What Santorum Gets Wrong

When I decided some months ago to start blogging again, I intended to avoid politics; I was just going to write responses to the lectionary.

However, when the current frontrunner for the Republican nomination feels that it's appropriate to criticize President Obama for a "phony theology" that is "not based on the Bible," I can't help myself.

When Republicans in Congress can summon an all male panel of clergy to complain that their rights are threatened by insurance coverage for women's healthcare (and simultaneously deny an opportunity to speak to a woman who was prepared to speak to how the laws impact her), something has gone off the rails.

When I say "what Santorum gets wrong," I don't plan to do a point-by-point rebuttal of his various statements and claims. The last thing the world needs is more Christians pointing fingers at each other and saying, "I'm right, you're wrong."

Today, however, is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. While there is a heightened focus on sin and all our various collective and individual failures, there is also necessarily an emphasis on forgiveness and salvation. What Santorum and people like him appear to have not understood - perhaps conceptually, intellectually, but clearly not in their hearts - is that salvation isn't up to us.

Oh, we can have a long argument about salvation by faith versus salvation by works, but that misses the point, too. It's not up to us. It's salvation by God.

The writers of the New Testament reached a pretty clear consensus that grace is a gift, freely given. We don't earn it, and in fact, we can't earn it. There is no person so good, so pure, so virtuous that they can enter into eternal life by their own efforts. No one deserves to go to Heaven. The astonished disciples asked Jesus, "Well, then who can get into Heaven?" He said, simply, "For mortals, it is impossible." Remember, this is the guy who also said, "If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can tell a mountain to uproot itself and fall into the ocean." But Heaven? "For mortals, it is impossible."

And then he says, "For God, all things are possible."

A lot of people - hopefully most people - concede this, even if they maybe don't really believe it. The most self-righteously pious, judgmental blowhard televangelist will also probably be the first person to say he's a sinner, but he's also a lot like that pharisee in the classic parable, pointing at the tax collector and saying to God, "I may not be perfect, but at least I don't sin as much or as badly as that guy." That's really where we find ourselves. "I may not be perfect, but at least I do not have sex outside of marriage/I do not use birth control/I have not had an abortion/[fill in the vice of your choice]." That's basically Rick Santorum: I assume he wouldn't dare say (and doesn't believe) that he's not a sinner, but at least his theology is "based on the Bible," not like that other guy's. It is a classic case of "holier than thou," in the most pathetic and literal (if illiterate) sense.

So it begs the question: if no one is perfect, then just how imperfect can we be, and still get into Heaven? And if that sounds like we're framing the question too much in a "works-based" theology, then let's rephrase: no one fully understands God or gets everything right, so...how wrong can we be and still be "right enough"?

But there again we fail to remember it's not up to us.

The Bible, which is sometimes described as a record of the history of salvation, is not a book full of inspiring, feel-good stories about virtous people, or, at the very least, that would be a grotesque oversimplification. It's a book full of troubling - but ultimately inspiring - stories about a whole lot of very real human beings who say and do all kinds of dumb, mean, fearful, selfish things. What we're meant to take away is that people are complicated, and that God can work with us and through us even though we screw up in ways big and small, all the time. Our brokenness is not an obstacle for God. Paul strenuously insisted that nothing can separate us from God's love, one of many verses the literalists prefer to pretend come with an asterisk.

And so, even laying aside the incredibly sad state of affairs that a self-professed defender of the Constitution does not understand why it's irrelevant, inappropriate and offensive to comment on whether the president's "theology" is sufficiently orthodox for the office, Santorum's own biggest mistake is failing to understand that no one's theology is sufficient.

You just can't legislate people into heaven, Rick.

Eve of Advent IV...or VII...

I'm not terribly proud of the earlier post this week on the parable of the talents. I think I'm "on" to something there, but I don't feel at all confident that I articulated it well, let alone proved my case. I wish that I had had more time to work on it, but there's so much going on this Advent season. It wasn't my best writing, and I'm out of practice. Recently I have also found that my extemporaneous speaking is not what it used to be, and I think there's a connection: I need to write more to practice training my thoughts to be both succinct and eloquent, and also, frankly, to "rehearse" talking points. I used to be better at this. May I find more time and energy to devote to this in the new year.

Today, however, was a special day. Today really felt like Advent. Come, Lord Jesus.

Proper 11, Wednesday, Year 1 - Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Amelia Bloomer, Sojourner Truth & Harriet Ross Tubman

Mark 4:35-41

Alas, I don't have much to say about the amazing women who are remembered in the calendar today, other than just how proud I am to be part of a church that recognizes their contributions to our modern world and honors them with a regular religious observance.

