The Stoning of Jesus

I just finished watching "For The Bible Tells Me So," a documentary about how the "Religious Right", Focus on the Family, and fundamentalist evangelical Christians have abused the God of love and the Bible by stating homosexuality is an abomination to God. First off, I want to thank a lovely young woman who used to watch my children at seminary for recommending the video to me. Rachel, the video made me cry and angry at the same time.

I cried because people of good will, people who have loved God and continue to do so, use God to discriminate, to ostracize, to exclude others from the church because of who they love. I cried because people of good will, people who have loved God and continue to do so, have stood by and let others discriminate, let others ostracize, let others exclude people because of who they love. I cried because God cries at this.

I am angry because, as people of God continue to fight, people continue to die. I am angry because, as the Bible continues to be used as a weapon, people continue to die. People die because of who they are, because of who they love, and because of who God created them to be. For centuries, God and the Bible have been used in ways that are contrary to God and the Bible. Anything that is not of love, anything that is not about giving life, anything that makes people an outcast, demeans people, or dehumanizes people DOES NOT come from God! Even parts of the Bible that say God kills or that God hates or that God destroys IS NOT from God, it IS NOT part of the Bible that is authoritative for God's people today! Those parts of the Bible come from the people who wrote the Bible trying to justify their killing, their warring, they extermination of others. IT IS NOT FROM GOD!!!

When we let this happen, we become the people of Nazareth who forcibly take Jesus out of the town to the tip of the ravine and try to stone him. We are people who try to destroy God. God is a God of love. God is a God of liberation. God is a God who wants nothing more than for us to help the Divine help others live and love and share. Do we stone Jesus more than help him?

HOMOdox?

With a storm raging outside my window right now, I am reading blogs. I love to find something new when I am spending time on the computer. Sometimes I find a new Tae Kwon Do move or a new movie that I have not seen or even a new word. That is what I found today as I roamed the infinite space that we call the Internet.

There is a movement within Lutheranism that calls themselves orthodox Lutheran. If we look at the word orthodox, we find from the Greek that orthos means "right, true, or straight" and doxa means "praise or worship." So the word orthodox really means right, true or straight worship, but it also means "having the right opinion." (I get this information off of Wikipedia. I know that source is not academic, but for our purposes here, it will suffice.)

As I read the blogs, and I cannot remember which one this comes from, but I found something new about these so called orthodox Lutherans. They are really not orthodox. They do not want right worship or having the right opinion, but this movement is about having the same opinion. Hence, they are not orthodox but HOMOdox. Homo means same and and that is what they want. The only thing these Lutherans want is for everyone to believe and think the same way, or I should say think and believe their way.

I don't know about everyone else, but the diversity of theological thought is a good thing. We have diversity in the natural world and it helps us understand more about the world. Therefore, diversity in theological thought helps us understand more about the divine. Having a robust dialogue about the divine gives us all a better understanding of God and our relationship with God. But the key word in that last sentence is dialogue. We must have a two way conversation where each person is willing to come away from that conversation changed. If we do not have a two way form of communication, then it is just dueling monologues and we all lose. Moreover, if we were all the same, if we all looked the same, acted the same, thought the same, think how boring the world would be!

So, every time I see the word orthodox, I will begin to be skeptical!

Lutheran CORE--What a joke!

During this wretched cold snap, I have tried to stay warm by wrapping up in a blanket and reading blogs that really have no meaning at all. It is amazing what one will do when one is really cold! Two of the blogs that I try to pay attention to are the Word Alone web page and Luterhan CORE. I do this not because I want to join, but because one should stay abreast of what the dark side is doing.

I find it funny that a group who in 2002 were complaining about not going along with tradition in the fight against Called to Common Mission now are using tradition as a basis of their argument. In 2002, Word Alone was complaining that the Historic Episcopate was a tradition and not part of scripture, although their displeasure with CCM was not about the HE but about homosexuality! Today, Word Alone is saying that tradition teaches that homosexuality is wrong. Seems like they want their cake and eat it too! How can they have it both ways?

Anyway, the blog Spirit of a Liberal tells a compelling story. Basically of the 10,500 ELCA churches, 135 churches have taken votes to leave the ELCA. Of those churches, 38 have failed to reach the needed 2/3 vote to leave. Therefore, 97 churches have decided to leave the ELCA.

Now that shows just how influential CORE really is. What a joke!