Making Peace

I have been struggling to understand what God expects of us regarding “being peacemakers” for a few years now.  I know that Jesus says a lot about peacemaking (Matt 5:42-44, Luke 6:26-28, 35-36, etc.).  In fact, the whole bible is full of commands and encouragements and examples of how to make peace.  But those stories either seem way too hard to do, or not meaningful to me. 

Lately I have been listening to others who find themselves on this path towards living at peace in the world.  Buddhists seem to have a lot of wisdom about this topic.  I have a friend who often shares the wisdom she draws from her religion. 

The struggle I have is not so much to respond in anger when people hurt me or treat me poorly; I struggle more with my attitude and with trying not to cause problems or pain for others.  The person I interact with most is my husband, and there are some examples I can draw on that I think we can all relate to.  For example, sometimes he wants to do watch a movie together or go out some place that we would both enjoy.  He is motivated by his love for me and his interest in the movie or speaker.  However, sometimes I want to do something else.  Not something bad, but something that only benefits me (play a video game, watch a movie he wouldn’t enjoy); and I try to get my way.  At that moment I am not thinking about peace; I am only thinking about doing what I want.

The question I have is: when is it OK to pursue my own desires and when should I be willing to give?  I mean, Jesus and the Bible make it sound like we should always be making peace with people.  So does that mean I can state my preference, but I should give in if it seems like someone would be hurt?  Or does it only mean not returning violence with violence?  But how do you define violence? 

Or is God only talking about systemic violence?  I know that shooting unarmed people, regardless of race, is wrong.  In the old days, I’m pretty sure the police would try to arrest someone instead of shoot them.  Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s what I think.  And the capitalist system we currently have, with so few protections for workers and consumers is certainly hurting and even killing people.  Millions of children and elderly people are hungry, that seems like a form of violence when so many other people have enough food to throw a lot of it away. 

What do you think is expected of us?

Kindness – what does it mean?

So, one of the goals of this blog and of my life is to spread some kindness around the world.  It’s a pretty simple idea.  I know how I would like to be treated, and kindness for me means something like the golden rule.  Not necessarily huge sacrifice, but just being nice to people I meet.  Sometimes I can get too philosophical about topics that don’t require it, so let me know if you think I am getting too bogged down with the details.

There are some actions that seem like they would always be considered kind.  For example, letting someone merge in front of you in traffic, cleaning up after yourself at a restaurant or friend’s house are pretty much always considered to be a kindness.

Other actions seem tougher.  Is it more kind to comfort your friend, or confront her about her choice of abusive boyfriend?  If you asked her, she might say she would prefer you help her figure out how to make her relationship with this boyfriend more successful.  Sometimes I think I don’t so much listen to what someone else needs from me, but rather impose my own ideas on them in ways that can seem disrespectful or demeaning.

Maybe it will help to think about why I want to be more kind.  One main reason is that I feel it fits in with my goal of spreading the kind of love that Christ has for people with the rest of the world.  Part of it is because I feel it’s a good start toward making peace with people.  I don’t try to be kind to someone so I can hammer home how great Jesus is, but because I want them to feel like they matter.  That does sound kind of lofty.  That’s why I want people to treat me kindly though.  I want to believe that I matter and that I have worth. 

Also, I think a habit of being kind will hopefully reduce my temptation to be hurtful and selfish.  I hope that I will be less likely to laugh at someone when they mess up.  I hope that I will be more likely to offer support that is genuine.  I hope I will learn to love people that annoy me.  I’ll keep you posted.

What are the police doing?

I am writing this after the non-indictment of Daniel Pantaleo for killing Eric Garner.  Since we have the video in this case, it just goes to show how hard it is to get an indictment against a police officer.   There’s no disputing the facts.  Mr. Garner probably was selling tobacco illegally.  He may have argued with the officers arresting him for selling this tobacco.  He was choked to death by the officer.  The person recording the interaction was charged for filming what happened, but the officer who choked Mr. Garner is not going to be charged?

