Top Ten Favorite Bible Verses, and Then Some

Recently I was tagged by a Facebook friend to post my top ten favorite verses from the Bible, one verse a day for ten consecutive days. Knowing how I am about such things, I decided to post my top ten verses here with some commentary, then share it to my Facebook page and tag my friend. So here they are, in no particular order:

1. “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.” (Psalm 139:14) This verse reminds me of one of my favorite nonbiblical axioms: Who you are is God’s gift to you; whom you become is your gift to God. We are all made just as God intends us to be.

2. “So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” (1 John 4:16) Ironically, some who claim to know God aren’t very loving, and some who doubt the existence of God are very kind and loving individuals. All I know is this: If I were God, and I were faced with welcoming a kind, loving atheist into my presence or a hateful, so-called “Christian,” I think I’d be inclined to welcome the atheist and spend a jolly time convincing him or her that I’m real.

3. “Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received.” (1 Peter 4:10) I firmly believe that every individual has something good to offer the world while they’re in it. I hope in my lifetime I can be the kind of advisor/counselor/teacher who helps others find their gifts to share and make the world a better place for everyone.

4. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (John 3:16-17) One of the first verses a new Christian of any age learns is John 3:16. But we should be including verse 17, too. Not only is it joined to verse 16 by the conjunctive adverb “indeed,” but also it is essential for the full meaning of verse 16. The saving of the world has been accomplished. Jesus’s own last words on the cross were “It is finished.” We’re all saved. We’re all included in God’s realm. That’s the Gospel, the Good News.

5. “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (1 John 4:8) See my comments in number 2.

6. “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22:21) This world is not ours; it’s God’s. This country is not ours; it’s God’s. In fact, I don’t think God really intended for people to even divide themselves into countries (I get this impression from the story of the tower of Babel, and the story of how God seemed reluctant to give the Israelites a king). Borders are drawn by people, not God. We are called to be kind to the strangers among us, because we, too, were once strangers somewhere in time. And we may be strangers in a strange land someday. Thus you can probably guess my opinion about building walls and rejecting refugees.

7. “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28) God doesn’t seem to care about our race or nationality, our socio-economic status, or our gender. All are equal in God’s eyes. All should be equal in our eyes, too. (See my bonus verses at the end of this post for more on God’s inclusive love).

8. “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” (Jeremiah 29:11) My security is in God and God’s plan for my life. It is not in a government or the things that represent that government, like flags and patriotic songs; it’s not in a savings or retirement account; it’s not in a wall or fence along a border; and it’s not in firearms or bombs. It’s in God’s love and concern for me as well as every other person on this planet, all of whom God knows and loves intimately.

9. “…but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:31) This is a good verse for someone like me who has a mild anxiety disorder, which can sometimes make me feel quite tired and overwhelmed. The feelings always pass, and these words give me hope.

10. “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8) Want to make God happy? Do these three things consistently throughout your life: Be just, be kind, and be humble. Easy to say, yet hard to do, right?

I’m throwing in these last few verses from Acts as a bonus:

“As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?’ He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing.” (Acts 8:36-39) This story is significant because, for many generations, people like this eunuch were excluded from the Jews’ holy places because of who they were. But after Jesus came with a new way of relating to God, people like this eunuch were welcomed into fellowship with God. This tells me that all are welcomed into the universal church of Christ regardless of who they are. Now that, my friends, is Good News!

To Live in the Light is to Live Without Fear

          In the wee hours of the morning, when insomnia has won our wrestling match and the thoughts in my brain spin round and round like a whirlpool, epiphanies can occur. Well, either they’re epiphanies or the musings of a madman. Either way, these revelations inspire me to write as a way to process my thoughts, and the theme that emerged this morning is fear.

           For decades, fear kept me from being who I truly am. It kept me in a closet, hiding my heart from everyone for fear of being rejected, or worse, beaten up or even killed. The church taught that people like me were an abomination, worthy of a horrible death. Gay people were not and still aren’t well tolerated in small towns in Texas.

