Stones or Cross: Which Shall Define Us?

* This sermon remains unpreached so I guess it is more of an essay or reflection than sermon.  I do plan to preach it at some point.  I am publishing it on here after a number of troubling conversations and messages in recent days.  One of the deepest and most profound problems with our society is the tendency to deal in absolutes to the point that disagreement necessarily becomes something akin to hatred.  That leads to coarsened language and perspectives on the world and one another. 

Stones or Cross?

1 Samuel 17

The Rev. Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone, threw it, and struck the Philistine.

He stood ten feet tall, this Philistine, this one called Goliath.  The breadth of his shoulders matched only by the sight of his armor.  The earth must have shook under his feet as he emerged from behind the lines of Philistine chariots perched atop the mountain.  They too would have been a site to behold; the smoke rising behind them from the encampment, the noise of armaments being prepared for battle, the sound of thousands of men shuffling around, finding their places in line and dressing ranks to face the enemy. 

Facing them across the valley on the opposite side were the Israelites.  Led by Saul, they gathered to face this long time nemesis.  The battle would not be a fair match.  It never was.  The Philistines always seemed to have more men, more arms, more…luck.  The Israelites, making due with what they had, managed to win a few battles, skirmishes really, but all in all the scales tipped on the Philistines side.

Surely the appearance of Goliath would signal yet another trouncing at the hands of the Philistines.  Taunting the Israelites, Goliath issues a challenge.   If the Israelites can find one man who will fight Goliath and defeat him, the Philistines will not only surrender their army, but they will surrender their very selves as servants to Israel. 

Certainly there is one.  There must be one man.

There must be one in the whole nation of Israel who can face down the giant and free the people from the threat of the Philistines.

Of course there was.  YHWH would choose one from among the whole of the people.  An unexpected choice to be certain, but YHWH’s choice nonetheless.  David.  The shepherd boy.  The son of Jesse. 

Met with derision and surprise, he snaked his way through the lines of soldiers.   After long machinations and negotiations, he is finally led to the field of battle to face Goliath. 

The shepherd boy and the Philistine giant face to face.

So, David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone, threw it, and struck the Philistine.

Facing Goliath would certainly have been frightening for young David but killing him was easy.  This was not a man it was a Philistine.

As a Philistine, Goliath was an outsider; a worthy target of David’s stone.  Philistines were unclean, undesirable, uncircumcised and, in short, unimportant.  They lived outside the covenant and were, therefore, completely expendable.  The represented everything the Israelites were charged by God not to be.

Killing Goliath was not merely a military act, it was an act of faith.  It was the killing of that which the nation of Israel saw as opposed God and God’s command.  Philistines were not, after all, real people.  They were caricatures.  They were the cartoons drawn to show the folly of all that was outside the nation. 

When David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone, threw it, and struck the Philistine, he was striking a blow for purity.  He was striking down the other, the unclean, the great unwashed.   

It is certainly easy to stand there cheering David on to victory.  I know that I locate myself there in the story around verse 51 when young David stands over the body of the slain Goliath and raises the giant’s sword over his head.  I can feel the sun on my face, smell the dust in the air and see the sights of the battlefield.  Fists pumping in the air, I join my voice with the crowd I imagine starting to gather to cheer on the boy who slew the giant.  Chanting DAVID, DAVID, DAVID! 

And surely this is a moment worthy of praise! 

Lying there on the ground is the greatest Philistine, the greatest unbeliever, the greatest of the unclean, unworthy and unfaithful.  The representative of all that is reprehensible, lay dead on the ground and the people were finally free of this menace.   If I could find the way, I wouldn’t mind arriving on the scene a few verses earlier.  Somewhere around verse 48, when Goliath walks out on the battlefield, because then I could pick up a rock.  I could stand there with David and strike a blow for good over evil.   

Eye to eye with evil, David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone, threw it, and struck the Philistine.

                And if David is a hero for his victory so, certainly, are we heroes when we cast a stone in the name of good.  Right?

Standing there over the body of the giant with my fingers clinched around the stone I so want to throw, I begin to wonder.  Is this stone really the way past this giant?  Am I really throwing this stone to defeat an enemy of good or am I throwing this stone to defeat my enemy?