Instead, I have another reflection on the value of reading multiple translations of the Bible. Today's Gospel passage is the familiar story, found in all three synoptic Gospels, of Jesus and the disciples crossing the Sea of Galilee in a boat, only to have a terrible storm arise, threatening to swamp the boat and drown them. Jesus is asleep in the back of the boat, and the apostles wake him in terror and cry, "Do you not care that we are perishing?"

Jesus "rebukes" the wind and says to the sea, "Peace, be still." The wind dies down and the sea becomes calm, and Jesus says, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?"

The reader, of course, has the benefit of knowing who it is in the boat with them and, also, of not being in a small, fragile craft in the middle of a tempest. It's easy for us to scoff and think, "Pfft, they were with Jesus, really...what did they think could happen?"

But from their perspective, they were on the verge of imminent and unpleasant death, and their leader was not only not concerned or trying to help, he was asleep. It's not so strange that they were panicking.

The lesson for us is that Jesus asks us to trust that even now, right now, Jesus is in that boat with us. And yet, do we live our lives like that? How many of us have confidence to weather the storms, as the metaphor goes, without anxiety? That's hard, because to us it often does seem that perhaps Jesus is asleep or not paying attention; we need help, we want assurance of safety, and we want it right now. The Bible asks us to believe that we do have it, right now and always. "Have you still no faith?"

Note, however, the disciples' collective response to this miracle.

The King James Version has Jesus ask, "Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?"

And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?

Beautiful. Why are ye so fearful?....And they feared exceedingly. So typical, right? It doesn't seem to matter how often God comes to our rescue in life, or how spectacularly obvious the intervention is, we cling to our fear. In this case, the miracle not only didn't inspire faith and confidence in the disciples, they became more afraid.

The language here matters, and this seems to be yet another occasion when the KJV, for all its shortcomings, strikes closer to the original Greek, which can be translated, "And they feared a great fear." "Fear" is the important word, we are to note that "fear" is the response to "why are you afraid"?

The NRSV, however, phrases it, "And they were filled with great awe." No!

I understand the editors' desire in many places to use "awe" instead of "fear" because this common phrase "fear of the Lord" doesn't make much sense in the context of God's repeated invitation, "Fear not." Awe, not fear, is the appropriate response in the presence of the Divine.

But the disciples do not respond appropriately; they are not filled with holy awe at the miracle they have just seen, they are filled with fear. That matters for the meaning of the story.

Proper 11, Tuesday, Year 1 - St Macrina

1 Samuel 25:1-22

I have mentioned before that for this two-year lectionary cycle I am studying with the King James Version. This evening I was reading along, following a typically awful Old Testament-style story of betrayal and bloodshed in 1 Samuel (the chapter which begins, by the way, with the death of Samuel...even though there are five more chapters to go, plus 2nd Samuel) but was taken aback when I got to the last verse of the lesson where David is praying to God for assistance in avenging an insult by slaughtering a bunch of innocent people, vowing by morning to have killed "any that pisseth against the wall."

Come again? LOL.

Curious, I turned to the other translations on my shelf (the NRSV, the NIV and the NKJV), all of which instead simply (and preferably...) refer to "men" or "males."

I Googled the phrase, and while admitting it's not like I spent hours of research on this, it does appear that in fact the King James has the more literal rendering of a Hebrew idiom for "men." (The phrase "that pisseth against the wall" appears in the KJV a second time in 1 Samuel 25, and in four verses of 1 & 2 Kings.)

But what really blew my mind was a video that came up of a Baptist pastor citing these verses to insist that God wants men to pee standing up. I won't link to it, you can find it yourself, if you're of a mind.

He relates a story about visiting Germany and seeing signs over toilets asking men not to pee standing up, and, explaining that his wife is German, he asked her, "Is this a joke?" and she apparently said, "No man in Germany pees standing up." "That's where we're headed in this country," says Pastor Steven L. Anderson.

Where to start?

I lived in Switzerland for a year and have visited Germany a couple of times. I lived in a university dorm in Zurich and, yes, there were signs over the toilets in the restrooms saying that peeing standing up was verboten. Now, this isn't because Switzerland has been taken over by anti-Christian feminist zealots, it's because, well, some men have really terrible aim, and no one likes to have to wipe someone else's pee off a toilet seat before using it. Duh. It's called etiquette.

But the idea that there is some sort of Teutonic cultural prohibition against urinating in a vertical position on principle is ridiculous. Any public restroom -- especially in train stations, etc -- will have urinals. In fact, in Switzerland, where the German dialects are sprinkled with French words, the common name for a men's restroom is a pissoir, where there's not a toilet in sight, and not even individual urinals, but just one long porcelain wall (!!!) with a drain at the bottom.