           Fear kept me from running after my vocational dreams. From a very young age, I wanted to be an actor on television. I loved playing fantasy games, where I acted the role of the hero or his or her sidekick. I took steps to an extent by being involved in the drama club in high school and by taking theater classes in college. But the fear of not being able to make a living held me back. I went the practical route instead and got a job in an office. Yuck.

           When it came to speaking my mind, the fear of offending someone or causing conflict kept me silent. I often have strong opinions, and I feel that many of those opinions are valid, but I’m so afraid of rocking the boat that I usually keep my thoughts to myself. The unfortunate consequence is that I have not learned to advocate for myself well, which often makes me passive-aggressive. Lots of fun to be around.

           As a person of faith in God and a follower of the Christ way, I strive to keep my thoughts and actions in alignment with the values I feel are of God. That’s what made me think of fear and how it has impeded my development as a fully realized child of God.

           We associate God with light. In the book of Genesis, God says, “Let there be light.” All of creation emanated from God, and light was the first of God’s creations. Light is good. Plants need it to grow, we need it to be healthy, it keeps us warm. Without light, there is utter and complete darkness, which we associate with fear. That’s why I believe the opposite of love is not hate, but fear. God is love, therefore light comes from love. As light always conquers darkness, so love always conquers fear. The Christian Bible says that in 1 John 4:18. Hate is the result of fear, as is greed and lust and all other destructive attitudes we call sin.

           Fear is what makes Americans put their faith in guns instead of God despite the fact that we have an enormously high mass murder rate among our counterparts in the developed world. Fear keeps our cities and states from showing hospitality to the strangers at our gates, and even makes our leaders penalize those who do try to show hospitality. Read the story of Sodom in the Old Testament, then read Ezekiel 16:49 and feel truly afraid. God did not destroy Sodom because there were supposedly homosexuals there, as some Christians, Jews, and Muslims would have you believe, but rather because they failed to show hospitality to strangers in need. Americans refusing asylum to refugees and building walls on our borders are modern-day Sodomites.

           The fear of people whose skin is darker than our own has caused a centuries-long oppression of black people in America, an oppression that is often tragically acted out on young, black men, sometimes with deadly results.

           Fearing people whose gender identities don’t match their assigned sex has resulted in tragic, senseless acts of violence, too. According to the Human Rights Campaign, at least twenty-one transgendered men and women—nineteen of them people of color—have been killed so far in 2015 in the U.S.

           Sadly, I could go on and on about how fear has caused death and sorrow for so many. One cannot deny that racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, classism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, religious bigotry, and all other attitudes that result in division, hate, anger, and other destructive actions are rooted in fear.

           Those who fear live in darkness. While the light of God’s love might leak through the brokenness of their hearts from time to time, the darkness in there prevails, and fear rules. Greedy corporations and their lobbyists, and the politicians, lawmakers, and law enforcers who are their puppets, use fear to manipulate the masses for their own gains. Another mass shooting? Quick, go buy a gun to keep yourself safe from the terrorists and madmen. Immigrants and refugees taking your jobs away and living off welfare? Here, let me build a wall for you. And don’t worry, I’ll outsource the labor overseas so I can save myself some money. Same-sex marriage destroying the sanctity of your marriage(s)? Well, let’s put a stop to that…but I’ll need a donation from you to run my campaign.

           People who live in that twilight zone between full light and full darkness are especially vulnerable to the temptation to give in to fear. I know, because I’ve been there, and I still find myself there from time to time. Like a moth drawn to a flame, though, I want to always head toward the light. Unlike the poor moth, however, I will be purified by the light of God’s love. I will be able to see more clearly and come to a better understanding of what it really, truly means to be a follower of Christ.