My quarrel is not with David.  Even I, with all the things I throw out to you, am not going to second guess the motivation of Israel’s great king.   I chose to believe at face value what scripture tells us here; that the Giant’s challenge was truly a threat that demanded response from the people. 

No, it is not David who is indicted here, it is we.   We who make up the cheering crowd gathered around the body of the fallen giant.  We, who, with our bags full of stones, looking for places to throw them, seeing in our own reflections the face of God’s anointed, too easily find Philistines behind every corner.      We who locate ourselves in solidarity with the hero king and place on our own shoulders the mantle of responsibility for freeing God’s church, God’s world, even God’s very people from the threat of the Philistines of our own age.

David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone, threw it, and struck the Philistine.

The windswept winter landscape of Wyoming probably did not resemble much of that battlefield of ancient Israel.  There were no armies, no grand generals.  Yet, I imagine that somewhere in their minds Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney thought they were facing a Philistine giant.  Before them was their Philistine.  He was the embodiment of all that is wrong, even evil.  Before them was the face of that which needed to be destroyed.   This giant certainly did not strike the same physical presence as the giant of old.  This giant stood barely 5’7 and may have weighed 8 stone soaking wet.  Nonetheless, these two warriors for good reached into their bags, took out a stone, threw it, and struck the Philistine.  In fact they struck this Philistine over and over and over again. 

Standing in victory like David, they looked down on the broken body of Matthew Shepherd and knew that they had done what was good, what was holy, what was right. 

They were heroes.

They were David.

Right?

After all, David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone, threw it, and struck the Philistine.

The sanctuary of First Presbyterian Church is the last place you would think to find a Philistine giant.  Yet there she was.  Standing at the microphone, recounting the tenants of her personal faith, with her every word the threat grew greater and greater.  We began to squirm in our seats, quietly caucusing in whispers to affirm that we were really hearing what we thought we were hearing.  Short notes passed from one to another until finally she finished and in that moment it was as if she had just emerged from the line of chariots to issue her challenge.  Two of the pastors sitting there in their discomfort, their bags of stones fastened around their waists, stepped to the microphone.  This Philistine, this conservative, was not going to enter their presbytery without a fight.  One by one they reached into their bags, took out a stone, threw it and struck the Philistine.  In fact the stones were thrown one after the other until finally this giant, rather than laying dead on the battlefield, stood defeated in the chancel.  A blow was struck by those pastors for theological purity.

We were heroes.

We were David.

Right?

After all, David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone, threw it, and struck the Philistine.

Standing around the fallen giant, seeing in the face of the young heroic shepherd boy David the reflection of our own faces, it is just so easy to appoint ourselves defenders of the right and purveyors of divine justice. 

And like David, we put our hands in our bags, take out a stone, throw it, and strike the Philistine. 

We set ourselves up as defenders and saviors forgetting that it is in truth we who are the defended and we are the saved.  And it is not by the casting of stones but the tragedy of the cross.

In Christ, we are relieved of the burden of our bag of stones. 

In Christ, we are delivered from the prison of our fears and even the Philistine giant, the other, the outsider, the object of our deepest fears is made whole. 

David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone, threw it, and struck the Philistine, but Christ stretched out his arms, submitted to the cross and once and for all brought the outsider into the fold.    

We, who reside on the near side of the resurrection, are called not to clutch our stones prepared to cast them at the enemy, but to free our hands so we may carry their crosses and our own.  

In recent weeks, I have been reminded of how easily our fear can lead us to lay down the cross and take up stones.  Yes, yes our fear says it is all well and good that Christ lived, died and rose again to make us all one and to make us whole, but just in case we’d better throw a few stones at those undesirables just in case.  And if we look in David’s face and see our own looking back, then the face of the Philistine must be the face of the other; of them.   So we let loose with the stones.  And let’s face it; it is a hell of a lot easier to throw stones at something we don’t like than to accept that in Christ we are made one with them.  It is easier to reach into a bag and grab a stone than to reach out beyond our fears to the Philistine’s of our imagination and with them take up the cross of Jesus Christ. 

The apostle Paul wrote that there is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female because we are all one in Christ Jesus.  He might have added that there is no longer young shepherd boy and giant Philistine. 

