On the Perceived Immorality of God: Part One – Descriptions and Prescriptions, especially of Marriage

A blog post inspired as a response to my friend who imagines God as immoral because They fail to condemn or correct a variety of behaviors of “Godly people” in the Bible (as well as some truly “Ungodly ‘Christians’” in the present decline and fall of the American religion mistakenly called “Evangelical,”) Here are some reasons I hold fast to my faith, while trying to reconcile the beliefs of so many who say they share my faith.

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With regard to ignoring parts of the Bible, some say: "That was then; this is now." But all of scripture relates to the relationship with God which Christ offers to us. Yet not all the Bible is written as a prescription for our behavior today. Much of it accurately describes some very bad behavior, and how consequences follow our deviation from the prescribed behaviors. So following the thread of the Divine conversation throughout the story is of utmost importance. Understanding God’s half of the conversation requires more than memorizing certain prooftexts. “Truths” and “pithy aphorisms” are frequently cherry-picked from passages that address entirely different topics than those claimed to be “what scripture says.” With regard, for example, to marriage, sex, procreation, and family units,  historically, that cherry-picking has been done in Western Cultures by misogynistic chauvinists seeking to buttress their claims to male superiority – a position utterly indefensible in a wholly Biblical theology.

The chart I’m including here shows a few of the household arrangements included in scripture. They involve some very different circumstances than what is presumed by some to be “The Biblical Pattern of Marriage.” Denying this evidence, these “conservatives” (who ironically pursue radically liberal scripture-twisting) claim that the Bible’s “description” of these relationships does not represent God’s “prescription” for marriage. To them, the only legitimate household is based on a social, physical, and legal union of one man and one woman.

I do agree that there is a vast difference between description and prescription. But the so-called definition of “Biblical marriage” in Genesis 3 – a cisgendered, heterosexual, and monogamous couple – is not at all prescriptive. That passage is clearly descriptive. In fact that “definition of marriage” clearly announces not wholeness, but the brokenness of The Curse that followed The Fall resulting from the first/original sin.

Let’s consider the originality of sin for a moment. If the sharing of fruit from The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is the original sin (and it is), can we assume that the prior commands of God were obeyed? Yes. Therefore, whatever God prescribed for humans prior to The Fall must have been lived out in obedience.

Since the first Divine command to humans is “be fruitful,” what did the first humans do? Bearing fruit would be obedience to the second command, “multiply.” But whether each joining results in offspring (and joining at all was unnecessary in our original androgynous state – Genesis 1:27), to “be fruitful” denotes something often overlooked by those who unbiblically redefine “how things ought to be.”

The wise note, “Anyone can count the seeds in an apple. But only God can count the apples in a seed.” Think of that solitary apple, then. Ambitiously attractive. Sweet and delicious. Borne bountifully – providing apples aplenty. And undeniably ubiquitous in their open availability. Do you see yourself in this description? Do other adjectives come to mind? Are you open to being “the apple of others’ eye?” Can you see yourself providing some kind of healthy, nutritive sustenance to others?

In considering such sensuous interactions we see that the primary purpose of being fruitful is not to multiply, but to be consumed (in “the act of consummation”) by constantly appreciating ourselves and those around us as drawing our attention, attraction, and interaction toward one another? Our first command from God is to respond in eager anticipation (and application) of actions that sometimes may result in fulfilling that second command?

Yes, we do multiply. But first, God tells us to be fruitful. I recommend it.

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Next time: What it meant for humans to be “alone,” even as they pursued androgynously promiscuous passions (that God evaluates as part of what is “very good” in human lives and in Creation as a whole).

Coming soon: Why polyamory was insufficient for the fully androgynous bearers of God’s image and likeness to procreate both prodigiously and passionately.

 

 

 

 

"Tyranny or Revolution" - One Context Favoring Chaos and Anarchy

A friend with whom I often disagree (i.e., the kind of friend we should all cultivate and value) asked about my agreement with another person's statement that our options at this point in the deterioration of our constitutional republic are “tyranny or revolution.” Specifically, my friend's two questions were these:

The Criminal-in-Chief
on his last day in court.

     “Did the early church fathers call for violent revolution against Rome?” (I note that not all regime changes require "violent revolution," even when some of the consequences include a season of chaos and anarchy. But to be clear: I do advocate for chaos and anarchy to be recognized as one possible means to motivating regime change.)