           And the operative word in that previous sentence is “be.” God does not call us to do, but rather to be. To be loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled. I cannot be these things, though, if I live in fear. And being these things does not mean that I do not speak my mind, or pursue my dreams, or express who I am, or stand up for my views. On the contrary, living in the light and casting out fear means that we have courage from God to both be and do all that God knows we can. For me, it is the courage to stand up for justice, peace, tolerance, inclusion, compassion, and generosity. If our being is in the light, then the doing that results will draw others to the light. The darkness will flee, and so will the hate and bigotry and all other fear-based attitudes along with it.

A Letter to Religious Conservatives

A letter to religious conservatives, especially Christians, concerning the recent ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States overturning state bans on marriage equality for same-sex couples:

          As I and other supporters of marriage equality celebrated the Court’s decision, you reacted with a wide range of emotions, from indifference, to disappointment, to sadness, to outright anger. Most of your emotions are fear-based. We expected that of you because fear seems to be the modus operandi of most conservatives.

          However, let’s take a moment to play the “what-if” game. I’ll go first. What if you’re right, and I’m wrong. Come to find out, sexual and affectional orientation is, indeed, a choice, and I have chosen wrongly. On judgment day, when I stand before my Maker—who apparently creates everyone with the capacity for this choice—I will be judged for having chosen to spend my life with a member of my own sex; for having loved and cherished him until death separated us; for enjoying life’s ups and enduring its downs as equal partners in the journey. I will be judged for believing those verses in the Bible (which we both respect and revere, by the way) a bit too literally. You know, the ones that say “Two are better than one…” and so on (see Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 for the whole bit). I will be judged for having forced a good man into my family and having adopted his family as my own. You know, like Ruth did with Naomi. I will be judged for advocating politically for the same rights and responsibilities as opposite-sex couples, so he and I could share our resources more completely and not have them taken away by the state or by greedy family members (not that either mine or his would; they are not like that, thank the Lord) in the case that one of us predeceases the other, and so we could make medical decisions for each other and have hospital visitation rights like opposite-sex married couples. I will be judged for having kissed him hello and goodbye and sometimes for no reason at all. I will be judged for having held his hand and hugged him close. And yes, I will be judged for having had some fantastically fulfilling monogamous sex with him despite the fact that neither one of us could make the other pregnant without a miracle even greater than the Virgin Birth. God will say, “Depart from me, ye worker of iniquity! I never knew you!” Because that’s what God says to everyone who goes to hell, right? Am I on track here? That is what you conservatives believe, right? I should know; I spent the first quarter century or so of my life surrounded by the likes of you.

          OK, your turn. Let’s pretend I’m right and you’re wrong. Sexual/affectional orientation is not a choice; gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people are, indeed, born that way, and God loves us just the way we are. God is much more concerned with how well we’ve loved than with whom we’ve loved, and the Bible does not, after all, forbid same-sex marriage. What will you be judged for? You will be judged for your part in perpetuating centuries of exclusion of LGBT people from your religious communities. You will be judged for lumping them into the same categories as idol worshippers, child molesters, and animal rapists; I’m pretty sure that violates the ninth commandment. Remember those? You like to post them on public property and then forget the ones about stealing and adultery and coveting and so on. You will be judged for your complicit participation in the violence that your less self-controlled counterparts have inflicted on LGBT people because they saw your vitriol and took that as permission to commit horrendous acts against LGBT folks. You will be judged for the thousands upon thousands of LGBT youth who found themselves on the streets after their families learned who they were because those families believed their precious children were an abomination. The blood of LGBT children and teens who killed themselves rather than endure the constant bullying at school and at home will be on your hands. You will be judged for having believed a lie based in misogyny perpetuated by patriarchal religious hierarchies. You will be judged for not having loved others as Christ first loved you. You will be judged for having judged others with often very harmful consequences.

