For the love of people. . .

Its that simple.

And that hard.

I've spent a  lot of time contemplating the future of the church.  For years now I have stood in the pulpit and looked out at aging congregations.  Probably the most alarming experience was while I was supply preaching.  I went from congregation to congregation and saw that the graying of our membership was not an isolated instance,by far.  And so I wonder what the church will look like in a decade or two.

I must confess.  As I look back too often I have feared membership loss to the extent that I coddled behaviors and attitudes that deep within my soul I feel are contrary to the Gospel.  The intolerance and judgmental attitudes that have prevailed in many a conversation hardly reflect the love of Christ or the compassion of our God and Father.  Yet in many instances they tithed.

To coddle attitudes because my financial security depends on it is not the most defensible witness to the Gospel.  It may in fact be sinful and so I confess.

One of the core tenants of my faith that has emerged more and more over the years is that if we would know the Creator we ought start by observing the creation for it is near to the heart of God.  And if we do that there is one thing, one very BIG thing that is undeniable.  God loves diversity.  From the landscapes that dot this planet (and the universe) to the flora and fauna of every corner of our world.

And one of the most regrettable tendencies of our human spirit is to limit this diversity and opt for a controlled uniformity.  Nothing is farther from the Spirit of God.  Yet we persist.

You see this in many ways.  Bananas for example.  Worldwide there are about 1,000 different varieties.  And only one that is exported, the Cavendish.  One.  There was a crisis among banana producers in years past.  The one banana that they focused on for production became diseased.  The lack of biodiversity meant that crops worldwide were at risk.  I digress.  If God went to the trouble of creating a thousand different types of bananas, God obviously loves diversity.

And humans also excel at diversity.  A few different varieties. And that makes us uneasy. 

One tendency of education is to impose conformity as opposed to encouraging diversity.  This is especially true of religious education where we are too quick to assume a common path to the divine and a homogeneous human experience.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  When God created us it was not with the intention that you would be me.

Human sexuality is one such example of the diversity of creation.  We are not all the same.  And no one experience can be applied universally without reeking havoc on the individual.  And yet we try.  Perversity is the condition of being different than me. . .

Back to the original point.  Will the church chart a future that imposes conformity or which celebrates the diversity of God's creation? 

Kennon Callahan, a church growth consultant, talks about the 'principle of homogeneity'.  "Birds of a feather flock together."  If you desire to successfully grow a congregation focus on one type of people because few truly can handle diversity. 

What is more important?  To have a successful congregation or to be faithful to the Gospel and the Love of God?

Dare we live in a world in which the Cavendish is not the only  banana and "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" is not the only hymn?  Dare we love each unique individual without the expectation of conformity to a universal norm?  And to be clear, it's not that the Cavendish is a bad banana.  It's just not the only banana.  It's not that being a blond haired, blue eyed, balding and aging man of Norwegian descent is bad.  It's just not the totality of the human experience. 

I wish my church was more diverse.  But I also acknowledge that my church will never be able to be home to the full spectrum of human religious conviction.  There is a place for Baptists, and Pentecostals, and Orthodox, and Catholics, and Jewish people, and Hindus, and Buddhists, and Muslims, and even those whose experience of the divine is at best a question mark. 

What I know is that I can no longer define my faith against others.  It is for the love of people that God brought us forth in all our diversity and one cannot love God while despising those who are created in the Divine Image.

An End to Righteousness and Purity

"I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.”  Genesis 8:21

The early chapters of Genesis offer to us explanations for some of the epic questions of life.  One of those is the question of evil, and why God doesn’t act to wipe evil off the face of the earth.  Never again.  Following the flood, God’s resolve is that such an act of judgment will never again happen.  The reason is that “the human heart is evil from youth”.  In other words, if God were to destroy evil, there would be no end to the slaughter as at one level we are all inclined to wickedness.