     “Does the fact that they rejected violence and political rebellion give you some pause?” (I also note that the absence of any mention of the topic is a different condition than a claim "that they rejected violence and political rebellion.")

 Please forgive the fact that this is worded for those who read deeply and frequently in scripture, theology, and church history. But also feel free to contact me for clarifications, explanations, or even vocabulary helps. It is a very important and timely discussion as questions of what is and is not legal are raised at and by the highest levels of our socio-political systems and structures – many of them with alarming answers.

 Here's the reply:

By definition the ante-Nicenes (the “early church fathers” prior to The Council of Nicea, A.D./C.E. 325) were never faced with an environment in which the ruling powers identified themselves heretically as "Christian." The necessity of resistance, conflict, and even revolution occurs, among other times, when the distinctions of church and state are not merely blurred, but erased. Christian Nationalism, especially in its authoritarian forms, and especially when enacting class warfare against whole populations identified prejudicially on the basis of stereotypes for the profit of oligarchs and corporations, is (to paraphrase Dietrich Bonhoeffer) a wheel through which a spoke should be driven (stopping it from damaging others any further).

Somewhat less than uniformly
"uniformed law enforcement officials."

 

Just as Jesus, Paul, and others acted in rebellious conflict against the established religious, civil, and commercial authorities, other early church fathers and other leaders throughout the centuries following A.D./C.E. 325 have advocated an activist approach to confronting the sins of the state (e.g., Bonhoeffer's progression of actions toward the heresies of the Christian Nationalist state he faced*). Debatably stipulating my friend’s point that advocating such corrective action appears absent among the ante-Nicenes (“debatably” since I'm admittedly not among the experts in that field of study), I leapt ahead to investigate my assumption that with his The City of God Augustine would have something to say about the issue. Surprisingly, my unfortunately brief investment there did not yield the specifics I thought would be easier to find in just that one work. Instead, looking elsewhere, I found John Chrysostom's sermon on Romans 13:1ff. to be a well-balanced presentation of the earliest (that I could find) position setting boundaries and circumstances under which these actions should be taken. Again, I’m not an expert in the writings of the church “fathers.” And Chrysostom’s advocacies would surely afoul of MAGA sensibilities, as well as any nominal Christian’s desire to peacefully acquiesce within the current circumstances. But my time is limited and his perspective on the passage intrigued me, as you’ll see.

 

Chrysostom opens his Homily 23 on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans with these statements (after quoting Romans 13:1 as saying, “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers.), “Of this subject he [the Apostle Paul] makes much account in other epistles also, setting subjects under their rulers as household servants are under their masters. And this he does to show that it was not for the subversion of the commonwealth that Christ introduced His laws, but for the better ordering of it, and to teach men not to be taking up unnecessary and unprofitable wars.”

Removing another so-called
"drug dealer, criminal, and rapist" while
"just following orders."

 

My question, give the current discussion about church and state, chaos and anarchy, tyranny or revolution, was whether “the better ordering” of “the commonwealth” might include active efforts toward regime change, or whether I was reading into his specification about “unnecessary and unprofitable wars” the possibility that Chrysostom would consider some violent conflicts to be necessary and/or profitable.

 

Correcting those who would object to the perception that he was advocating for maintaining the status quo despite rulers who do not fulfill their appropriate functions, he adds that “lest the believers should say, You are making us very cheap and despicable, when you put us, who are to enjoy the Kingdom of Heaven, under subjection to rulers, he shows that it is not to rulers, but to God again that he makes them subject in doing this.” Are leaders who are acting outside the proper boundaries of their duties to be considered dispensable, then? For Chrysostom, the answer was “Yes.” He describes those rulers who ignore (much less contradict) the godly purposes of governing as “a duller sort, whom things to come have not such a hold upon as things present.” Does God still use such leaders? Yes. Do they still serve His purposes? Again, “Yes.” But not by being allowed to retain their hold on power. “He then who by fear and rewards gives the soul of the majority a preparatory turn towards its becoming more suited for the word of doctrine, is with good reason called ‘the Minister of God.’” I would understand Chrysostom’s “turn towards . . . becoming more suited for the word of doctrine” as denoting a regime’s repentance, or its replacement in the course of a regime change, which in the interim between rulers/systems is by definition “anarchy” and can predictably result in “chaos.” Further, a regime may be so egregiously damaging that seeking chaos and anarchy is a better choice than allowing the state’s damage to continue.