          Remember, this is just a game. And let us heed the words of the Apostle Paul and remember that “…now we see through a glass, darkly.” The fact is that probably neither side of this argument is completely right or completely wrong. Maybe God does like opposite-sex marriage only, or maybe God likes it better than same-sex marriage, or maybe God doesn’t give a rat’s ass about marriage. Jesus did say in Matthew 22 that, like the angels, people won’t be married in Heaven. If marriage is such a big deal to God, then why won’t there be marriage in the afterlife?

          Allowing same-sex marriage will in no way whatsoever affect opposite-sex marriages. The United States is the twenty-second country on the earth to extend civil marriage equality to same-sex couples. None of the others have burned in fire and brimstone. Does that mean that God only cares about American politics? How arrogant to presume so! God doesn’t love America! God loves Americans…and Chinese and Koreans and Japanese and Brazilians and Kenyans and all the other people of all the other countries on this planet we all share. God loves people. And gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered individuals are people loved by God and worthy of dignity and respect.

          Those of us who profess to follow Christ will be judged according to how we have treated “the least of these” (Matthew 25:40). We will also be judged for how well we’ve loved our neighbor as we’ve loved ourselves. Aren’t people who are excluded and reviled among the least of these? Aren’t LGBT people your neighbors? Aren’t we all called to love one another, without condition or exception?

          If fear truly is your modus operandi, then you need to let the love of Christ into your heart. Christ’s love is perfect, and “…perfect love drives out fear.” (1 John 4:18). If, however, you claim to “love the sinner but hate the sin,” then I challenge you to really get to know a same-sex couple. Visit their home. See how they live. Hear their stories. Eat with them. Laugh at jokes together. Play some board or card games. Attend movies and sporting events and concerts and plays together. Meet their families. Maybe even visit the churches and places of worship they attend and see how their congregations worship and fellowship.

Beware, though: conversion and transformation are likely to occur, and you might be surprised at whose heart will be changed.

Wearing Our Faith

          It being a warm, sunny day yesterday, I opted to eat my lunchtime sandwich while sitting on a low wall near a parking lot of the community college across the street from where I work. There was a light amount of foot traffic passing by, mostly the late-teens and twenty-somethings that comprise the majority of the college’s student population. From a distance I could see two figures who did not represent that population, though. Their distinctive white shirts, short-cut hair, and name tags gave their identity away, along with the fact that there were two of them. They’re always in pairs.

          I watched as they greeted students who walked past, asking if they could give them a brochure. Of course they stopped to chat with me. One asked if I was having a good day. “So far, so good,” I replied. Then the other asked if I was a student or teacher at the college. Good tact, I thought. Being mistaken for a student always makes me feel a little good about myself, even if that’s not what the speaker intended. I replied that I worked at the language school across the street. He then informed me that they worked at a school across the street, too, pointing to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints training facility on the other side of the parking lot.

          The young men were very friendly and pleasant, although one of them did most of the talking. Of course the conversation quickly steered toward “the prophet.” The chatty one asked me if I thought it was possible for God to call a prophet for our modern times. I replied that I believe it is possible for God to call whomever God wants and whenever God wants for whatever purposes God decides. They seemed to like that answer. When they inquired more about my faith, I explained that I am a deacon in the Presbyterian church. We talked about Presbyterian missionaries and their terms of service. We talked a little bit about what Presbyterians believe and so on. They invited me to a meeting where I could learn more about “the prophet.” I politely declined.

          By that time I had about ten minutes left before I needed to be back at work, so we amicably parted. Later, as I reflected on the conversation, I wished that I had thought to ask these young men some questions: Why does only one of you do most of the talking? How often do you get to call or write home to your family? Why don’t I ever see black or brown-skinned Mormon missionaries? Or overweight Mormon missionaries, for that matter? Why does your church hate LGBT people so much? And why do you keep talking about “the prophet” when your church is called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints? Why not talk about Jesus and His message more? And do you really wear special undergarments that have been blessed by your church’s leadership?