White people need to understand, the protests are not so much about an individual case as much as the fact that every week or so, there’s another case of an unarmed person being killed by police over something non-life-threatening.  And that person being killed is overwhelmingly likely to be black or brown.  It’s not just that it happens, but that it keeps happening.  I don’t really know how to solve this problem, but it seems to me that it should start with providing each child with the same opportunity to get the best education they can, no matter who their parents are.  Helping each child to have nutritious food to eat, no matter where they live.  To stop incarcerating people for minor drug crimes where no violence was done, so that they can get a job and participate in our civil governance.

I don’t know how we expect people to be contributing members of society when we keep them in schools with so few resources to teach them the skills they will need in this new global economy.  What do we expect when older brothers are fathers are locked up in prisons set up for private profit.  How often do they see the system working to make their lives any better?  What are they supposed to do if the school they attend doesn’t have the textbooks or the teachers to prepare them for life?  You have to have bootstraps before you can pull yourself up by them!

Honesty – is it always the best policy?

I got this idea from a journal writing prompts website, and it seems like a good place to start. On the surface, it’s an easy question, right?  You’re not supposed to lie.  Certainly there are situations where we would probably all agree that it’s better to tell the truth, even if it’s difficult, rather than hide something important from someone. 

On the other hand, we lie all the time, and most people see it as harmless or even a good thing.  You know, the standard answer to the age-old question: “Does this make me look fat?” which should always be “No, darling!”

Maybe we should start with a definition of honesty.  I think it’s more than just not lying.  You can be dishonest through not saying anything when you know something.  You can also be dishonest more in the sense of not being trustworthy.  Like stealing or coercing someone.  I’m going to leave these last 2 ideas for another post; for our purposes today let’s just look at lying or not speaking up when something needs to be said.

There are a lot of gray areas though.  Sometimes what one person considers to be a harmless white lie, is a major deception to the other person.  There are many ways I could go with this one. 

There are a lot of times we stay silent for social reasons.  We don’t stand up and say that we think our friend or co-worker is wrong.  I run into this a lot when people are talking about political issues.  I have opinions that are fairly left of center, and a lot of my friends are more right of center.  When people say things that I feel are wrong or hurtful, I always face the choice of standing up for my truth, or playing nice to get along.  And it matters, because the policies promoted by the right have consequences that harm a lot of people who can’t really protect themselves. 

If everyone was honest all the time, our society would be a lot more contentious, that’s for sure.  But what are the consequences when people aren’t honest?  For one thing, a lot of money can be made by hiding things from consumers and regulators.  People are often sent to jail based on false testimony or false confessions extracted by police who are allowed to lie to suspects (which can be anyone, you just have to be in the wrong place at the wrong time).  When politicians lie about their priorities or the effects of policies they are implementing, all of us can suffer.

So, is honesty the best policy?  I guess it’s complicated.  Maybe we should evaluate it based on the consequences of both telling the truth and lying.  So if I tell you you don’t look fat in that dress, the outcome might be that you wear a dress that doesn’t look good on you, or you might even decide you don’t need to lose weight, which could be a positive or negative outcome.  But if I tell you that my chemical company is not using a certain chemical or process but we are, then the outcome would potentially be much more serious. 

You don’t have to tell your best friend that her eggplant lasagna is gross, but in most cases, I think it’s better to err on the side of being honest most of the time.

The Gay Agenda?

Hello.  I know it's been a long time, but my new idea is to try to make this more interesting for people who follow me.  

So, my church has been considering how they want to respond to the question about how to treat gays in the church, in light of what the Bible says, and what seems true to us.  It's a complicated question for many reasons; I've entitled this post "The Gay Agenda" because I notice a lot of people seem to feel like this is a thing, and that it's a scary thing.

First, let me summarize what I think is an accurate representation of this viewpoint.  According to wikipedia:

The term is applied to efforts to change government policies and laws on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) issues - such as, for example, same-sex marriage and civil unions, LGBT adoption, recognizing sexual orientation as a protected civil rights minority classification, LGBT military participation, inclusion of LGBT history and themes in public education, introduction of anti-bullying legislation to protect LGBT minors - as well as non-governmental campaigns and individual actions that increase visibility and cultural acceptance of LGBT people, relationships, and identities. The term has also been used by some social conservatives to describe alleged goals of LGBT rights activists, such as recruiting heterosexuals into what they term a 'homosexual lifestyle'.