 

Godly purposes are served, even by those ruling in ungodly ways, because activism toward anarchy (i.e., contradicting, confronting, correcting, or even replacing faulty systems and structures, even when those actions result in chaos) is a contributing means of honoring God’s calling and movement that is just as worthy of being “called ‘the Minister of God’” as are those who faithfully maintain and support the state’s unique responsibilities when that is the circumstance. 

At present, it is not.

 

 

* According to Bonhoeffer, “. . . there are three possible ways in which the church can act toward the state” [either when it “is sometimes extraordinarily difficult to distinguish real lawlessness from a formally permitted minimum of law” or when “The state which endangers the Christian proclamation negates itself.” He describes those three stages in an essay published in April, 1933 entitled “The Church and the Jewish Question.”

 

     In the first place, as has been said, it can ask the state whether its actions are legitimate and in accordance with its character as state, i.e., it can throw the state back on its responsibilities. Second, it can aid the victims of state action. The church has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering of society, even if they do not belong to the Christian community. ‘Do good to all people.’ In both these courses of action, the church serves the free state in its free way, and at times whe laws are changed the church may in o way withdraw itself from these two tasks. The third possibility is not just to bandage the victims under the whell, but to jam a spoke in the wheel itself. Such action would be direct political action, and is only possible and desirable when the church sees the state fail in its function of creating law and order, i.e., when it sees the state unrestrainedly bring about too much or too little law and order. In both these cases it must see the existence of the state, and with it its own existence threatened. There would be too little law if any group of subjects were deprived of their rights too much where the state intervened in the character of the church and its proclamation.

With friends like these?

 

It is this writer’s observation that the current authoritarian trends (whether through the party leaning toward advantaging oligarchs or that sustaining a broader status quo by promoting corporations’ advantages) fulfill both of the state’s characterizations above as simultaneously excusing lawlessness while capriciously enacting prejudicial oppression toward particular groups within the population. 

Why McDonald's Succeeds Where Church Fails

An old friend recently shared this meme. We agree on so much, it’s hard to say, “Au contraire, mon frere.” ("Exactly the opposite, my brother.") Admittedly, though, I too want the failures of The Church to be someone else’s fault. But “It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem; it’s me.” And you, too, probably.

The key to success for McDonald's is their consistency. A Big Mac is a Big Mac is a Big Mac. If they forget to put something you ordered in your bag, then you tell them, and they fix it.

The key failing of The Church is that Jesus isn't even the toy in the Happy Meal. I speak from personal experience: If that Happy Meal toy is missing, you'll know about it as soon as your kid (or grandkid) opens the box. Also from personal experience: Most churches actually run better without the inconvenience of Jesus being in their box.

To be clear:

Consistently living up to expectations is what keeps McDonald's in business.

Constantly chasing the "fun new things that will make our church grow" is just one part of the disease killing churches (at least in the past four decades of my ministry career).

The meme is wrong. People are hungry enough. In fact, most know that they are starving. They recognize a famine when they see one.

 And even in the midst of blaming them, we offer "everything else" in addition to (or instead of) The Bread of Life and The Spring of Living Water. Worse than burying our toy-version of Jesus beneath greasy salted starch sticks, we withhold the entire meal from those we blame. Why do we hide what we expect them to find? Because they do not first pledge their allegiance to our ever-shifting worship focus, our self-contradicting theology, or our personality-of-the-month-club. We make them come to church to find Jesus, instead of delivering Him to their doorstep, their tent-village, their cardboard box beneath the overpass, or their workplace where they may spend forty-hours a week next to a Christian…and never once see Jesus.

To those of us in The Church who criticize these hungry others: It would probably help if we could try to see ourselves through their eyes. But that’s unlikely to happen. It would require us to talk with them, instead of ignorantly talking about them. 

Perhaps a good first step would be to talk less about them, and more about Jesus.

“Sorry for Your Loss” and “Facing the Maudlin and Morose”

 

Donna Ashworth -
Her poem appears below.

“Facing the Maudlin and Morose” – Wm. Darius Myers

 

Mortality makes me morose.