          Then my thoughts turned to other religious people practicing their faith—or obeying their religion’s mandates—in public places: the Salvation Army in their pseudo-military getups; the Muslim men wearing beards and robes and head dressings, tabling on the sidewalk on the campus; the Jehovah’s Witnesses, looking like the rest of us until they whip out those Watchtowers; there are even a few bare-headed, robed, tambourine-shaking Hare Krishnas leftover from the 1970s here and there, at least in California. There are no pretenses with all these people. You know who you’re talking to when you see them, or at least once you see what kind of literature they’re holding in their hands. And while I don’t personally agree with all of their religion’s precepts, as long as they proclaim a message of peace and love, I can tolerate them as long as they tolerate me.

          It’s when the messages stray from peace and love to practices of exclusion, thought control, domination and submission—an “us vs. them” attitude—that I begin to have a problem with these or any religion’s practices. This morning there was a story online of the Salvation Army’s public service campaign in South Africa to raise awareness of domestic violence. The ad showed a pretty white female model wearing the now-famous white and gold/blue and black dress of recent internet popularity. The model was covered with bruises, and the caption asks why it's so hard to see black and blue (you can see the ad here). I inwardly applauded their noble efforts to help put an end to this detestable practice, but I quickly stopped my clapping when I saw a related story about how the Salvation Army had possibly denied long-term shelter to a homeless transgendered woman. Where’s the love of Christ there? Are attractive white females more worthy of God’s grace than homeless individuals who don’t fit the Salvation Army’s definition of womanhood?

          My finger of blame may be pointing to the Salvation Army, Mormons, and other groups who claim to be a part of the body of Christ, but there are three other fingers pointed right back at myself. I grew up in a strict, predominantly white, Southern-rooted Christian denomination that still doesn’t ordain women as pastors or deacons, still doesn’t allow a divorced man to serve as a pastor or deacon, still condemns dancing, drinking alcohol, and playing cards, and would not tolerate a “practicing homosexual” to worship in their midst (Lord only knows what they’d do with a transgendered individual). This denomination is very male-dominated, patriotic, and focused on the avoidance of sin. I was taught that if a person died before asking God to forgive them of a particular sin, that person would go to Hell. Although I have traveled far from that black-and-white, rules-bound upbringing in my own faith journey, the evil spirits of judgment and labeling, of the “us vs. them” mentality, are hard to exorcise. It’s just that now my “them” are the people whose practices show disrespect for diversity, disregard for the environment, ostracization of the outcast, idolization of country and military might and weapons—basically all the things I am now against. But I know in my heart of hearts that I have such a problem with “them” because I was once them, ignorant and living in spiritual darkness, and inside my soul some of that darkness still struggles against the Light.

          Jesus, the model for my faith, loved everybody, even—and perhaps especially—those who persecuted him. And therein lies my struggle: it’s easy to love those who are like me, who agree with me socio-politically and theologically, who follow lifestyles similar to my own. It’s much harder to love those who are different from me, and the more different they are, the harder it is to love them. The labels for them come just as easily as those in my more conservative days: before, the terms “non-Christian” and “non-believer” encompassed anybody who didn’t fit my worldview, from Communists to liberals to feminists to gays to pacifists; now the labels are Islamophobes, homophobes, misogynists, gun worshipers, nationalists, warmongers, capitalists, and anything else that doesn’t fit my current worldview. I’m just as judgmental as before; it’s just that now I’ve stepped over the line and turned my lens back on the ones I used to stand with, years ago. What I really need to do is turn that lens on myself, get the “plank” out of my own eye in order to better see the “splinter” in my fellow human being’s eye.