Whether, like those misguided men on a cold Wyoming night, we throw our stones at the object of our fear in the world or, like we misguided pastors judging one of our own, we throw them at the object of our fear in the church, we must put down the cross of Christ to take up the stones. 

David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone, threw it and struck the Philistine.

Christ spread wide his arms and submitted to the cross. 

By which example shall we live?  In which is true victory won?

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.  Amen.

On My Honor, I Will Do My Duty...

The Boy Scouts of America have had a profound impact on American life.  Many young men were formed by the traditions and vision of scouting.  I am one of them.  I was not the best Boy Scout, but I can say that my life was positively impacted by my time as a scout and my time as a Cub Scout leader.  It is because of that history that it pains me so much that the Boy Scouts of America have not only affirmed their discriminatory stance against gay Scouts and leaders, but done so at a time when GLBTQ youth are at risk of bullying and discrimination in so many other parts of their lives.

As a person of faith, it is not unusual to find yourself having to find ways to navigate between theological principle and realities in the world.  I am morally opposed to aggressive warfare, but I still pay my taxes that help fund aggressive war because it is part of the social contract that I pay my taxes and that I be allowed to speak against their use for war.   Although I would prefer a perfect world, this is the only one I have. 

Part of a healthy theological life is, I believe, living it publicly and using our theology as a foundation for living.  Do I propose forcing my own theological beliefs on anyone?  Of course not.  What I do propose is that a life of faith cannot be lived in isolation on Sunday mornings or within the community of faith as a whole.  It must permeate every aspect of our lives both public and private.  Sometimes those convictions and our daily living fit neatly together and sometimes they do not.  So it is not new for me to have to come to personal theological terms with a decision by an organization of which I am a part. 

But this is different.

After searching my heart and prayerfully considering what my conscience and spirit will allow, I have concluded that I can find no room for principled compromise with the Boy Scouts in the wake of this decision.  Although I still believe in the underlying principles of scouting and the importance of teaching young men the values of honor, discipline and good citizenship, I cannot agree with doing this by institutionalizing discrimination and homophobia.  As a Christian I cannot endorse the institutionalized discrimination against a whole segment of humanity for no reason other than prejudice.

I do not deny that it is the right of the Boy Scouts of America to set their membership requirements as they see fit.  The Supreme Court has spoken on this issue clearly.  It is their right, but that does not make it right.  It is in fact profoundly wrong for an organization that has a rich heritage of forming young men into good citizens to take a stance that is antithetical to the core values of the very democratic society they embrace. 

At the heart of scouting is duty and honor.  In fact the first words of the Scout Oath are "On my honor, I will do my duty to God and my country."  I belive those words.  It is because of that that I find myself duty bound to disaffiliate myself from the Boy Scouts.  It is the only way I can discern  to honor duty to my God who abhores human division and my country that is founded on the principle of equality.  This morning I wrote to the Quapaw Area Council which oversees the area of my home in Little Rock and expressed my strong disagreement with the Boy Scout’s decision and my decision to disaffiliate.  I deeply regret that both of those acts are necessary.

It is my fervent prayer that the Boy Scouts of America will rescind this decision, embrace the high calling of scouting and become a bold witness to young men that there is no place in an honorable life for discrimination.

A Word in Favor of the (NCAA) Death Penalty

45 days from today the world returns to normal.  College football season begins.   Fortunately the three teams I love to watch (the Arkansas Razorbacks, Michigan Wolverines and Texas Longhorns) are on TV pretty often so it is about guaranteed that I will have at least one game to watch each week.   I love college football and I love that it comes back year after year like an old friend.

It is because I love college football and college athletics in general that I have to join my voice to the growing chorus calling on the NCAA to impose the “death penalty” on Penn State’s football program.  For those who do not know, the NCAA death penalty bans a college or university from fielding a team in a particular sport usually for one or two seasons.  That means no practice, no recruiting, no scholarships, no TV money. 

The death penalty has been handed down only five times in the last six decades and in every instance the issue was one of NCAA rules infractions or, in the case of Kentucky basketball in the 1950s, cheating by point-shaving.  The Penn State case is different because it involves actual criminal behavior and conspiracy to allow that behavior to go unpunished. 