 

A steady diet of dying and bereavement,

my own,

and not just that of patients’ families

whose deeper losses fail to make mine less painful,

renders me “sullen and ill-tempered,”

            as Oxford identifies “morose” as meaning.

 

And so I provoke those around me,

too often for most,

to join in my maudlin mood—

that state in which

a clear understanding of mortality

leads to self-pity,

sentimentality,

and a significantly regretful nostalgia

for the days in which I could still act

as though I believed

everything would last forever.

 

But,

I know now,

very few things last forever.

 

And yet,

there are,

            of course,

some things that do last forever.

 

Thankfully, though,

the maudlin and the morose

are not among them.

 

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All of which brings me to consider Donna Ashworth’s poem,

“Sorry for Your Loss.”

 

When I say sorry for your loss

it may sound perfunctory

trite even

 

but what I mean is

 

I am sorry

that you wake in the night

gasping for breath

heart racing in agony

 

I am sorry

that you will know a lifetime

of what ifs and

could have beens.

 

I am sorry

that you ache

for one more minute with your love

knowing it can never be.

 

When I say sorry for your loss

please know

my soul is reaching out to yours

in understanding

and trying very hard

to take away

just one little ounce of your pain.

 

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Our hospice agency has a bereavement coordinator. She provides services to families after the death of the patient, helping them to experience their grief authentically, and pursue their mourning effectively.

 

But each of us on the care team (nurses, aides, social workers, volunteers, office and support staff, and chaplains and counselors) all face the daily challenge of providing services to both patients and families who are already experiencing losses. Can we help them to experience their grief authentically, and pursue their mourning effectively, even before the death of the patient? Probably so. And in doing so, perhaps they would see that we are “trying very hard to take away just one little ounce of your pain.”

 

Maybe that would become clearer if we were to say, to the patient, as well as to the family: “Sorry for Your Loss.”

 

 

 

 

Donna Ashworth’s book, Loss: Poems to better weather the many waves of grief, is available here: https://www.amazon.com/Loss-Poems-better-weather-waves/dp/1785304429/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1SHNES3SURQKP&keywords=loss&qid=1698425033&sprefix=loss%2Caps%2C179&sr=8-3

Thoughts on a Reason for the Hatred of Hamas (and Zionists, and 19th Century European Nation-States, and—in fact—all humans everywhere in every era since Genesis 3).

 

The fundamental intractability of the Arab-Israeli conflict (from the inception of a people identified as "Ones who struggle with God" - the literal translation of the word Israel) stems from the same struggle we each face whenever we distinguish “me” from “you,” and “us” from “them.” For Israel, the importance of these distinctions is heightened due to Jews being defined as "other than" all other peoples. They are historically "the chosen people," set apart by God, for God. While the idea of struggling "with God" stems from the Patriarch Jacob's literal wrestling match, refusing to let go of God until he received a blessing, there is also the sense that Israel struggles "with God" as His ally, seeking to pass along His blessings to (and/or impose His will on) all other peoples, including the Arabs who "occupied our land" for 1,878 tears (70 CE until 1948).

 

It is this "set-apart-ness" that many Europeans found objectionable during the 19th century as nations began to differentiate from one another by certain commonalities within distinct geographic borders. In short, those who lived in Germany were Germans, those who lived in France were French, those who lived in Spain were Spanish, but the descendants of Israel ("sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob")--no matter WHERE they lived--were all one with one another as Jews (short for followers of Judaism or, formerly, inhabitants of Judah--one of the twelve tribes of "The Hebrews").

 

Persecution against Jews in Europe arose as nationalists reacted to "The Jewish Problem in Europe." In the 1930s, under Hitler's Nazi regime in Germany, most of Europe—with support from North Americans—agreed on "The Final Solution to the Jewish Problem in Europe." But the solution proposed was not Zionism, the emigration of Jews to a new nation-state of Israel to be located in Palestine. The solution implemented by Nazi Germany was extermination—the attempted murder of every Jew in all of Europe, with roughly six million Jews dying as a result.

 

With that as background, the Zionist argument seems reasonable. "Yes, it is VERY inconvenient for the Palestinians to be expatriated from their homes and forced to live elsewhere. But the alternative, when we Jews lived elsewhere, was for others to exterminate us, and leave us with nowhere to live anywhere." Subsequently, though, most Palestinians have come to find the Israeli position sounding something like, "You're in our way, you Palestinians. So we will herd you into settlements, starve you, and occasionally kill some of you, so that we feel safer from all those others who are still trying to exterminate us."

