Practicum Part 3

I knew it would come.  I think I have my resolution.  It came today in what I can only describe as a moment of spiritual revelation.  As usual, this will not translate into words very well.  But I'm documenting it anyway.

A new person started at work this week and guess what?  Yep.  Not married, but I have it on good authority.  It will be a hard road working amongst these rough field guys, and doubly so because he was sort of foisted on to them by a management decision.  I'm pretty sure this detail of his personality hasn't, shall we say...come out.

So today as I was leaving I had a desire to reach out and be friendly, even though this person doesn't work for or with me.  It was simply an offhand greeting with a little more friendliness than perhaps is typical.  Simple, but a reaching out nonetheless.  It stems from a desire to be Christ-like to others.  Caring for widows, orphans, and foreigners.

So then on the way home it hit me that I had a desire to reach out simply because he was an outsider and I understand how that could be hard.  Then from somewhere deep it flooded over me that it is wrong to create difficulty for people.  Not just wrong here, but wrong in my conundrum about marriage.  How could I imitate Jesus who didn't "break a bruised reed" if I was at all harsh or declarative about things I believe.  I would never do anything toward this person but show them respect and kindness, regardless of their situation, so it should be the same for everyone.

It wasn't an intellectual understanding.  It was less clear and more full.  Full of emotion and rightness, so I knew I had my answer.  Even this blog over this topic may be too much for people who don't at all understand where I'm coming from and I debated deleting these posts.  But then I thought it may serve more good to leave them as they stand in case someone stuggling with a similar issue may stumble across (or be guided to) them.  Perhaps it will be helpful.  Or maybe it could help someone who has been mistreated understand those who have been hurtful.  Plus, like Paul, if I must boast, let me boast in my failings because in them Jesus is shown to be who he is: the fullest revelation of God and the perfection of humanity.

So if my recent blogs have confused or estranged anyone in my seeming judgementalism, I sincerely apologize.  I ask that you come to know me before you judge me, just as you want others to do for you.  This was not about hatred or politics.  It has been a true chronicle of one person's struggle to deal with a surprising reaction in myself.

While I have not at all changed my beliefs on it all, you can be certain that I will not force them upon anyone or treat anyone wrongly because of my issues, God help me.

I am a complex and growing person, just like everyone else and we all have our issues that God is perfecting in due time.  I will aid this in myself and in others if I can.  But it is in his hands, not mine.  And where I am unsure or where my issues rub up against yours, I will try my best to not make things more difficult.

Practicum Part 2

I was going to do this as a comment on the last post to keep them together, but it kept expanding of it's own will, so I decided to make it a new entry.  Please read the first before this one so it makes sense.

I reread Daniel's story with Darius.  I also looked up some other opinions.  I don't have anything clear yet, but it seems less hazy than last night.  I noted in Daniel's story that he didn't make a public stance.  He simply continued doing what he was doing, regardless of the law.  Similarly, in the early Christian statue salute thing, they were being asked to actively go against what they believed.  In neither case were they concerned with what other people did.  I'm currently not being asked to directly contradict any belief.  It could come to that, but I'm not there yet.

Secondly, I don't feel a need to call out other misuse of marriage such as divorce, infidelity, or unmarried partnering.  It's just this one that sticks on me for some reason.  As I said before, it has nothing to do with politics, fear, or unreasonable condemnation of homosexuality.  So if must be rooted in my view of marriage, which I hold in high regard, higher than many others I know. 

Marriage for me is a deeply spiritual and personal giving of oneself to a relationship of three complimentary parts.  That is the male protective, aggressive, providential.  The female nuturing, generative, healing.  And God, the spirit, vitality, goodness.  It participates in some mystical way with the unity of the Father, Son, and Spirit.  It is not something that can be lightly entered into nor something that can be undone.  Truly, when I committed to my wife it was a permanent bond for me.  I didn't go looking for a wife.  It just happened.  Honestly, I took this so seriously, that I didn't give myself to anyone before her, and when I did, that was what made us married.  No ceremony, no law.  It was the giving of my soul and body to be bound to hers. 

Because of this, it hurts me when I see people throw that bond away, especially lightly.  So I guess the issue is that marriage as I understand it, is not possible in a same-sex couple.  It compounds the wrong.  Not only is there sexual confusion, now there's relational confusion.  But I don't feel a need to call others out about it.  So I shouldn't here either.