Some have argued that this fact demonstrates that the NCAA should stay out of the mix and allow law enforcement to do their job.  That the NCAA is not competent to act in these matters and that it would serve to punish the players and fans who were not involved in the cover up thus compounding injustice with injustice.

I disagree.

Law enforcement should, and doubtless will, do their job in bringing legal justice to those who are found to have broken the law.  And no matter what happens the fans and student athletes will be caught in the middle.  But the NCAA has a stake in this as well.  College athletics are perceived as being above the law, especially in big sport schools like Penn State.  For that reason alone, the NCAA must step in and shut down the Penn State football program for a period of time. 

But perception is hardly the only reason to penalize the program.  The program has materially benefitted from these actions in preserving their reputation and keeping the status quo.  Given the fallout that has come since Sandusky’s crimes (he was found guilty, they are no longer alleged) were revealed, it is no surprise that the Penn State administration and Athletic Department tried to keep a lid on things.  The program benefitted directly from their conspiracy of silence.  That cannot go unchallenged.

The NCAA should, at a minimum, shut down all football related activities for two seasons, institute a TV and bowl ban through January 2015 and halve scholarships through the 2014 season.  Current players and committed freshmen should be allowed to transfer without penalty and without loss of eligibility.  And Penn State should establish a victim’s relief fund for abused children in Pennsylvania in an amount equal to at least 75% of their 2011 TV revenue.  None of that will make up for what has happened but neither will Jerry Sandusky’s prison sentence make up for it.  What NCAA sanctions will do is what Sandusky’s prison sentence does; it makes clear that this sort of action will not be tolerated no matter what the status of the offender.  Since there is no possible way to make the punishment meet the crime, this will have to do.

So what, you may be asking, does any of this have to do with theology?  Simply this; sin.  We in the church are called to speak against sin and in favor of virtue in the world.  How we live, the good and the bad, impacts our world.  We are all responsible for our actions and we must be prepared to reap what we sow.  Too often we in the church get wrapped up in speaking of human sinfulness in terms of eternal and salvific contexts.  When we get distracted by thoughts of the hereafter and we forget that our sin has very real consequences in the world, we allow it to have control over our present while we are obsessing about the future.  The church has a theological stake in speaking up for a world in which those who do harm to others are brought to justice and in breaking down structures of power that protect those wrongdoers in the name of money, prestige, power, or even winning percentages.  We need to challenge our culture of no consequences by showing just how actions impact the world.

I am not suggesting that law enforcement or the NCAA become the enforcement wing of the church or that Penn State should be punished for some sort of commandment violating.  They should be punished for violating the laws that we all share as a society and the rules they share as an NCAA school.  By breaking those laws and rules, Penn State violated covenants.  If those covenants are broken without consequence, the world will become deaf to the vocabulary of covenant that we in the church are called to proclaim. 

Whatever we believe about the hereafter, certainly we can all agree that sin is alive and well in the world and we, the church, have a stake in creating communities in which covenants of all kinds are respected and violations of covenant bring consequences.

For the love of the game, for the love of God, the NCAA needs to act and show the world that another Penn State will not be tolerated.

Mormons, Malls and Millions (well, Billions)

“Jesus said, “If you want to be complete, go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor.  Then you will have treasure in heaven.  And come follow me.”  But when the young man heard this, he went away saddened, because he had many possessions.   -Matthew 19:21,22 CEB

A recent cover story on Bloomberg Businessweek has stirred up a good bit of controversy on the question of church finances.   The story explores the massive financial empire that is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons).  What is so interesting is that the controversy has been more about the cover art on the magazine than about the content of the article. 

The cover depicts the moment recalled in Mormon history when John the Baptist confers the priesthood upon Joseph Smith.  The satirical scene features John the Baptist saying, “"and thou shalt build a shopping mall, own stock in Burger King, and open a Polynesian theme park in Hawaii that shall be largely exempt from the frustrations of tax ..." To be sure the parody is not as tasteless as the infamous Campari ad in Hustler magazine featuring a fictional interview with Jerry Falwell that led to a showdown in the Supreme Court.  Nonetheless, it has garnered a great deal of conversation and comment. 

