On Gay Boy Scouts & My Christian Faith

Posted on by jbyas

As the Boy Scouts just decided to allow gay scouts but will still keep the ban on gay scout leaders, first of all, let me just say it takes guts to make a decision that doesn’t fully satisfy the desires of either side.

I know that many of my fellow Christians will immediately begin their ban on Boy Scouts for approving of such blatantly sinful behavior.

But let me say, regardless of your position on the sinfulness of gay sex: until the Boy Scouts of America ban every boy who openly sins, this is the most Christian decision they could have made. That is, if standing for justice and fairness is included in what it means to be Christian. If not, well then, I am not sure I want to be one.

And then there is that nagging question: why does someone sins disallow them to belong to a group?

Ironically, in the same chapter of Leviticus Christians use to show that homosexuality is an “abomination” to God, we have this: “When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt.” (Lev. 19:33-34)

Even those idol-worshiping (<–that’s a sin condemned hundreds of times throughout the Bible by the way) foreigners were to be loved as though they were God’s chosen people. If you are so convinced that the Boy Scouts are a Christian organization who should live by Christian principles, then perhaps we should acknowledge them as “aliens living with us.” We do not kick them out. We do not go find a new land. We live among them and love them as ourselves.

To be honest, I am typically embarrassed to admit how much time I spent as Boy Scout, doing those, let’s admit it, somewhat dorky things we Scouts did. But today, I am proud to be a Boy Scout and am proud that their Christian foundations led them to this decision.

Creating with the Creator

Posted on by jbyas

I have been wrestling with what it means for God to be Creator. According to my reading of Genesis, this does not mean that God creates something out of nothing but that he creates order out of chaos, beauty out of ashes. Creativity, in this sense, is redemption.

So, what does it mean to be created in this God’s likeness? Perhaps, yes perhaps, it means we were born to create. And perhaps being creative is deeper than just being good at art. Maybe creation is about redemption, taking ashes and making something new.

There are two lies I hear often enough that I must consciously refuse them:

First, that we are not all creative. As a Christian, I cannot believe this. We are creative if we are human because we bear the image of the Creator. We are creative if we take pain and create joy, take material loss and create relational abundance. Of course, this is what art does. It takes a mess of paints, canvases, personal stories, and creates beautiful portraits. It takes strings, words, heartbreak or triumph, feelings and fingers, and creates music.

Second, being creative is a waste of time. Perhaps, yes, in a cultural narrative obsessed with efficiency, productivity, and the bottom line, being creative is a waste of time. But that is a narrative in which people are workers for profit and working for men, not co-creators. But if God is the Creator, then we are workers for redemption and working for the Creator. If we are working for money and out of fear, then yes. But if we are working for relationships and redemption, then there is nothing more fruitful to be done with our time than to be creative.

It is no accident that both the Exodus and the promise of return from exile are filled with creation language, reminiscent of Genesis’ account of chaos, power, order, and beauty. There is a deep connection between Creation & Redemption, Creator & Redeemer.

I do not want to live in a story where being creative is a waste of time and where we are not all creative. And if part of God’s task is, in every generation, to subvert dehumanizing narratives, those among us who own their creativity might have a few things to teach the rest of us who only reluctantly, and uneasily, admit the image we bear.

The Violence of Understanding

Posted on by jbyas

One hangover our culture has from modernity is the belief that the only way to achieve positive things in the world is by having an accurate view of the way things really are.* It seems like our churches, educational systems, and even the worldview of the so-called New Atheists all rely on this image of thought. Again, I find it ironic that Church Leaders and the New Atheists seem to obey the same logic.

To put it in Zizek terms, understanding the world as it really is, is the fundamental objet petit a, the “if only,” of American life. With a commitment to the view that “if only we understood as it really is,” the world would be better, comes “the world won’t be a better place until we reach the top of the mountain of understanding.”

This seems to be why New Atheists are so angry at religion. Religious people’s faulty understanding is keeping us from a better world. But that presupposition privileges the solution in a way that doesn’t seem warranted, cutting off all possibilities to see the multiplicity of solutions that are by-products of the process itself. It makes understanding some sort of savior.