But I am clear that I cannot accept it as valid in the same way as my marriage.  can the two love each other and care for each other for a lifetime?  Sure.  Is there good in a committed same-sex relationship over a casual one?  Yes.  Can it be better than many hetero marriages?  Yes again!  But I firmly believe that the best highest way of things is not possible in this kind of relation and calling it a marriage just makes an inferior form seem equal to the greater. Kind of like when someone can't appreciate the difference in a fine tea and a cheap one.  Or tries to replace kids with pets.  Or more accurately, can't distinguish a truly saintly attitude from a selfishly motivated philanthropy.  Perhaps that is what bothers me most about it.  It's an attempt to steal a word from me, but then again, perhaps it is already stolen and I just haven't seen it.

So I have no clear answer on this.  And perhaps I won't find one categorical right answer.  Much like food sacrificed to idols in the New Testament.  James said Christians should stay away from it, but Paul said as Christians, we are free from those constraints of perception to live in reality, and the fact that someone said it was consecrated to a fiction didn't change the reality.

Practicum

It was going to happen sooner or later.  I had no idea how I was going to respond to it and I'm finding it harder than I thought.  I'm talking about same-sex marriage.  So this is an attempt to sort my own thoughts.  As always, it's raw, so tune out now if you're going to be offended.

By way of background, I do not ascribe to any ideas that confuse politics with sexuality or faith.  I believe that people are free to make choices.  Some choices are good for us, others aren't.  Some are right, others aren't.  Regarding homosexuality, I frankly don't want to hear about your orientation any more than I want to hear about your latest sexual exploits.  I don't define people by what they do with their *&@$#.  That extends to any acts.

But I am not blind.  It is obviously a mark of identity for some people.  I have personal friends on both sides of this line (out and proud, and discreet).  But it is only one aspect of their personality.  I don't define my friendships based on who is honest at work, who has been divorced, who has had sex outside of marriage, who is habitually confrontational, or who does *&^@ with %$^&.  Get my point here?

But as a Christian, I do not believe it is a good choice or a healthy choice.  Though, it's no different to me than cheating on a test or eating junk food.  So I'm not in your face about it, ask me and I'll tell you.  Otherwise, it's not an issue.  (aside: some will say it is not a choice.  I know the argument and don't agree for many well-thought out reasons that I don't want to go into for sake of space.  I've blogged about them before, so look them up if that's your beef.)

So that said, now I am being forced to recognize it in a way I am not comfortable with.  Where you were previously just Joe and Tom.  Now you're Tom's husband Joe.  Somehow to me, this terminology seems I am being forced to be complicit with a wrong, like Daniel being forbidden to pray to anyone but Darius.  I wouldn't introduce you to my drug-addict friend Eddy or my stripper friend Pixie.  That may be who they are, but I'm not defining them by it.  Do you see what I mean here?

I don't even truly have a problem with same-sex people cohabitating and receiving benefits given to married couples.  But to call it marriage is the problem.  I'd have rather seen them take the civil part out of marriage.  Abolish it before the law in favor of civil unions for all.  Then marriage remains a religious or social institution that I can recognize or not as my faith and liking allow.  But now the law of the land says I have to call it marriage.  I can refuse and could lose a job, friendships, or worse in the future.  But is this worth it?  Is this the line in the sand that I go to the lions for?

Many Christians may avoid this problem by simply avoiding and cutting off any such ties.  This seems the monastery approach.  Just pull away from society.  The other option is to go with the culture and moralize around it.  But if this is something I have no Godly wiggle room on, then by doing so I am one of the lukewarm, the goats amongst the sheep, the Israelites who continually turned to foreign gods.  I'd love to do one or the other, since it would save a lot of headache for me, but that's just not how I work.

So now the choice is immanent before me.  For the first time, two people walked into a group that I operate and introduced themselves as wives.  Ok, so what?  Just ignore it and treat them like anyone else.  I did, and will.  I will always be respectful.  But this creates a potential problem for me since I have people in that group who sit on both sides of the issue.  I lead it, so I set the tone for how it works.  I plan to simply not make it a thing, remain officially silent on it.  But what do I do if I set up an event at one party's premises and the other party shows up?  Recipe for disaster with me as the main blamed ingredient.

So I can grow a set and take the heat from whichever side or both.  But I have to know where I stand to do that, even if my stance is a third one from the perceived dichotomy.  I just don't know what it IS yet.  And that's the problem.

All in all, I trust it will work out.  I just need to walk in faith that the resolution is already planned, I just haven't gotten there yet.  Thankfully, this is a relatively easy test case, since it will be far harder when, say, an employee has a same-sex spouse.  Then it really hits the fan.  Since I work in government, I don't have the same choices private businesses do.  Do I stand my ground at that point and trust I'm acting rightly?  Or do I not have to do that?  What is acting rightly, even?  I simply don't want to call a man the husband of another man or a woman the wife of another woman.  That's all it is really.  But this is no different than Daniel.  Couldn't he have just prayed silently with no outward signs for a month?  It's a shading of the line in both directions.  Many early Christians were said to have lost their faith when they made the customary respectful gestures to the Roman god statues in a store.  This seems the same thing.