The cover is in bad taste.  But it is not the issue.  The issue is a church that has more than $40 Billion in business holdings not to mention the $8 Billion in tithes received annually from the tithes of its members.  $40 Billion.  For the sake of perspective, the total market capitalization of Ford Motor Company is $35.4 Billion and the Mormon church has business holdings of $40 Billion. 

Nothing the Mormon Church has done is illegal or even unethical from a business perspective.  At least there is nothing notable enough to make it into the article or subsequent reporting.  There is nothing illegal about a church having large financial holdings.  The issue is not HOW they accumulated such massive holdings but THAT they did.  Like the old saying goes, it takes money to make money so at some points over time church leaders chose to use the church’s assets to buy land (more than 1,000,000 acres of US farmland), franchise businesses and real estate holdings.  In each of those transactions a conscious decision was made to use funds to build business assets rather than to feed the hungry, house the homeless, heal the sick or bring comfort to those in times of need. 

That should give members and nonmembers of the church pause. 

That priority should be put on the relief of suffering in the world is at the heart of Jesus message.  I am not an expert on the Book of Mormon by any means, but I very much doubt that it seeks to overturn Jesus’ teachings to the degree that priority is not on profit.  When we, as individuals or communities, fail to remember Jesus’ call to care for the poor we find ourselves in position of the rich young man; fearfully clinging to the things of this world for fear of losing them forever.

When you control a vast financial empire that stretches into almost every part of life, can you be an effective witness against your own interest?   I other words, if you own shopping malls can you effectively speak against over consumption?  If you own fast food restaurants can you be an effective witness against predatory marketing toward children?  It is difficult to witness against the unjust structures of the world when you depend on those very structures for return on your investment. 

Our churches exist in the world and we have a responsibility to act both faithfully and responsibly with the assets in our care.  In some cases, it is the residual impact of generous gifts given in the past that make present ministries possible.  To be foolish or wasteful with the resources at our disposal would be to break faith with those who gave them.  We also break faith, this time with God, when we fail to use those gifts for the benefit of God's people. 

When Jesus tells the rich young man to sell all he has and give it to the poor, the young man is saddened because he feared losing what he had in this world.  He cannot bring himself to follow Jesus because the cost is just too high.  What if being church meant not owning  a shopping mall?  Or oil wells? Or whatever other assets may need to be disposed of if we are to be free to follow Jesus.  When the assets of the church become burdensome treasures and we begin to hold them back today for fear of needing them tomorrow, they cease to be a blessing to our shared ministry and become, instead, a stumbling block to faithfulness.

There is a fine line between responsible stewardship and fearful hoarding.  The call of the church is to live into the first without falling victim to the second. 

Healthcare, Hypocrites and History

Let me get this out of the way first. I am glad the Supreme Court ruled as it did on healthcare reform. I think it is good for the country to move in a direction that covers more people and I still support single-payer healthcare. Now, on to what I REALLY want to talk about.

There can be little argument that Jesus dislikes hypocrites. I cannot think of a time when his words about them were anything but damning and condemning. Hypocrisy is something that we must all be careful of and be watchful of in our institutions. Today, it is difficult not to see it all around.

In the wake of recent Supreme Court decisions (really starting with Citizens United in 2010), pundits and activists on the political left have been calling for Justice Scalia to resign. The charges against him are:

1.      Rampant partisanism to the point that his jurisprudence no longer makes sense philosophically. It is just a series of policy statements for one political party.

2.      His behavior out of the court bring the office disrepute as he increasingly politicizes the role of the judge.

3.      His willingness to ignore the law, the constitution and consequences in order to render the decision he wants shows that he has his own political ideals and not the American people in mind.

Serious charges all of them. For my part, the only thing that would make me happier than Justice Scalia leaving the Court would be if Justice Alito was leaving with him. That would be a great moment for the American people and the rule of law.

So as far as the hoped for outcome, I agree with the liberal and progressive pundits in wanting to be see Scalia taking another vocational track away from the Supreme Court. What I cannot agree with is their criticism of him noted above.