And yet we offer up one lament after another for the wickedness that remains part of the human story.  This week was a bad one.  Two major assaults.  Bombs sent to Democratic leaders and activists.  And then there was the mass shooting at a Jewish house of worship in Pennsylvania. These seem to be at least in part politically motivated-- the work of deranged minds.  Are they at least in part the result of the harsh political divide in our country?  Yes, but it’s too early to come to conclusions.

Sometimes these acts of violence have had no motivation whatsoever, except to do evil.  At other times there is a motivation, a belief that somehow these acts are justified and serve a greater good.  The gunman believes that he is acting ‘for the good of all’ by destroying those who are responsible for the problems in society.  Early indications are that the gunman at the Jewish temple believed that Jews were responsible for the “invasion” of immigrants from South America.

Historically, one of the most pervasive causes of evil is ironically the belief in a utopian future.  If only certain people were overcome or eliminated, then evil would be eradicated from the earth.  Stalin purged the Russian population in the name of establishing a utopian socialist society.  Hitler believed that the eradication of the Jews would solve Europe’s problems and bring about a better world.  It was the “final solution”.  It is the belief that a greater good is being served that justifies acts of evil.  As people pursue a pure and perfect society, inevitably entire classes of people need to be eliminated for the sake of that purity.  And even in our country, Native Americans were seen as an obstacle that needed to be overcome in the building of this nation.  My ancestors were the direct beneficiaries of this effort as they were given land to homestead following the Indian wars.

If there is a solution to this, it is that we accept each other and the world as imperfect.   And part of that is accepting a rich diversity, not a pure unity. 

In the political realm this means embracing the give and take of a multiple party system.  Republicans and Democrats need each other’s perspective as correctives to their own.  The opposition party is not an impediment to progress, but an essential part of that.

Within the Church this means practicing love, forgiveness, and a reconciled diversity not a purified righteousness.  When metal is purified, the dross needs to be burned off.  This metaphor, though used in the bible, actually can never work in the church.  If we seek to purify the church of sinners, in the end nothing is left. 

That’s why in the history of salvation God decided to pursue the path of forgiveness and acceptance, not purity. 

At the end of the Bible, in the book of Revelation, we have a description of the final battle against the forces of evil.  One of the lessons of that is that evil will remain part of our world until the end.  No amount of effort on our part will be able to create a ‘pure’ society.  Instead, to live well means living with each other, faults and all.

We cannot solve the problem of evil in the world.  What we can do on a day to day basis is simply to love and accept one another, even in our differences.  You are not always going to agree with me or me with you.  Nevertheless, we are both part of the Church and the society.

As a church we are called to love one another.  As a society we need to practice civility in public discourse and relationships.  And we need to accept that this is an imperfect world that can never be purified.

Acceptance and Adaptation

I'm an avid Seahawks fan.  So much so that I follow them intently even during the offseason.  This last week the Seahawks signed a veteran wide receiver, Brandon Marshall.  Brandon has had a checkered past, with many off field issues.  He has revealed that he has and is being treated for Borderline Personality Disorder.  This knowledge and the treatment he has received has resulted in a transformation in his life.  He, like me, has been open about it and seeks to remove the stigma of living with mental illness.  His story stimulated some thoughts and observations.

When one finally has a diagnosis it goes a long way to explaining, but not excusing behavior.  In other words, I'm not much on a mental health defense, claiming one is not responsible for actions because one is mentally ill.  At the same time, there is a degree to which one is out of control and hence absolved to a degree from personal responsibility.  It's a fine line.

Case in point:  As a bipolar person I experienced both the highs of mania and the lows of depression.  These were not in anyway choices.  They did, however, affect day to day choices.  One of the difficulties of dealing with mental illness prior to diagnosis and treatment is that "normal" is defined as one's own experience.  I could not recognize the wide swings in mood as anything other than normal, in that it was "my" normal.  I believe that one of the most crucial things a friend or family member can do to assist a person with mental illness is to help them identify and recognize that certain behaviors are not "normal".