I really don't know what to do yet.  In my heart, I don't want to hurt anyone or drive them away from God.  My life has been built on helping the unhelped.  Living what I believe.  Seeking the one lost sheep.  Is the controversy I perceive a function of my legalistic upbringing or is there more to it?  Is this issue going to be something that forces me into a much larger boldness in that it will force me to label myself far sooner?  I've favored erring toward grace and letting my actions define me.  How do I do that here?  How do I teach my kid to do?

I respectfully refused to pray at Japanese temples, and I wouldn't build a mikoshi (portable shrine) as asked to do because it is believed to house a god.  If it was simply a parade float with religious origins, that would be different.  But when I asked, the first thing anyone mentioned was about the god.  So I'm out.  How do I bow out this time?  Do I even need to?  It's got me twisted up.  It really has.

Rephrased

So the Fanbase asked me a question about my last post.  Seems it caused some confusion.  This blog is usually a very raw vomiting of my thoughts such that I  rarely remember what I've written once it's posted.  But she is a dear friend and actually engages this rambling enough to think about it (which is saying something) so I went back over my post and am now trying to offer a fuller explanation, which will delve into the theological.

First, let me say that I wasn't making up the ideas I talked about in the last post.  I was merely rumbling them around in my own mind, much like a rat thoroughly inspects its treats before eating them.  The ideas themselves are all well established, centuries-old ideas that have been well treated in Christian record.  They are, in fact, some of the sharper dividing lines between certain large chunks of denominations.  All this to say, I'm not in any danger of moving beyond the lighted sphere of orthodoxy, in the sense that each side of the debate is considered orthodox to some major denominations.  Though if you've only been steeped in one side, the other will no doubt seem nearly heretical.

The funny thing is if you are a Christian, you probably know people whose denomination is on the other side of the fence and never knew there was a fence.  I know for a fact the Fanbase has regularly attended churches on both sides, and judging by her questions, didn't notice.  This is not a slight to the Fanbase.  I mean it only to say, I am struggling with some obscure points of doctrine that mean a lot to me, but won't really impact most people...which is why I hate theology as a discipline in the first place.  End of preface, now the meat.

The struggle for me is over the doctrines of penal substitutionary atonement and imputed righteousness.  These things are endlessly discussed in theological texts, blogs, websites, etc.  So feel free to delve as deep down that rabbit hole as you want.  Here's a good place to start: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/inebriateme/2014/11/thoughts-against-penal-substitutionary-atonement/.  In very brief, the first is a teaching of what Jesus' dying and rising again accomplished and how.  The second is about how salvation works.

Penal substitution says that Jesus had to die to pay for our sins.  The theory, and I stress these are all theories since God didn't see fit to lay it out in long-winded grammar (though I will argue by the end that it is laid out in other ways).  Anyway, the theory says that God is both just and loving.  So he can't abide sin, but he has to forgive it.  To be just, he has to punish the guilty.  But that means killing all his children that he loves.  So God himself decides to take his own punishment for us.  So he sends the aspect of himself known as the Logos or Son to be a human so that he can be fully divine and fully human.  In this way he can 1. support the weight of all humanity's guilt for all sins for all time.  2. take the annihilating punishment of God the Father for us.  and 3. Survive it (the resurrection).  Therefore we as humans can now claim Christ's atonement as ours and are no longer guilty of our own sins, even the ones we haven't committed yet.  God's wrath is satisfied.

This is the doctrine I was steeped in as a kid.  I was trained in theology from a young age and taught to apologize (argue) the faith, since in that particular bent of the faith, it is the duty of every good Christian to be an educated debator for the faith who wins souls by the power of our divinely inspired compelling logic (groan).  But if I'm honest with myself, this doctrine raises so many questions and bad understandings of God.  Of course, I can give you all the answers to dodge the problems, but they are just that: dodges, not resolutions.  Which is probably why that group hasn't won the world in 2000 years time.

For one, how is it just to punish an innocent person?  For that matter, how is it just to let the guilty off because someone else stepped in?  How does that help the guilty get better?  How does that right the wrong they committed?  But worse than that, what does it teach about God?  He seems a twisted father that beats his children black and blue while thinking it's to make them improve.  Or worse yet, the father who beats another kid because his kid did something wrong.  He seems the very opposite of love, or at least schizophrenic about it.  It doesn't at all mesh with the countless verses about love, protection, forgiveness.  In fact, there are far more verses in both the old and new testament that are clearly about God's love and forgiveness and fatherhood than there are verses to support the penal sub model, and those that do could easily be interpreted in other ways.