This is why we privilege truth, as though it, and only it, will lead us to freedom. But propositions necessarily always and already inhere within the mind only. It is poor logic to assume that just because we understand the world, that something happens to make that world a better place. That is, there is an assumed mechanism between the truth of a proposition and a corresponding reality, one that has ethical implications. It’s like putting a quarter in a vending machine. The proposition is the quarter. The getting what “is best” (in reality, what we want or think is best) is the product that comes out of the vending machine, “in real life.” But where is the button? And where is the finger that pushes the button? People often assume that a propositional statement has within itself this mechanism, that it is the quarter, and the button, and the finger, and the relation, all in itself.

But that has not proven to be the case. Instead, our understanding is an insatiable appetite, a quest for control that limited human beings will never conquer.

So my, along with many others, modest request is that we must abandon the project of understanding the world as it really is, a violent project by definition, and begin to relate ourselves to the world, so that understanding is subject to a higher goal, that of the relation. The most important thing we can do as humans is not understand the world, but relate to it.

What do you think?

*Warning: heavy philosophy language. I am working at being less critical and more constructive. But in so doing, I have to go through the process of working it all out in philosophy-land before I begin translating it into everyday-speak. These ideas will show up again again but hopefully they will be more and more clear as I process. Thanks for bearing with me!

Help for the Bohannon’s

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I studied at Westminster Seminary with Steve Bohannon. We were there during a pretty polarizing time with people taking sides and politics superseding friendships at every turn. Steve, on the other hand, was incredibly generous and gracious, even to those with whom he disagreed. He was always an attentive listener and quick to lend a hand.

But what amazed me more, was how he still lived out these things in the midst of a tough situation at the Seminary and an even tougher situation at home. His wife had been battling brain cancer. Since 2009 April Bohannon has had 4 occurrences and has defied the odds and beaten them all. She was just diagnosed with another occurrence and plans to beat it again, but they need our help. Their insurance doesn’t fully cover the procedure she needed and now they have medical bills they can’t pay.

Many of us who know Steve & April, including my friend Peter Enns, are doing what we can to support them through this time. If you’ve been looking for ways to help fellow Christians or just fellow human beings, I hope you’ll consider it as well. Just go to the link below, read more about their story, and donate if you can. Thank you all and I hope to get back to writing soon!

http://www.youcaring.com/medical-fundraiser/help-for-the-bohannons/59279

The Christian Workarounds

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In my work as a communications adviser, one of my primary tasks is to help people let go of their workarounds. Sure, it takes 10 extra steps, 3 more documents, and 1 sacrificed squirrel to get it done – but it’s what they know, it’s comfortable, and change is scary. I totally get it. I hate change too.

What I recognized early on as a pastor is that Christians have these workarounds too. At a “book study” one night at my house going through whatever popular Christian Living book we were using at the time, a new Christian asked: “Is it really this hard to be a good Christian?” She was referring to all the “simple steps” articulated in the book. Why does being a “good Christian” take reading all these books?

I had had enough. I looked at my group and said, in my overly brash/arrogant early 20s way, “No. It’s not that difficult to understand. Jesus says, “Love your neighbor. Defend the poor. Give up all you own.” But that’s terrifying. It requires actual sacrifice. So Christians in America have spent the last 50 years developing dozens of workarounds, ways to be “good Christians” without actually having to do the hard things Jesus talks about.”

Was I arrogant? yes. Was I wrong? I don’t think so.

As Kierkegaard says, “Being alone with God’s Word is a dangerous matter. Of course, you can always find ways to defend yourself against it: Take the Bible, lock your door – but then get out ten dictionaries and twenty-five commentaries. Then you can read it just as calmly and coolly as you read newspaper advertising. Can’t we be honest for once! It is only all too easy to understand the requirements contained in God’s Word. The most ignorant, poor creature cannot honestly deny being able to understand God’s requirements. But it is tough on the flesh to will to understand it and to then act accordingly. Herein lies the problem. It is not a question of interpretation, but action.” – For Self-Examination & Judge For Yourself 26–35

Some of us evangelicals have more of an academic bent, so we tend to create workarounds that involve defending esoteric doctrines that no one has ever heard of. Others of us evangelicals have more of a contemplative or pragmatic bent, so we tend to create workarounds that involve those aspects of our lives.