Expect resistance.  Admitting one is no longer "normal" is difficult.  One blatant example of this in my life was my alcohol consumption.  I was self medicating with alcohol, using it as a sleep aid and to control my moods.  I had thoroughly convinced myself that having a "couple of drinks" in the evening was normal.  Now, define "drink".  The standard "drink" of hard liquor is 1 to 1 1/2 fluid ounces.  A shot.  My definition was "whatever I could fit in a glass".  And my scotch glasses got larger as time went on.  My "couple of drinks" was in the end, over ten fluid ounces per day, on average.  So, that's 7 to 10 "drinks" per night.  Given the opportunity I could drink a fifth of scotch in a sitting.  I needed help to recognize that this was not, in fact, normal.  But recognizing this was not easy, even as my wife was crying out about it.  Denial is a major factor.

Nor were my experiences of mania and depression easy to recognize as not normal.  Everyone has their highs and lows, right?  Well, within reason.  The problem is that even now, five years into treatment, I am just discovering what "normal" is.  Today, I no longer fall off a cliff into deep depression.  Stability is the new norm.  I'm learning that.  But it takes time.

With recognition comes responsibility.  No excuses.  Grandiose schemes are symptoms of mania.  I have a responsibility to accept this, and be responsible for managing this.  There is no excuse for my spending our life savings on a risky business venture, no matter how reasonable it may seem to me.  For me one of the most difficult things has been to realize that I need other people's perspective.  Another example.  I have family members who struggle with being OCD.  Now being OCD offers a good explanation why one feels it necessary to have a specific number of ice cubes in a drink, not four, not six, but five.  However, it is not an excuse for going ballistic if someone serves you a drink with the wrong number of ice cubes in it. 

A second observation is that altering unhealthy behaviors requires intentional choices that go against what has become "normal".  Regarding the ice cube example, I wonder if it wouldn't be a good adaptation to intentionally choose to have a random number of ice cubes in a drink.  In my own case, the tendency to make risky business decisions is probably best served by not putting myself in the position to be making those decisions in the first place.  Maybe being a self employed person is not in my own best interest.  Adapting to life as a bipolar person may necessitate making intentional choices to live differently than before.

One of the hardest things to accept is that chemistry plays a huge part in mental health.  To me there is a deep desire to believe that my thoughts are independent and stand on their own.  It's hard to admit that my mood on a particular day may be entirely the result of the chemical balance in my brain.  Likewise, that my new experience of "normal" is chemically assisted through medication.  I guess what I'm saying is that western thought has often focused on a mind/body distinction.  More and more what we are discovering is that the two can not be separated.  Brain chemistry is intricately intertwined with mood and thought patterns.  And I'm not sure anyone understands which comes first.

Finally, I believe that we need to come to a new recognition that mental health issues are as universal as physical health issues.  That's essential to  removing some of the stigma surrounding mental health.  It is as "normal" to experience varying degrees of mental health, as it is to experience varying degrees of physical health.  That some of us have a specific diagnosis does not separate us as a class from the rest of humanity.  Depression to one degree or another, is a universal human experience.  That some must be diagnosed and treated is a matter of degree not type.  Everyone experiences highs and lows.  For some that becomes extreme enough to be debilitating.  It's like cholesterol.  We've all got it.  It's just that for some, the specific level and type of cholesterol may be problematic.

A second part of this is that I believe we would do well as a society to pay as much attention to mental health issues as we do to physical health issues.  Mental health screenings should be a regular part of our health maintenance.  Physicals should be more than "physicals".  I wonder if at some point the medical field will advance to the point where chemical analysis of the brain will enable not only diagnosis but also prevention.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if one could identify tendencies and take corrective action before mental health is compromised, again, just like we do with cholesterol levels. 

Enough for tonight.  I'll see what dreams the night has left for me.