Yes, Scalia is partisan, much of his behavior is beneath the role of a justice and he seems more concerned with getting his way than getting the law right. But so was William O Douglas! For nearly four decades, Douglas was the liberal Scalia. He was partisan to the point of openly campaigning for the presidency while still a justice, his matrimonial record speaks to his less than stellar moral makeup, and his propensity for penumbras and wild flights of fancy led to opinions based less in reasoned judicial thought and more in one man's determination to get his way and impose his vision on the nation. One thing Scalia and Douglas have in common is a long string of solo concurrences and dissents articulating their take on an issue in a way that not a single colleague could join.

I wonder how many of the voices baying for Scalia's head on a pike would do the same for Douglas? We know what some of his defenders said. Some of Scalia's staunches defenders in the Congress were there when Gerald Ford tried, unsuccessfully, to get Douglas impeached. These conservatives who were so willing to rid themselves of the liberal Douglas for his politicking and questionable ethics are stunned that anyone would attack a Supreme Court Justice like this! Something tells me that, were they around today, many of Douglas's staunch supporters would be taking up their pitch forks and joining the crowd after Scalia.

It is one of the troubling symptoms of our political times that the sort of hypocrisy inherent in these events goes unnoticed. One of the things Jesus spoke harshly about has become as common as air and as tolerated as traffic.

Justice Scalia is certainly an embarrassment to the Court and the country and he should resign for the good of the institution he claims to hold in such high regard. But let's can the moral outrage. The left is no more concerned with the dignity of the court now than the right was in the early 1970's when they went after Douglas.

It is the height of hypocrisy to tolerate behavior in the one who does as you like while condemning it in the one who does not. It might be a good idea to check your own hypocrisy before going after someone else's. Didn't Jesus say something about dealing with the splinter in your own eye, etc?

God Is More Than a Particle

I am about as far as you can get from being a physicist. Yet I am fascinated by the search for the Higgs Bosson. Commonly called the God Particle, the Higgs is expected to explain why matter has mass. This is evidently important and many scientists are excited about it. My interest is more about the whole solving a mystery of the universe. There is something appealing about cosmic questions.

So what happens if, at the press conference called for July 4, the Higgs exponent scientists declare that they have found the Higgs and it goes from theory to reality? What happens if they find the God Particle?

To be fair to the scientists who have spent years on this experiment, they do not like the moniker "God Particle" to describe the Higgs. It overstates the importance and implies that there will be no more questions after it is discovered. They assure that this is not the case. So finding the Higgs does not mean finding God. But that very fact might just teach us something.

The name "God Particle" took off so easily in part because the Higgs represents what God is to many people in Western society; a mystery that seems far off yet ultimately possible to prove or disprove in the end. We lack a vocabulary for the divine in mainstream society. For those of us who embrace as valuable such ideals such as independent thought, critical thinking and the compatibility of faith and reason in the same mind, the rigid orthodoxy of American evangelicalism and fundamentalism provides little help.

And, to be fair, the silence of mainstream theology has contributed little either.  For the last half century mainstream religion has allowed its vocabulary of faith to be supplanted by the vocabulary of scientific method and proof. For my part, I have no trouble with the scientific vocabulary of contemporary society. It is what keeps science science. However, this one vocabulary is not enough for a full life that includes both belief in God and confidence in science. If faith and reason are to co-exist in one life, we need to learn to be bilingual. We need to learn the language of both.

When the only language you have is uncritical faith and you try to explain the physical world, you end up with creationism and so-called "young earth theory."

When the only language you have is that of scientific proof, you end up with a "God Particle" that cannot live up to its name or the hype.

The world needs both. We need to learn again to hold in our lives the language that empowers humanity's ability to look beyond the atom and understand even more fundamental elements of the universe AND the language that lends the ability to look beyond the horizon of our own imaginations to a reality in the divine that cannot be proven because it cannot be replicated, isolated or controlled.
I was asked in a bible study today, in reference to the idea that we need to be as children to enter the kingdom of heaven, why God would give is critically thinking minds if what God wants is for us to be simple like a newborn. I wish, in retrospect, I had the presence of mind then to say tht what God wants is less about not being critical and more about being humble. In other words, I think God wants us to be bilingual- speaking both the language of faith and wonder and the language of science and reason.