Moving on.  The second doctrine of imputed righteousness says that Christ's substitutionary work is imputed, put on, the believer so that they are now viewed as righteous in God's sight, even though they are still going to commit sins.  It says that when God looks at a human, he sees the bad we've done, unless we have accepted Christ (done in different ways in various denominations) in which case God sees Christ...in other words, we have a big "PAID" stamp across us, so we're good.  Forgetting the mechanics of this, which are all purely speculation, it still raises many questions, such as why we would be left to continue committing sins?  Why wouldn't it stop?  Why wouldn't it be imputed in a way that it did stop?  It requires some sci-fi time-space disconnect to understand why "new creations" aren't really any newer than the old ones in any humanly discernible way.  I remember the huge let-down when I was baptized and didn't feel any different.  I know some people that kept getting baptized again and again because they felt so much the same they thought it just wasn't sticking, like they were dud dunks.  I felt the same about saying "the salvation prayer".

Not only these questions, but then come the aftermath questions.  Let's say we accept it for a second.  Now what?  Can I just go sin and know it's not going on the record anyway?  Already paid, like a cosmic gift card?  Or do I need to be careful to stay in the salvation?  Perhaps I could get uncovered as easily as I got covered and I'd never know it.  To deal with this, my particular group has ample proof-texts about assurance of salvation to convince us we can't lose it, even if we continue to be terribly bad people.  While others do stress a continuation in faith to keep the record clear.  And still others require a continual re-covering for the new sins.

At this point I should note that the two doctrines are not tied together.  There are denominations who accept one and not the other.

So this brings me to the point of my last post.  I have slowly grown to the point that I can't accept either of the two doctrines.  But what then?  When I try to read the Bible with fresh eyes, I can't hear anything but the old interpretations because I was SOOO steeped in what they mean to the group I was raised in.  So my heart says, "No, it can't be!" and my head says, "But it must!"  And that was what came out in my last post.

Fortunately, I am beginning to see what else is there.  It has taken years of information filtering into my brain, but now it is coming together so that it makes sense.  The trail was blazed by many things that Steve Miegs taught, though I don't know if he remembers them because he was so caught up in the moment when he spoke, I have no doubt he spoke from the Spirit.  C.S Lewis, then laid the real groundwork (I often refer to him as my teacher Jack in this blog) with his talk of halls and rooms and hell being locked from the inside.  The push down the road came from Wayne Jacobsen, who showed me I was not alone in modern times and that if my heart was sick at the system, it was not a flaw in me, but God's truest voice.  Also that what we call churches need not be the Church.  And the fog is clearing at the hands of George MacDonald (Uncle George), who wrote so so many things about this a full two centuries before I would read them.  It is Uncle George who is primarily showing me how to understand the world in this new view.

Of course there have been many others along the way, helping hands and points in the direction.  One of the dearest to me is Dan Dunn, who has never had a shadow of doubt that I was heading right, and never placed an ounce of pressure to do otherwise, even when it forces us to part ways for a time.  He is truly a Christ-like example for me in what it means to love people where they're at.

Which brings me to the summary of this long post.  So what now?  For me, I think we can leave the theology (study about God) and just get to know the real God.  There is only one way to do this.  That is to do what he says.  As Uncle George says, if anyone truly wants to see what Truth might reside in Jesus, he just has to try it out.  There's a reason Jesus didn't leave a theological treatise.  He didn't even write a single word of his own.  He simply DID his work.  So forget the teachings, the processes, the doctrines.  I don't care if you never understand the history or processes, or even call him Lord.  If you want to find out if he was who he said, simply open one of the Gospels and go do what you read him doing.  Simply start with whatever next comes your way.  In whatever way you can act like Jesus, do it and see what happens.  Then do it again and again until you understand.  If there's no value, you'll soon see.  Doing good can't hurt in any case.  But if there is value in it beyond the ordinary good deed, you might just have found the door to the universe.  Work it out and see for yourself.  If you get stuck, let's talk.  No guarantees I'll have an answer, but if God is there, shouldn't he help us find one?

I am convinced, this is the only true means of salvation and I'll go no further for now accept to say that it was proven for me in one simple sentence when a dear friend was downing Christians and then said to me, "but you and your wife are the most Christ-like people I've ever met.  You actually live it."  I almost cried right there on the street.  There could be no better compliment for me and no better proof amidst all my doubts.