All in Ethics
Here’s what’s going on in America today: There’s a steaming pile of goopy food flying about in the next room, and too many of us are asking someone to please put up a curtain so we don’t have to see and smell that unpleasantness. We just can’t be bothered by other people’s problems right now; we’re too stressed out already.
In this momentous year of presidential politics, COVID-19 and racial reckoning, it’s time for Christians to reclaim a message that is biblical — whether it appears political or not. Politicians should not be the ones defining what is a biblical view, and neither should church members who just want to avoid being challenged in their biases.
This year, Juneteenth must not be a “black holiday.” If we are to find a way forward in our country, if we are to be authentic followers of Jesus, we must find the humility to admit that we don’t know nearly as much as we think we do. This year, Juneteenth must become a day for all of us to earnestly fill in the gaps of the stories we have not been taught. To fail to do so will leave us all in bondage.
I’ve finally figured out why so many white evangelical Christians are so angry and claim they are being persecuted in America today. And it turns out we have something in common I hadn’t previously understood.
Most Americans believe everyone ought to be able to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. That’s the ideal we imagined, at least: If everyone would work harder or be smarter, they could achieve the American dream. Here’s the problem with that logic: Not everyone has working bootstraps to pull up.
This is not a Republican-versus-Democrat problem in our churches – although some politicians are working overtime to make it that, and one interloper has taken the reins vigorously. This is a failure of all of us to espouse a consistent ethic, a consistent theology, a holistic view of the demands of Christian community.
When someone frequently has to tell you how they are ‘not a racist’ or ‘not a bigot’ or ‘not sexist,’ there’s a pretty good chance they actually are those things.
This is the trickle-down moral economics of American policy today. It's harder and harder to know who are the good players and who are the bad players and who are the opportunistic players. It's possible some are all three at the same time.
Recent travels have afforded me the opportunity to walk in the paths of both Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty of Ireland and Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli of Rome. Their paths converged at the Vatican during the atrocities of World War II. The subsequent passage of time has shown Pius XII to have been complicit in enabling Hitler’s genocide while appearing to say slightly reassuring things and O’Flaherty to have quietly done the right thing by saving 6,500 people from execution.
Sadly, it seems America’s cultural divide has reached such a bitter impasse that the Golden Rule no longer applies. We’ve short-circuited it by jumping to the conclusion that “others” are not like us enough for the Golden Rule to apply.
Here’s a biblical appeal to evangelical Christians who don’t feel any responsibility to prevent further worsening of the climate: The why doesn’t matter so much to those of us (like me) who can’t cite the specifics of climate science. The what-to-do does matter to all of us who believe God has entrusted the earth to human care.
What congregants seem to mean when they ask pastors to “just preach the gospel” is to avoid the things that make them uncomfortable and cause them to leave worship with something less than a warm glow in their hearts. They want Christmas Eve and Easter Sunday sermons, not Ash Wednesday or Good Friday sermons.
One of the greatest blind spots of white privilege is the ability not to talk with your children about critical issues of the day, to “protect” them from reality. Black parents don’t have this privilege. Hispanic parents don’t have this privilege. Poor parents don’t have this privilege. Immigrant parents don’t have this privilege. My parents had this privilege, even though they would have been sympathetic to integration. The point is, they didn’t have to talk about, though.
For men and women who are secure in their sexual orientation or gender identity to definitively testify to God calling them to service just as they are — that’s a game changer. Especially when it’s not just one or two random people but instead a pattern among people who never knew each other before. Perhaps it’s time for us to connect the dots and try to puzzle out what God’s Spirit is painting among us.
It turns out that ABC has a sharper moral compass than the Evangelical church in America today. ABC took a stand against racist hate speech by cancelling the “Roseanne” show, which was making the network a ton of money. In contrast, Evangelical pastors and churches have bowed down to the most blatantly racist American president since Andrew Jackson and have refused to challenge him for fear of losing influence in Washington.
Unless a face-to-face with Jesus has straightened out his theology or his politics — or both — Ed McAteer no doubt was smiling down from heaven this week as the United States relocated its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. No religious figure worked harder for such an outcome than McAteer, who died in 2004 at the age of 78.
Our congregation went through 18 months of intense study, prayer and dialogue about LGBTQ inclusion, and we have the scars to show for it. And we would have had scars regardless of which way the decision went. But we are better for choosing the good over the easy.
I’ve reminded myself that as a young professional I had to learn the hard way that not every joke a guy might want to tell is actually funny. For example, it’s wise to avoid any joke that mentions PMS and livestock in the same sentence. I was 26. And boy, did I learn a lesson that day — one that has stuck with me for nearly 30 years.
What would happen if someone voted based on what would benefit his neighbor more than what would benefit himself? What would happen if someone watched the stock market with concern about what was happening to vulnerable people more than what would benefit her own portfolio? What would happen if someone used their platform of privilege to speak out on behalf of those who cannot be heard rather than demanding more rights for his own tribe?
Here’s the problem with saying we must never talk about politics at church: We immediately cede to politicians the right to define what is political and what is theological. And then the church loses its voice on theology because important biblical concepts have been wrongly labeled “politics” and therefore off limits.