The God Particle is not going to prove or disprove God to us any more than the Bible can prove or disprove the existence of the Higgs. What the Higgs may do is give us an even deeper understanding of the universe and ourselves. As someone who believes that we are all wonderfully made by the hands of God, I can't imagine how that knowledge can be a bad thing.

An Open Letter to Dan Savage

Dear Dan,

May I call you Dan?  We have never met and it is probably presumptuous of me, but I have read so much of your writing and seen you interviewed so many times, Dan feels ok. 

So, I am writing because I am worried.  I know that you have an edge to your writing and speaking.  Its part of what I like about it.  You are unflinchingly honest and sometimes honesty has sharp corners.   That is a good thing.  However, there are sharp corners and then there are sharp corners.

The last year or so it seems like you are getting more and more pissed off and I think it is getting in the way.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I am pissed too. 

I am pissed that teenagers are dying and whole segments of our culture do nothing but give a halfhearted tisk-tisk and shake their heads and say how sad it is.  It is not sad it is heartrending and a stain on our whole society.

I am pissed that people in my own faith tradition have turned the gentlest thing in the world, the love of God for God’s children revealed in the Bible, into a weapon to bludgeon and cudgel rather than comfort and heal.

I am pissed that my government just doesn’t give a shit.  About anything.  Or anyone.  Unless of course they have loads of money and power.

So, I am pissed too.  And I understand the temptation to live into that pissed-off-ness.  I at least get to take a break from time to time.  As a public figure, you are out there in the mix of it 24/7.  But, Dan, that is why it is so important for you to not let the BS get the best of you. 

You have become a critical voice for something more than tolerance.  You have become a voice for the importance of active engagement and healing rather than just passively putting up with one another.  I have had more than one young person tell me how important watching or making an “It Gets Better” video was for them.  You really have made a difference.

So you can imagine how disappointing it was to see you speaking to a group of high school kids and, after a diatribe on the Bible (more on that in a minute), calling the kids who walked out pansy-ass.

Pansy-ass! 

Seriously?

It was like watching a really good guy morph on the screen into the bully he has been cutting down to size for the last couple of years!  How does making fun of them do anything but get a cheap laugh and deepen the divide between groups of already divided kids?

And worst of all, it was religious kids you said it to.  Like it or not, religion is a part of our culture.  And even as fast as our culture is secularizing, religion in general and Christianity specifically are not going anywhere soon.  Those kids you ridiculed are the next generation of people of faith. 

I am a pastor.  I work in a church in a rural Arkansas community.  In fact, you were here this week at the university.  It is a highly religious and very conservative place.  And I choose to do ministry here because I refuse to surrender the church in any place to a message of intolerance.  I, and many many more pastors and lay people like me, refuse to give up on the church because we believe it is an instrument of incredible good when we will allow it to be.  Those kids you made fun of are the next generation of leaders in the church.  I understand the temptation to just say go to hell.  I understand the temptation to belittle their beliefs and to dismiss the scriptures on which they rest those beliefs. 

It is tempting and it is easy, but what purpose does it serve?  What purpose is served if I belittle them the way they belittle me for my beliefs?

What was gained by calling those kids out?  Yeah, their beliefs are wrong and can become destructive.  So why harden them against hearing what you have to say?  What is gained by giving them a reason to tune you out?  To not see the error of their ways?

The way we stop the kind of biblical and ecclesiastical abuse that so many kids endure is to never give up preaching a word of truth, hope, love and inclusion. 

I’m not saying that you need to be a preacher.  I have no idea what your own personal faith is.  But I do know that if you are true to your ethic of tolerance, you will respect that there are some of us who still believe in that book you make fun of and we believe that it has something good and hopeful to say about how very much God loves each and every one of God’s children.

I can see how you probably get pissed off about the kind of treatment those kids showed and I understand the temptation to knock them down like tenpins.  It feels good in the moment but it really doesn’t serve any purpose. 

I think you are better than that.  In fact, based on some of the compassionate writing and risk-taking you have done on behalf of GLBTQ kids, I know you are better than that.  So, I hope that you will get back to doing what you do so well, speaking truth to power and standing up for the powerless.  Stay pissed off; just try not to let it get the better of you.

Peace,

Robert Lowry