Fun with Facebook Part 1

So I have been having some fun with Facebook over the past year or so, and I'd like to share some of the fun that I've had. I've been inspired pretty strongly by both Ben Palmer and the excellent books from Ted L. Nancy.

This will be the first of many.

Can't we all just get along?

I've noticed a growing trend within Christianity in America that I find rather alarming. As is obvious, the church is split on many issues; gun control, the refugee crisis, homosexuality, stem cell research, etc. And while it seems as though most of the positions are either For or Against, there actually runs a whole spectrum on each issue with people all over the place.

This is understandable, as we all have different perspectives based upon our experiences, our backgrounds, and the way we're wired. This is normal and expected. The issue that I see, however, is rigid militant arrogance on both ends of the spectrum for most of these issues.

Understanding that everyone is an individual and thinks about things differently, for the sake of discussion, I'm looking at two groups which encompass a lot of the passionate, albeit brash, voices out there: Conservative Evangelicals and Progressive Christians. This is not to say that everyone who fits in one of these camps (myself fitting into one of them) holds this attitude, but this is where it is most prevalent. Also, I am considering both of these groups as people who are genuinely trying to follow Jesus the best way they know how.

From the Conservative Evangelicals you run into the "The Bible says it; I believe it; so that settles it." mindset. I think it's the "so that settles it" part that is harmful. This stance doesn't allow for alternate interpretations of the Bible. It discourages questioning the meaning and role of the text. The person with this mindset assumes that their view is THE correct view and they cannot be wrong, because it's what the Bible says; it's what they've been taught; it's how they grew up. To them, people who hold a different view don't take the Bible seriously; they don't have strong enough faith; (some say) they aren't believers at all.

On the Progressive Christian side, you see "I don't know how anyone can believe that anymore." This group doesn't necessarily feel like they have all the answers, but since they generally (anecdotally speaking) come from the Conservative Evangelical background, they believe they know that the Conservative Evangelicals are wrong. They know what they DON'T believe. While they won't directly say it, they'll insinuate that the other perspective is ill-informed, ignorant, or even stupid. They will make sarcastic remarks about the way "the other side" thinks. They vehemently lift up "the other" while at the same time "othering" Conservative Evangelicals.

I don't think this is the intent of either group, but it's there.  Don't believe me? Read the comments section on any blog about any divisive issue. I'd like to chalk this up to the impersonal nature of the internet, but it happens between people in the real world too. I am guilty of having made sarcastic remarks about peoples' beliefs that I disagree with. While I feel like I'm more cognizant of it now, I'm sure I have quite a way to go.

Where is the grace? How can we encourage one another to live with humility and empathy? How can we see eye to eye even though we disagree with each other? While it seems simple, trite, and maybe a bit naive, I really think that answer is Jesus.

"O come desire of nations bind in one the hearts of all mankind.
Oh, bid our sad divisions cease, and be Yourself our King of Peace."

Climbing through doubt

Throughout my camp years, one of my favorite things to do was work from 40 to 50 feet in the air on one of our high ropes courses.  Ropes courses are typically used for team building exercises, designed with what we call "elements" that are essentially obstacles to get through, either in a team or individually, with a debrief afterward to help you learn something.  A high ropes course takes this same idea and raises the stakes by placing the elements in the sky.

Participants of ropes courses, regardless of how confident they are, have to display an immense amount of trust. They have to trust the tower; that it was designed and maintained properly, and will function as it's supposed to.  They have to trust the leaders who monitor the entire process and let the participants know when to proceed.  They have to trust the belay team, who holds the rope that catches them if they fall.  They even have to trust the rope itself (literally their life line).  In my opinion, trust is the most important thing that happens at a high ropes course.

I've seen many people climb these courses, cross the elements, and descend on a zip line. While some people move pretty quickly and show little to no fear, others are terrified before they're even halfway up. The experiences I remember most are not the ones where athletic folks traversed the elements in record time, but the ones where people were scared, and I had to spend time sitting with them, listening to them, and guiding them through their emotions and toward their next move.  These are the people who have to display the most trust; the ones who are afraid...the ones who doubt.  They show their trust by climbing, through their fears and doubts.  I think that faith works the same way.  