          I posted a meme on my personal Facebook page recently, but I posted it as private because I was afraid that many of my conservative Facebook friends would judge me (How ironic, the judger is afraid of being judged!). It stated, “Buddha was not Buddhist. Jesus was not Christian. Muhammad was not Muslim. They were teachers who taught love. Love was their religion.” I liked this meme for several reasons: First, Jesus was not a Christian. He was a Jew. Many Christians throughout history and today conveniently ignore that fact. He worshiped in Jewish synogogues and temples, appointed a rough-around-the-edges Jewish fisherman to be the cornerstone of His community of followers, yet welcomed Gentiles, tax collectors, prostitutes, diseased people, and anybody else into His community, never once telling them that they had to become Jews, or even addressing the religious beliefs of those individuals. His message was all about simply turning to God and living in loving relationship with God and other people. In Jesus’ definition, sin was anything that kept one from loving God, loving others, and loving self completely. Yet like many of our Jewish spiritual forebears, we Christians (and many Muslims, too) became focused on identifying the particular sins of others; we became like the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable, publicly proclaiming how thankful he was that he was not like the nearby unrighteous tax collector. We became self-righteous by deflecting our unrighteousness onto those who did not conform to our own unrealistic expectations of righteousness. Like me, we judge others because we are too uncomfortable judging ourselves—or perhaps because we judge ourselves too harshly and can’t handle the resulting burden of guilt?

          Second, I feel that Christians have misjudged Buddha and Muhammad throughout the years. Buddhists are labeled as idol worshipers, while Muslims are labeled as expansionists and terrorists. Think about how Christians are labeled in many countries and cultures around the world based on the actions of some of those who profess to follow Christ. We are called warmongers, imperialists, and murderers because of what we have done in the name of Christ. What blasphemy against Christ’s name we have committed and continue to commit!

          I do not want to end this blog without acknowledging the Christians, Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Salvation Army members, and others around the world who are united in their efforts to expand their particular group’s views into a more loving embrace of God’s people everywhere. These are the people who advocate for worldwide peace and nonviolence; who work for equity and fairness for the working poor and charity for those who cannot work; who not only invite members of the LGBT community into their fold, but affirm their identities and marriage commitments to each other; who seek to learn from, and not fear, other religious traditions; who respect all gender identities, all sexes, all races and nationalities and ethnicities and intellectual and physical abilities as being of equal value in God’s sight; who simply seek to love God with their whole being, and love others as they love themselves. I want to be like that. I want my only label to be “kind and loving person.” For if God truly is love, as 1 John 4:8 proclaims, then those who fit the label of kind and loving person must surely be a child of God.

Side Trip or Sidetrack?

          In 1988 and again from 1991 to 2002, I taught English as a second or foreign language in South Korea and in various places in the U.S. I enjoyed teaching the English language. It was satisfying to get to know a group of students over a semester or an eight or ten week term. I liked creating learning experiences that were both useful and enjoyable. The conversations with students outside of class time were often stimulating and entertaining, and the cultural excursions were exciting. Put quite simply, it was fun. And for me, it’s important that my work be fun.

          So why did I leave teaching for advising and counseling roles? There were several reasons. Teaching jobs were term-to-term in most cases, not permanent, and although that was more or less in my comfort zone, I felt that the job insecurity caused stress on my relationship with my significant other of that time. There were also no included benefits with the jobs in the U.S., so I had to depend on my significant other’s employee benefits for domestic partners. And the pay wasn’t great. While it would have been enough for me to support myself alone, it wasn’t enough for me to contribute to the lifestyle that seemed important to my significant other. So I sought permanent, full-time jobs with benefits. And, I did have an interest in advising and counseling that pre-dated my relationship with my significant other, so I willingly made the career shift.

          Now I’m more or less done with counseling and looking forward to a new chapter in teaching, this time incorporating more e-learning and multimedia technologies in my practice. I am both excited and nervous, with all sorts of questions spinning in my mind: Will I be able to successfully facilitate learning in my students, helping them reach their educational goals while also fulfilling the expectations of my employer? Will my methods and approaches be outdated? Will I be able to capture and hold the attention of these millennials who have grown up with smart phones and tablets in hand? Will I look like a dinosaur next to the veteran teachers?

          And some of the old concerns have crept back: the insecurity of continued employment from one term to the next; the lack of benefits; the relatively low pay.

