallow to realize how two-faced they really were. She went on to say how people would treat her with false respect, and then speak horribly about her behind her back. She shared with me what it was like to be followed relentlessly in a store because everyone just knew a black woman was there to steal, not buy. “It’s one thing to be racist and know it, even be proud of it, but I hate the most,” she said, “is those ignorant fools who are too blind to see their own hatred.” We continued to talk and I learned a lot about the clandestine aspect of racism and how much of society allowed institutional support of this sin in ways which made it easy for the rest of us to ignorantly believe we were doing nothing wrong. Essentially, we allowed our institutions do the sinning for us so it was easy to absolve ourselves of persona accountability.

                It was a lesson I learned over 20 years ago, and one that has never left me. Yet, in light of the present culture of incivility and outright hatred frequently expressed in the public sphere, as well as across much of Social Media, it is a lesson that needs to be taught. A South African Bishop and Pastor named Peter Storey once noted that the challenges he faced as a South African Pastor preaching against Apartheid was far greater than those challenges facing American Clergy facing the culture of American Nationalism. His point was that Christian and Biblical values had become so convoluted in the political and nationalistic fervor of patriotic priority that the task of preaching God’s justice and mercy was overshadowed by what he called the “red, white, and blue myth.”

                Those are strong words. In fact, they offend me. They cut to my heart the same way my supervisor’s condemnation cut me over 20 years ago. Then, I was forced to examine my own heart and see what racist beliefs, attitudes, and prejudices were secretly influencing my life. I found them and they offended me. Likewise, the myth of the red, white, and blue challenges me to look at the bigger picture of what is best for the world—God’s whole earthly creation—and step back from the arrogant and self-serving assumption that America deserves my absolute priority. Or, more to the point, my own political leanings deserve priority.

                The refugee crisis currently facing the nation more fully and completely brings this principle to mind. I have co-written a faith statement with several other brothers and sisters in the ministry that calls for a compassionate and just handling of the refugees from Central America that have been relocated to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Artesia, New Mexico. http://faithnurtureandchallenge.blogspot.com/2014/07/ecumenical-faith-statement-on.html) Some of the reaction I have received has been positive and affirming. Yet, some is not. Various arguments have been raised that generally point to same basic ideas. They have no right to be here because they broke the law and have no intention of contributing to our great nation, only draining from it and becoming the gangster thugs that are ruining our country. Besides that, if we can’t care for our Veterans and homeless, they certainly don’t deserve support. In very basic terms, they are not wanted here, not now, not ever! Yet, I have to ask, “Is that what America truly stands for? Is that how Christ would truly have us respond to such a humanitarian crisis?”

                Somewhere between the blatant racism my supervisor experienced so many years ago and the ignorant racism she experience when we worked together lies the very challenge we face today. Somewhere between the horrific conditions of what was Apartheid and the myth of the red, white, and blue, lies a stark reality that many of us are not truly addressing. Somewhere between creating an impenetrable border with massive walls and protective machine guns and opening our borders for anyone to come and go as they please, there is a better way—an American way, a Godly way! It is a way that places fear not in the person whom we do not know or understand, but places our trust in God. It is a way that recognizes that we can be stronger by working for a common good rather than simply asserting what’s perceived as being best for our little world. It is a way that balances compassion with discipline, grace with legalism, and love with restrictions.

                I do not pretend to have all the answers, nor do I assume that I fully understand the very complicated immigration system. I do know this. As a nation, if we allow ourselves to be ruled by fear, hatred, anger, and division, we will reap greater proportions of all those things. In regions such as Iraq, Syria, Israel, Afghanistan, and Libya, where war or the pestilence of ungodly violence is destroying whole societies, the fuel is fear, hatred, anger, and division—each faction seeking absolutist means to assert its sovereign control over those other factions that understand the world differently. Is this the path that we wish to take? Truly, such violence is not the way of Jesus Christ.

                Truly, I believe most Americans are good-hearted, honest, and God-fearing people. We may be, to some degree, guilty of ignorantly allowing our institutions—our government, our churches, our corporations, our media—do our sinning for us as we blindly pat ourselves on the back for being good people. Yet, there is a better way, a holy way, a Christian way, even a truly American way. It is time that we set aside our petty political posturing and raucous religious rhetoric. Jesus Christ was not an American or a Christian. On earth he was a Palestinian Jew living under Roman occupation. He did not transform the world by taking control over those in opposition to him, he transformed the world through loving sacrifice. It is time that we take on the law of love, and forgo the laws of hatred that are permeating our culture. It is time for those who proclaim Christ to live his love! 

Peter Storey quoted from "Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals" Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, & Enuma Okoro, Published by Zondervan Press, (c) 2010, Reading for July 16, Page 361.