Oftentimes we as a Church equate faith with belief. Many churches interpret Ephesians 2:8 as, "It is by grace that you have been saved through belief in Jesus..."  The health and prosperity churches teach that when our prayers are not answered, it is because we do not have enough faith, or we do not believe strongly enough in what we have asked for.  When we struggle with doubt or wrestle with questions about God, we often call it a "faith crisis".

While belief works correspondingly with faith, I don't think that "belief" is an adequate definition of "faith".  From my experience, "trust" defines "faith" much better than "belief" does.  I cannot decide to believe something, but I can decide to put my faith or trust into something.  Like the climbers who put their trust in their teammates and the equipment, Christians put their trust or faith in Jesus.  Belief is understanding the climbing process; faith is climbing.  Belief is believing that Jesus is real; faith is following him. Belief is a state of mind, where faith is an action.  So when James says "Faith without works is dead," that resonates with me, because I think that faith without works is impossible.

But belief does enter into the equation.  Like the experienced climbers, who strongly believe in the equipment, trust is easy for them. They believe the equipment will hold up.  They believe the belay team has their back.  So they can trust them and climb without worry.  Those who are scared, who doubt that the team will truly be able to take care of them, have to exhibit a much higher level of trust.  It is easy to trust with strong belief; it is hard to trust with fear and doubt.

As such, I think it's fair to say that it takes stronger faith to follow Jesus through fear and doubt than it does through confidence and assurance.  It takes commitment, and a faith that takes action when belief is uncertain shows stronger commitment than when everything is hunky dory.  A season of doubt then, should not be described as a "faith crisis" if you're still committed to following Jesus, but rather a "faith exercise".

Perhaps, it shows more faith for a terrified climber to make it halfway up the tower than a confident climber completing in in record time. Through time and experience though, that same fearful person may be able to climb just as high, but it has taken them much more faith and commitment to get to that level.  I think both ways are good, and both types of climbers should understand and encourage each other.  Regardless of our level of belief, may we all strive toward faith that is active, and me way help each other to keep climbing.

Golf carts, bridges, and leather chaps

It was the summer of 2004, and I was working at Timber Pointe Outdoor Center, a summer camp for kids and adults with disabilities and chronic illnesses outside Bloomington, IL.  Well, maybe it was 2003 or 2005; I can't remember for sure, but I remember how it happened, and I am going to tell the story so it doesn't get buried in the dusty archives of my memory. 


Whichever summer it was, I was a program staff that year.  I created and ran a music program, and with the rest of the program staff I planned and ran the large group activities.  Program staff have a few "perks" that counselors (those who take care of the campers) don't have.  We carried walkie talkies, we were not assigned campers, and we got to drive the golf carts.

These perks seem pretty sweet, but there are certainly some drawbacks.  While we had a blast blaring bad music and cracking"your mom" jokes toward our camp director over the walkie talkies, they also made us reachable 24-7, which was annoying at 2:30am when we had to deal with a bat in one of the girls' cabins.  Sometimes after sitting on them and inadvertantly pressing the talk button, a private conversation would be publicized (Fuzz).

Not being assigned campers was great, because when you're a counselor assigned campers, you're booked solid for your campers' entire waking hours, and as a program staff with no campers, you have more flexibility to take some of the day a bit more leisurely.  You also have the freedom to get to know ALL the campers, because they come to your activities, and you can float around to hang out with the campers you want to in down times.  The drawback of this flexibility, is that we were then available to do random work projects. These would consist of everything from helping with dishes in the kitchen to hammering loose nails on the waterfront deck to inventorying arts and craft supplies to clearing out trails with machetes.  The worst of these I remember is on the hottest day of the year, we had to power-wash our outdoor concrete basketball court.

The other program staff perk, driving the golf carts, really only had one drawback, and that is why I'm writing this.