 

Ironically, the underlying belief motivating much of Israel’s Palestinian policy, that “in this place there can only be ‘us’ and none of ‘them,” is the same underlying belief that caused the 19^th Century European Nation-States to identify all Jews everywhere as a “them” that needed to be separated or eradicated from among “us.” Even more difficultly, it is the same underlying belief that infects all humans everywhere: “We are other than, different than, and therefore more important than them.” The disease stems from the third chapter of Genesis, in which we determined that “I am other than, different than, and therefore more important than you.” So, if you or they are in the way, we conclude that I and we have the right to identify and implement a solution to that problem…unless we find the commonality of us all being “we.” Could that possibly result from our common condition and mutual acceptance of our fearful tendency to war against the “them?”

What Was Life Like Before? (Death and Terminal Illness Aren’t the Only Things We Deny)

In the television program Virgin River, Melinda Monroe (“Mel”) has left her Nurse Practitioner position in Los Angeles and moved into the wilds of California’s Northstate (very like the communities I served for over two decades). Mel’s decision follows the death of her husband Mark, and others around her and in his family especially demonstrate the kinds of behaviors chaplains, counselors, social workers, and other hospice staff members refer to kindly as “family dynamics.”

 But in the midst of varying layers of drama, at one point she’s questioned about her perspective on their marriage and its challenges. Wanting Mel to return "the family's" wedding ring, her sister-in-law asks, “If Mark were still alive, do you think you’d be still married?"

 True, those around the bereaved can often be horribly insensitive. But this scene (in Episode 5 of Season 2) reminds me, too, of how often our patients’ loved ones fall prey to pretending that everything in the patient’s relationships were uncomplicated by conflict, or that somehow being gravely ill results in some new sense of nobility, respect, or at least stability in the life of the patient.

 As we’ve seen frequently in recent months, though, even as our patients face their impending end-of-life, they are still who they have been. We work with families where relationships have been damaged by substance abuse, abandonment, disagreements, religious conflicts, and many other factors. The questions raised by these realities sometimes needs to be asked:

 “If your loved one wasn’t dying, would you let them live with you?”

 “If your loved one wasn’t dying, would you have taken an interest in their religious beliefs?”

 “If your loved one wasn’t dying, would you have stopped the divorce proceedings?”

 “If your loved one wasn’t dying, would you…?”

You cannot resolve what you will not address. Ask the questions.

 

So Much Can Go Wrong: Tropical Fish Edition

 At San Francisco State University, our Biology professor noted that he didn’t believe in any personal deity, and so we should take his terminology with a grain of salt. “But,” he said, “there is so much that can go wrong with the human body that it’s a miracle that any of us survive until birth.” As hospice workers, we get to see a lot of what can go wrong. In eight years of law enforcement chaplaincy, I think I saw most of all the other things that can go wrong.

 

To illustrate that, I looked up a list of all the things that need to go right in order to be a successful pet owner for tropical fish. According to those who admittedly want to sell you supplies and equipment related to keeping fish alive in your home, here’s the list:

 

1 – Get everything out of your household water that will kill your fish. Chlorine is just one of the many poisons that we tolerate, but that your fish will not.

2 – Don’t shock your fish with rapid temperature changes.

3 – Don’t shock your fish with sudden changes in their aquarium.

4 – Maintain a consistently proper pH and other chemical levels.

5 – Maintain a consistently proper temperature in the aquarium.

6 – Change 25% of the water monthly, without messing up any of the above.

7 – Clean the tank regularly so that all of the above are maintained without waste building up.

8 – Don’t put fish in with other fish that will kill and/or eat them.

9 – Also, don’t put fish in with other fish that they will kill and/or eat – because the uneaten remains of dead fish will violate #7 on the list.

10 – Don’t overfeed your fish, since it’s not just uneaten dead fish that will violate #7 on the list.

 

As hospice workers, we could compile a similar list for our patients, their friends and family members, caregivers and collaborators, and even our own team members. But here’s the point I’d like us to remember:

 

There is so much that can go wrong, that we will never give anyone “The Perfect Hospice Experience.” Still, providing them with hospice care is so much better than the alternatives that it wouldn’t be inaccurate to call it, if not perfect, then at least a miracle.