The idea of a homosexual agenda is also used by some Christian critics of LGBT rights in conjunction with a putative ideology they refer to as homosexualism (as opposed to a synonym for homosexuality), using homosexualists to describe people who seek to advance LGBT emancipation.  The use of homosexualist in this way first appeared in 1995 in Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams' book The Pink Swastika, "to refer to any person, homosexual or not, who actively promotes homosexuality as morally and socially equivalent to heterosexuality as a basis for social policy".  Lively and Abrahams in The Pink Swastika argue that alleged homosexuality found in the Nazi Party, specifically within Ernst Röhm's SA, contributed to the extreme militarism of Nazi Germany, and write about the gay agenda in this context.

So, when I talk about the church’s response to homosexuality, it is in this context within conservative thought that ‘traditional values’ are under attack by the people trying to normalize treatment of LGBTQ people.  However, there is also a growing sense in American culture that there is a biological basis for homosexuality, and that everyone should be treated the same with regard to things like housing, employment and the legal system.  While some churches and denominations are reacting defensively to protect the cultural disapproval of anything that deviates from the biblical norm, there are other ways of being faithful to Jesus without excluding some from a place in the church.

I attend a church which is already pretty open to people who are different or don’t fit within the traditional western evangelical group.  Most people have internalized the idea that church is not about judging or expecting conformance.  We are trying to live out Christ’s example of loving each other even when we are not all the same.  It works fairly well in the abstract.  Most of us support legal protections for LGBTQ folks.  Most of us voted for same sex marriage in Canada.  Most of us think the loving God we worship would not create people just to damn them to hell.  But, there’s a difference between accepting the person and accepting the ‘lifestyle’ that is often ascribed to people with an agenda.

I think this is where we run into problems with the idea that there is such a thing as the gay agenda.  In the churches I used to attend, there seems to be a lot of fear around the agenda of gay people, especially as they ask for the same rights straight couples who can marry have.  My interpretation, after many years of association with these Christians is that the biggest fear people have is that somehow their children will be recruited, or otherwise encouraged to adopt the gay lifestyle.  There are many ideas about what would cause this, and I think that is one of the main reasons Christians can be so un-loving toward these people who are marginalized in our society.

Of course there is the problem of homosexuality (or at least homosexual sex) being considered a sin in the bible.  But I sometimes think the reason people focus on this one as being a sin that can keep you out of the church and out of heaven is that connection between homosexuality and children, either pedophilia, or at least influencing children to turn gay.  After all, the bible calls many things sin that people do every day (lying, stealing, not honoring their parents, etc.), but no one really freaks out over people committing those sins.

Of course, there’s tension with this reaction to LGBT people, because Jesus was a pretty accepting guy, when it came to people who were seen as ‘sinners’ in society.  And he did tell us that one of the ways people would know we were Christians was by the way we love people.  The bible is full of warnings about not judging others, and being on the side of those who are marginalized.  We want to be accepting of people, and demonstrate the love and forgiveness that God has shown to us, but we don’t want to have our kids be seduced into that lifestyle, or be victimized by someone who preys on kids.  Also, I think part of the fear Christian people feel about this particular sin is that it is kind of a symbol of all the myriad of ways that American culture is changing from what they remember it to be.  Gay marriage kind of stands for all the other things too: no-fault divorce, prayers being out of schools and other public arenas, the application of freedom of religion to Muslims and other religions, the loosening of community standards in women’s clothing (and teens)and in the proliferation of pornography and sexual story lines in movies and TV.  Many people look back on how things were in the 50’s with rose-coloured glasses and think we should go back to how things were then.

I don’t believe we will fully resolve this issue for the church until each denomination comes to terms with these cultural and religious trends and concerns.  Gay marriage will probably end up being the law of the land in the entire US before too long; how will the church of Jesus react?