We had at least four golf carts that year:  the Millenium Falcon, a gas powered cart that we rented for the summer, the Starship Enterprise, another rental, the Electric cart , which wasn't cool enough to have its own name and was usually only used by the nurses, and the Low Rider.  The Low Rider was our camp-owned battle-horse, and it had seen its better days.  After being beaten down by countless summers of abuse, wrecks, and jerry-rigged repairs, the Low Rider putt-putted through camp.  If you pressed lightly on the gas pedal, the Low Rider would move slowly in reverse, which we called "Moonwalking". 

The Low Rider had a solid rap sheet of camp shenanigans.  I believe it was the Low Rider that John, a camper we called "Cheeseburger", stepped onto when one of our staff left the key in, and drove it into the lake.  This was before my time, but the incident has lived on as legend.

Fuzz and Oller, a couple of our staff, were driving the Low Rider one day, while dragging a little red wagon, and randomly letting it go to see what it crashed into.  They accidentally ran it over after it didn't go where they thought it would.  The Low Rider banged up this wagon so bad, that they knew they couldn't return it, or risk throwing it away and have it be seen by the director. So they hung it on a tree in the woods and dubbed it "El Muerte".

El Muerte lives on at camp.

And it was the Low Rider that was the protagonist, let's say "anti-hero", of my story.  Those of us who drove the golf carts were...well...idiots.  That nobody died on one of those things is nothing short of a miracle.  We often drove the carts around an obstacle course that we made up on the trails.  The rules were simple.  Once you start, you push the accelerator to the floor and don't let up or hit the breaks until you've gotten all the way through.  Sometimes we would tag team this with the person in the passenger seat stepping on the gas pedal while the driver steered.

I don't remember the exact course, but we definitely went down a dip by the waterfront which gave us extra speed, wrapped around to Chapel Point, passed by the ropes course and threaded the needle while crossing The Bridge of Destiny, appropriately named, because you had about an inch or two on each side of the cart.  (We also had a Bridge of Death that the carts couldn't quite squeeze through.)

One such day, I was running water jugs to various locations with Lego (we had camp names, not strange parents) when we decided we would take a breather and drive through the obstacle course.  Nearing the end, Lego asked me if I would like to drive on the "Luigi Raceway", which was a level from Mariokart.  Sounded okay to me, so I kept the pedal floored.  Luigi Raceway turned out to be that concrete basketball court.  We swerved a 90 degree angle on the gravel to enter the court, then started looping around.  On a right turn, the bald driver side tires of the Low Rider decided they'd had enough contact with the ground and that they wanted nothing more to do with it.

The Low Rider flipped up onto its right side, driving for what seemed like a minute on two tires, but it must've been less than second. I was thrown from the cart, with both knees skidding across the ground, the concrete shredding apart the knees of my jeans and mincing the skin of my knees.  Lego landed on top of me, completely unscathed and free from injury.

We got up, assessed the situation, realized I was hurt, Lego wasn't, and the Low Rider may have been, but you couldn't really tell amongst all the other dings and dents. We flipped the golf cart right side up and drove to the med shed to get me cleaned up.  It was a slow time during Camp COCO, where I was cared for, not by the typical older camp nurses, but by the younger, more appealing to a 22-year-old, Oncology nurses, who were only there for the week.  Let's just say it hurt way worse than I let on.

Rabbit, our camp director heard about the injury and asked me what happened.  I told him the truth.  "I fell off the golf cart." Sure, I didn't mention the flooring it or flipping it, but I did fall off.  He had me fill out an incident/injury report just in case I were seriously injured it would be covered by workman's compensation.

Two or three days later, Rabbit came back to me with a blank incident report telling me I had to fill it out again. When I asked why he said, "Under 'What could have prevented this injury?' you wrote 'leather chaps'."


We continued the rest of the summer (and subsequent summers) to drive the obstacle course, although we refrained from driving the Luigi Raceway.  I think one thing that camp taught me is not to take myself too seriously.