          Yet despite these questions and concerns, I wouldn’t go back to counseling unless I absolutely had to. Sitting at a desk in an office all day long; working with students individually one after the other, having the same conversations over and over again; dealing with the stress and drama of departmental and institutional politics; all of that was not for me, no matter how secure the position or how high the pay or how good the benefits. Counseling just didn’t feed my soul. It wasn’t fun at all.

          My faith in God drives me to trust that my Creator loves me and has a plan for me, a plan to prosper me and not to harm me, a plan of hope for my future. Sure, doubts and insecurities sometimes cloud that faith. But if they didn’t, it wouldn’t be faith; it would be certainty, which doesn’t require much faith at all. And without faith, there can be no meaningful relationship with God.

          I believe that in all things, God works for my good. There is good to be found from my years counseling and advising; good that I can bring to the table of my new life as a teacher. A side trip isn’t the same as a sidetrack. I’ll need some time to get back on the teaching track again, for sure, but this time it will feel like a new experience because of the new knowledge I’ve gained. I believe that good awaits me because I’ve consistently encountered good all along my life’s path. In spite of my neurotic anxieties, I don’t expect the path that lies ahead to be any different.

Note: Of great inspiration to me in my decision to return to teaching was Parker J. Palmer’s The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life, 10^th Anniversary Edition (2007, Jossey-Bass).

A Theology of Love

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

1 John 4:7 NRSV

          I grew up in a church that gave me a good foundation for my faith. Elder saints, including my parents, taught me the stories and verses from the Bible that helped me learn the history of the Jewish people and introduced me to the Jewish man upon whom my faith tradition is based. And they modeled the love and compassion that Jesus expressed to others. These were simple country folk, for the most part, without a sophisticated world view and a complicated theology. The church tended to have a fairly literal interpretation of the scriptures and a conservative approach to living out their faith. There were no female pastors or deacons; drinking alcohol, dancing, and gambling were strictly forbidden; and for the longest time, women were discouraged from wearing pants to church, if at all. And we never, ever openly discussed s-e-x. The emphasis seemed to be on having the right belief system, or orthodoxy. We believed that right actions would naturally result from espousing the “right” doctrine.

          The problem with such an approach to the Christian faith is that there are so many sets of “right” beliefs and doctrines within the Christian community. There are schisms created between Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox believers. There are divisions based on one’s eschatology, or one’s beliefs about the final events of human history. The issue of slavery divided the Christian church for hundreds of years. Interracial marriage created divisions in the mid-twentieth century. And today, churches are divided over the full inclusion of GLBT individuals and their right to marry the person of their choice, as well as the issue of a woman’s right to control her own body.

          If the twenty-first century church is to not just survive, but to thrive, we must overcome this fixation on orthodoxy and instead focus on orthopraxy, the right way of doing. When Jesus dwelt among us, he didn’t preach to others about right beliefs. Instead, he focused both his messages and his practices on doing right—right by others, right by self, and most importantly, right by God. Jesus didn’t try to convert Gentiles to Judaism, or one sect of Jews to another sect. He just said, “Follow me.” In other words, Do as I do. And what did Jesus do but feed the hungry, heal the sick, and embrace the outcast in peace and love. The writer of 1 John hit the nail on the head with one sentence: Love is from God, so we should love one another, and that’s how we’ll know who is “right” with God.

          But we all know how very, very difficult it is to love one another. Let’s face it: there are some very unlovable people out there. I myself have a very hard time loving mean people. It doesn’t matter who they are socio-economically; a mean rich person, a mean homeless person, a mean Democrat or a mean Republican, a mean man or a mean woman or a mean child, a mean white person or a mean person of color, a mean liberal or a mean conservative. I just have a hard time loving people who are mean toward others, whether in action or attitude. The flip side of this quandary is that I then have some very mean thoughts toward those mean people. And mean thoughts often result in mean actions. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, indeed (see John 8:7).