Moreover, "Sitzpinkler" -- which literally means "one who sits to pee" -- is a very common German derogatory word for a less-than-manly man, specifically one who can't stand up for himself.

Anyway, this has nothing to do with poor St Macrina, whose feast unhappily coincides this year with this particular lesson, and who deserves a better post.

Pastor Anderson goes on to caution his listeners against judging him for using bad language by arguing that this word "pisseth" comes directly from the mouth of God, via the Bible. He rails against other translations, including the New King James, for rendering the euphemism as "males" instead of keeping the word-for-word idiom, and cites this as evidence of the extent to which anti-Christian feminizing political correctness has infested even the church itself, in what basically amounts to a xenophobic, sexist, homophobic rant where a holy concept of "masculinity" can be so narrowly defined as to require certain orthodox, patriotic postures for peeing.

I lament that this is the sort of sermon that gets regularly posted to YouTube, and this is what has the potential to go viral. When I think of the hundreds or even thousands of thoughtful sermons that must be given in all kinds of churches every Sunday, to think this is the sort of pathetic nonsense that will form or reaffirm some people's ideas about Christianity and the Bible, I am filled with anger and despair.

Obama's First Huge Mistake

The selection of evangelical megachurch pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the inauguration of Barack Obama on January 20 is absolutely astonishing and tremendously disappointing.

President-elect Obama's defense of the choice is ironic: claiming that he wants to honor and represent the diversity of America, he has gone with a pastor who has stood in public opposition to that ideal.

Rick Warren is entitled to his religious views that homosexuality is incompatible with Scripture and to hold the belief that marriage should be between one man and one woman. He is even entitled to disregard all the available scientific research on the subject of sexual orientation and continue to maintain that homosexuality is a "lifestyle choice" that can be "treated." He was entitled to support California's Proposition 8 and to campaign on its behalf.

What Pastor Warren was not entitled to do, however, was to participate in a campaign of dishonesty about the "threat" the civil marriage of same-sex couples posed to religious freedom and freedom of speech. He claimed that any religious figure who spoke out against homosexuality or same-sex marriage could be "charged" with hate speech and fed the silly fear that churches would be "forced" to hold same-sex wedding ceremonies.

Either Mr. Warren does not understand his own first amendment rights that he claims to be so worried about, or he is a liar.

The legalization of civil marriage for same-sex couples does not restrict in any manner any person's fundamental right to speak in opposition. Just look how many people were censored or arrested for "hate speech" in California during the four months that same-sex marriage was legal there: zero. And how many pastors were forced to bless same-sex unions agains their deeply held religious beliefs? None.

It is true that Warren's rhetoric has been more moderate in tone than many other conservative religious leaders, but the content was no less poisonous. It is odious that in the name of "diversity" Barack Obama has given this honor to a person who used his pulpit to call for the elimination of existing rights for a minority population based on prejudice -- whether protected speech, or no.

Barack Obama's victory was in large part possible because the nation chose to soundly repudiate the politics of pander perfected by Karl Rove in targeting people like Rick Warren and his supporters. It is disheartening that this selection reinforces the notion that to be a credible religious figure in America one must be socially conservative. Why couldn't Obama have picked a progressive member of the clergy, like evangelical activist Jim Wallis? Or why not Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first woman presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, who is also a scientist? Or perhaps a prominent African American scholar like Harvard's Peter Gomes?

Consider me extremely disappointed.

Blasphemy on Several Different Levels

Wow, here's maybe the worst idea anyone's ever had. Paul McCartney and Jesus are both spinning in their graves.

I Thought I'd Seen Everything

You know, I feel like more than 13 years of living in Manhattan allows me to be pretty jaded about quite a lot of stuff.

Nonetheless, when I was strolling around downtown Portland this morning and witnessed a man with his pants down around his ankles humping a trashcan, I have to say I was surprised.

Continuing Saga of the iTunes Genius Sidebar FAIL

I know I have taste in music that runs outside the mainstream, but seriously...what's going on at iTunes? Why is it that when my selection is "Il segreto per esser felice" from Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia sung by Marilyn Horne that the iTunes "Genius" recommendation is "Con te partiro" as "sung" by Andrea Boccelli? This would be like me going into a restaurant and remarking that I like Veuve Clicquot and having the sommelier respond by suggesting a glass of Diet Pepsi. WTF, people?

iTunes Genius Sidebar FAIL

Currently playing: the Benedictus from Mozart's Great Mass in C Minor.

iTunes: "We currently have no matches for this selection. Recommended: "Single Ladies" - Beyonce Knowles."

Ummm...?