Faggots, Bigots, and Heretics

I woke up this morning to a post on Facebook from my friend Matt, a staunch conservative.  I say "staunch conservative" because I'm pretty sure he would label himself as such; if I'm wrong, please correct me and I'll edit this.  Matt specifically tagged me, as he knows I am pretty much at the opposite end of the spectrum that he is, and I've had many Facebook "discussions" with him over the years, where it's been generally respectful despite our differences.  The post is below, with the other last names being omitted.

I've refrained until now about gay marriage. No longer.Gay marriage is a component of homosexuality. A component.The Bible says it is a sin in the old and new testament. Sin is sin. No one is greater than the other. "For we all sin and fall short of the glory of God." So to support gay marriage, again a component of homosexuality, is supporting sin. To support a pastor who will marry a same-sex marriage is also advocating for sin. To me, that means, you support most of the sins. Therefore making you an ineffective witness for Christ. ( Yes I have sinned. Yes I continue to do so. Unavoidable, I'm not Jesus Christ, or God, or the Holy Spirit. I am fallen. I am not the best witness either. I know that.)Love the person hate the sin. Absolutely. But Steven P N, Daniel Sutter, and Lacey C why do you support it?I agree we as humans can be forgiven, but to support a path of sin, really? Not to mention this is a blatant and strategic attack on Christianity and the first amendment. The law suits that are being up held against religious freedom. It's completely wrong and obvious.‪#‎onemanonewoman‬.

I used to engage in this type of online debate constantly, but over the past couple years, I've grown tired of it.  It can be emotionally and intellectually draining as well as extremely frustrating when someone can't understand your point of view, even though you spend an hour or more drafting your response.  Nobody will ever change their position based on these debates alone, and I consider it to generally be an exercise in futility.  I'm making an exception here, to give a genuine answer to what seems to be a genuine question.  I know I'm not going to change this friend's mind, but that's not my goal.  My goal is to help him understand why I think the way I do and also offer some guidance on ways we as Christians should act (or more importantly, not act) through these sweeping changes to our world regardless of where we land on the spectrum.

From here on out, I'm talking to and about Christians; everyone is welcome to read and chime in, but Matt's question is completely based around a Christian perspective (a perspective which I hold) and I want to speak to that. When talking about our stance on gay marriage, many people would have you believe that there are two stances to take; either you're for it or you're against it.  That's an oversimplification, and it prances around the underlying, until recently unspoken debate, which is "what do you think about homosexuality?"  And the follow-up to that, "how does what you think about homosexuality fit in with church orthodoxy?"

Regarding gay marriage, these are the points of view I have seen, and I have friends or acquaintances who hold to all of them.

Stance 1 - Homosexuality is a sin, and gay marriage should be illegal because of that.
Stance 2 - Homosexuality is a sin, but gay marriage should be legal because it's a civic institution, not religious.
Stance 3 - Homosexuality is not a sin, and gay marriage should be legal.
Stance 4 - I'm not sure if homosexuality is a sin; there seems to be some doubt among several Christians, but I'd rather be safe than sorry, so gay marriage should be illegal.
Stance 5 - I'm not sure if homosexuality is a sin; there seems to be some doubt among several Christians, and we've gotten things wrong before (i.e. slavery, flat-earth, misogyny) so I'd rather err on the side of grace; gay marriage should be legal.
Stance 6 - Don't know. Don't care.

I started off in Stance 6. I didn't know, and I didn't care.  Somehow, in my mind, I formed no opinion whatsoever.  I was involved in the musical theater, which has historically been an open and accepting place for LGBTQ folks, so I knew quite a few, but it never really came up to me.  It wasn't my issue.  My parents didn't teach me about it; I don't really remember my church talking about it.  I didn't even really think about it.  I was naive.

My naivete continued into college, where I started going to a youth group at a fairly conservative church.  Here I was introduced to the Bible as the authority.  What you need to know about anything, you can find it there.  The Bible says homosexuality is a sin, so it is, because the Bible is inerrant and authoritative, so we should hold to what it says.  As such, we should vote for the candidate who will fight against gay marriage, abortion, and...well, those are the only two that I remember; we talked about it during the height of an election year.  I believed it.  I knew that the people I was around were genuine, and they had good intentions.  So I took stance 1.  Homosexuality is a sin, and gay marriage should be illegal because of that.