Are these bad practices in themselves? Probably not. As always, it’s about the heart.

Why do we defend doctrine rather than the poor? Why do we grow in learning to be kinder and more patient but not growing into solidarity with people who make us uncomfortable? Because the former increases our comfort and control while the latter decreases our comfort and control.

But to admit that we just don’t know how to love well would be devastating, our fragile egos often cannot handle it. So, we create a workaround. We create a new system where Jesus doesn’t really mean what he says and where defending doctrine is a wonderful substitute for defending the poor. All the reward without any of the sacrifice.

It’s like the Christian version of the diet pill, putting money in the manufacturers’ pockets & helping people find a solution for their dilemma of wanting to change without the pain that change causes. Sounds like a win-win. Is that bad? I am not interested in right or wrong, good or bad. I’m just saying that if we want to be like Jesus, increasing comfort and control doesn’t seem to be a good tactic. There is no Resurrection Sunday without the Death of Good Friday.

My Father

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A Short & Personal Parable*

The One

There was a boy who loved his father. He loved him so much and wanted to be just like him. Not only was the father all powerful, all wise, and all good, at least in the eyes of the boy, but the father always told the son what to do and the best decisions to make. The boy had a wonderful childhood. Anytime he came to a tough decision he simply ran to his father, who hugged him tightly, and told him exactly which road to take. The boy was so comforted knowing that it was not his decision but his father’s. He was glad to give up the responsibility for his life, placing it in the hands of someone who knew so much better. When the boy was a man, his father became ill. And fear struck. I am lost without my father. I cannot make a single decision without his clear direction. And in that moment came the most devastating revelation: he was nothing like the father. He was neither wise, nor good, nor powerful. The father recovered, but the son never did.

The Other

There was another boy who loved his father. He loved him so much and wanted to be just like him. The father was all powerful, all wise, and all good, at least in the eyes of the boy, but it was often frustrating to be the son. It was difficult to understand why his father acted in the ways that he did. When the son would ask (I admit, sometimes he demanded) for the best path to take, the father would most often shrug his shoulders and simply say “I am with you always, even to the end of the age” while pointing to a particular book on the shelf that the father had written many years before. It was an autobiography of the tallest order.

Time and time again the boy would come to him with a decision to make, a crossroads in life and the father would simply say “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” How arrogant. How frustrating. This was such a different world than the world in the book. “I don’t want to know how my father acted, so long ago. I want to know right now what I should do,” the boy would often say.

After reading the letter over and over again, searching for the answer to the question that lay before him, the son would slam it shut in disgust and say, “I guess I will just have to make my own decision.” And so he did.

When the boy was a man, his father became ill. And he asked his father, “Before you die, I need to know one thing. Why did you never tell me what to do? Why did you never give me a clear answer to my questions? Why did you give me nothing when I most needed your direction?”

His father replied, “Any father who gives his son the answers robs him of the gift of the struggle. There is no one who becomes strong physically by having someone lift weights on his behalf. To desire to be like me without desiring to suffer is a contradiction. It cannot be done. Forcing you to take responsibility for your own life is the spiritual exercise required to be like me.”

The son thought, and said, “But why risk it? I could have made all the wrong decisions!”

The father chided the son, “Did you not read the book? Do you not remember who your father is? You have a father who will always be with you, even to the end of the age. The balance between Love and Power does not stop you from making mistakes, it redeems them.”

It was then that the son understood. And resentment melted away and was replaced by inestimable gratitude. And the father remained with the son, even to the end of the age.

Sunday School Observations*

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I teach Old Testament at a university. My kids are now old enough to be in Sunday School on Sunday mornings. Add those two things to my own years of experience being a kid in Sunday School and I have noticed a few things about the Sunday School system that worry me (as I have experienced it in my own evangelical tradition). Specifically, there are three common themes I see in many Sunday Schools that seem to give kids a distorted view of the Bible and the Christian faith, a view they carry with them through college and into life. I will call these The Noah’s Ark Problem, The Goody Two-Shoes Problem, and The Disney Problem. Now, perhaps I am overreacting (it’s my job as a parent and perennial over-analyzer). Or perhaps I am just reading things wrongly. But perhaps I am not doing either.