          My Christianity has changed considerably since my childhood church days. I don’t see God as an old white man anymore, but rather as a genderless spirit of pure light and love who inhabits all of his/her creation. I see Jesus as a Palestinian Jew and not a fair-haired, fair-skinned European man. I recognize that the Old Testament stories are based on hundreds of generations of oral history that was influenced by a number of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cultures and languages, and not eyewitness accounts recorded by ancient journalists. I acknowledge the fact that the New Testament scriptures were selected from a great collection of letters and accounts by men in power, and that the voices of women and minorities were greatly overlooked. I realize now that the interpretations of these scriptures must take into account their linguistic, cultural, and historical contexts in order to fully understand and bring them to life for our present day realities. And I fully believe that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not a set of four books in the New Testament, but the Good News that Jesus proclaimed: that God loves us enough to give up everything for us, to overlook our shortcomings and imperfections and cover us with incomprehensible grace, and inspire us to love each other as God loves us, thereby resulting in “right” actions toward each other.

          In the Old Testament, God expressed God’s self to the world through God’s chosen people, the Jews. In the New Testament, God expressed God’s self to the world through God’s only son, Jesus. And now, God expresses God’s self in the world through the Christ-Spirit, the spirit of love and mercy and compassion and forgiveness and joy that permeates the world, every language, culture, place, and religion. The writer of 1 John didn’t say, “If you espouse this set of beliefs and hold these tenets of the doctrine dear, then you are born of God and you know God.” He (or she, who knows for sure?) said, “…everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.”      

          The Apostle Paul is credited with writing that we are saved by grace, and not by works (Ephesians 2:8-9). Yet, also allegedly according to Paul, we will be judged by what we have done (2 Corinthians 5:10). The two statements seem contradictory, don’t they? Here’s my interpretation: grace is a gift, freely available to all who will open their minds and hearts to it. It is not a reward that can be earned (as many Christians seem to preach). But I see “Judgment Day” as the day we enter into the eternal presence of God, with those who have done good in their lives—loving others as God loves us—getting to sit a little closer to God at the metaphorical table, no matter who they are—Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, agnostic, rich, poor, gay, straight, whoever—than those who were more focused on having the right belief systems and doctrines, and who were obsessed with being the “right” person before God based on their doctrinal affiliations. Obsessing about the right belief system leads to pride, which is a sin, which separates us from God. But those who possess the spirit of Christ—whether they are aware of it as such or not—will display the Spirit’s fruits: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). There is no law against such things, so these must be what God is looking for in one who is born of God and knows God, right?

          The late writer and poet Maya Angelou, who passed away just this last week, wrote, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” All people want to feel loved; when we feel judged, we don’t feel loved. That’s not to say we should refrain from discerning and calling out beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that are harmful towards others. Such discernment is what spurs Christians toward activism leading to social justice for the poor and the oppressed. But when Christians judge others through the lens of their own rigidly defined set of beliefs and doctrines to the point where the result is oppression and harm to the one being judged, it becomes clear that the motivation is not love at all, but rather fear—which is the opposite of love (see 1 John 4:18). Judgment and fear are most certainly not fruits of the spirit of Christ.

          Right actions don’t always result from right beliefs; just look at the abominable way some Christians treat women, the poor, and GLBT individuals. But might it be possible that right beliefs always result from right actions? That loving others unconditionally and unselfishly naturally results in bringing us closer to the heart of God? That actively pursuing the fruits of the spirit of Christ will bring us into fellowship with God and God’s people? And when we arrive at that point, might we then realize that God’s people—those who are born of God and know God—represent a much broader community of humanity than we originally believed? Those who know God are better able to see others as God sees them. This renewed perception makes loving others, as well as ourselves, a little bit easier.

          I suppose this theology of love can be summed up pretty simply: Do your best to love God, love yourself, love others, and love creation unconditionally. By doing so, you’ll be drawn closer to the mind and heart of God.

Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.

1 John 4:8 NRSV