This view was not something I came to on my own; I just believed what I was told.  Now, to clarify, I'm not bashing this group or what they believe; the onus was on me and my ignorance.  Overall this group was great for me and formed a solid foundation for understanding God and who he is, most importantly the concepts of Grace and Faith.

During the first year or two out of college, I started to think a bit differently.  This came about through a shifting of how I understood the Bible.  As I read and studied it, parts of it seemed to contrast with things I believed, contrast with itself, and contrast with how I understood Jesus.  For example, the Genesis story.  I still believed that God created the world, but I did not believe he did that in a literal seven days some 4,000 years ago.  I could not reconcile the genocidal God of the Old Testament with Jesus.  And I wasn't sure I believed that homosexuality was a sin.  (So I transitioned to stance 4 and then 5).

This led to a huge crisis for me, because so much of what I believed about God was based around what I believed about the Bible.  I wasn't confident enough at the time to claim I didn't believe these things.  As I talked about them, I considered them doubts I was struggling with, but in retrospect, they weren't doubts; they were beliefs.  And I was too afraid that I would be ostracized from the rest of the church if I believed that way.  How can I believe in Jesus, but not believe everything the Bible says?  Am I really a Christian?  This was a dark time for me.

I can't speak toward others who hold to an authoritative interpretation of the Bible, but for me, what I was doing was equating the Bible with God.  I was idolizing it.  But the Bible is not God, it's the word of God; Jesus is God...and the Word of God (and with God).  At that same time, I started reading books by several authors (the ones that impacted me most were Shane Claiborne, N.T. Wright, Rob Bell, and Tony Campolo) who didn't necessarily believe everything the Bible says is literal.  This began to give me some comfort. These people are following Jesus, but don't believe homosexuality is a sin (Campolo) and don't necessarily believe in hell as eternal conscious torment (Bell) or that Jesus came not for us to go to Heaven when we die, but to start his Kingdom here and now (Wright, Claiborne).  These people articulated so well what I was thinking and believing (especially Claiborne and Wright) that I was comforted to know that there were other followers of Christ who thought the way I did.

A few more years went by, life happened, my family moved around a lot, and we were looking for a new church after a move.  What we found has been life-changing.  We go to a church where I have learned that I am not alone.  Other people believe the same things I do about God and have the same questions about the Bible.  And not only that, but people who do not believe the same things I do still recognize that I'm a follower of Jesus, and we commune, worship, serve, and follow Jesus together, knowing that we disagree about a lot, but we agree about the most important thing.

Now, I am comfortable claiming that I land on stance 3.  I do not believe that homosexuality is a sin (and gay marriage should be legal.)  Knowing Jesus, having gay friends, and learning about the original language and context of the Bible has reinforced this.  I believe God would bless a committed monogamous marriage between two people regardless of what sex organs they have.

So, that's my journey. I've been at all but one of those stances.  I get it.  I know why you think the way you do.  So what are we to do?  Specifically those who believe homosexuality is a sin and those who believe it is not a sin.

I've seen three words used to debate for and against homosexuality, and they are NEVER helpful.  In addition to using these three words, we should avoid alluding to them.  They cause nothing but hurt, anger, and bitterness.

Faggot, Bigot, and Heretic.  

We obviously know "faggot" is an insult, a slur that should never be used; especially as the church.  People who agree with me, we should not call others "bigots" as most people who hold the opposing view are not. They are genuine in their understanding, and they didn't choose their stance, they learned it.  They just believe that way; maybe they will change some day as some of us did, maybe not.  People on the far right, don't call those of us who do not believe homosexuality is a sin "heretics".  We are still trying to follow Jesus as best as we know how, and this should be what unites us, not our differences.

The Sunday after the Supreme Court decision came down, we began at my church by singing together and then communing together.  Prior to taking communion, we recite the Apostle's Creed.  Despite our differences of opinion on homosexuality, the death penalty, war, method of baptism, we come together, worship together, and serve together, and that should be the response of the church.