The Noah’s Ark Problem

One of the more disturbing things about Sunday School is that it teaches kids to view Bible stories in a way they were never intended. If left to many Sunday Schools, my kids are going to grow up thinking Noah’s Ark is about cute animals getting on a boat made by Fisher Price. We always seem to leave out the whole ” torturous death by drowning to all living things as a judgment for humanity’s utter wickedness” punchline. In fact, we just change the punchline to be about a rainbow and how God keeps his promises. Considering much of the Old Testament is filled with sex, violence, and concepts difficult for kids to grasp, I am not sure how much of it is suitable for teaching to kids in a group setting. But we do anyway. And in our attempts, we inevitably water it down to the point where our kids leave thinking the Bible is like a fairy tale or Aesop’s Fables. And when we do, not only do our kids grow up missing out on what’s really going on in the story, but we teach them to read the Bible as an edited collection of stand-alone moral stories, looking for that story’s “valuable lesson” to me, rather than teaching them the entire story so that they find themselves in its ebb and flow, context and all.

The Goody Two-Shoes Problem

When I was a kid, the point of Sunday School seemed to be to teach me how to be a polite American citizen who doesn’t cause trouble. The lessons were all geared toward my behavior: “Jesus wants you to be happy. And to be happy you need to be nice to your sister, clean your room for your parents, and register to vote (<–that’s hyperbole for dramatic effect).” There was no emphasis on how strange the Bible can be or how counter-cultural it shows Israel and God to be. We never focused on Israel or how Jesus was related to that story. And no mention that sometimes God wants us to be troublemakers by standing up to authority and our culture. No, the lessons were all about me. And more specifically, they were about me being good. Well, I don’t want my kids to just be polite. I want them to be wise and courageous. I want them to learn to think for themselves and be confrontational when such is called for. I don’t want them to be good. I want them to be faithful. And I don’t think those are at all the same thing.

The Disney Problem

This is probably the thing that makes me cringe most when I hear Sunday School lessons. They often focus on external cultural influences rather than how culture is internally influencing my kid’s identity, goals, dreams, and expectations. How many Sunday School teachers advise their children not to watch certain Disney movies because they objectify women and portray the object of life as finding your soul-mate? I have never heard of it. But I have often heard that my kids need to steer clear of listening to lyrics with bad words or watching movies that portray violence. Now, perhaps both aren’t advisable for impressionable young kids. But for our family, Sarah and I have decided that we will screen our movies based primarily on how it presents what we should aspire for and how it presents the roles of women and men.

I am much more concerned that my boys learn that love does not end after 10 minutes of emotionally charged music when the credits roll, that there is more to life than women, and that their princess doesn’t need to look like a Barbie doll than I am that they hear a few shit’s or damn it’s. Those aren’t shaping my kids identity, just their vocabulary.

I see this in my college students all the time. They strive so hard to be non-confrontational, to behave in the right Christian ways, to not say curse words. But it’s not until we discuss cultural influences that they begin to see how much the movies they watch and the music they listen to influences something much deeper than silly curse words. They shape the overall trajectory of their life, the things they desire and believe will lead to a happy life, the things they strive for and the things they try to avoid. I recommend Rated R Braveheart over Rated PG-13 “Insert Almost Every Romantic Comedy Here” any day.

What would I do differently? I have no idea. And I do not blame Sunday School teachers. I was blessed by many wonderful teachers as a kid. They have inherited it from others. And others before them. I have volunteered in the past to teach large group at my son’s Wednesday night church group and recently volunteered to teach my son’s Sunday School class. Did I or will I do things differently? I hope so. My only hint for how to move forward is that perhaps Pete Enns is right, we need to spend our time focusing on the life of Jesus so that when they are older, they are anchored in the person and work of Jesus rather than a list of moral stories. Sounds like a good first step to me.