iTunes Christianity

iTunes has revolutionized the music industry. The days of buying an entire album just to get a few songs are gone. Today consumers can pick and choose the only songs and shows they want and place them on their computers, iPods, and burn them to CDs. I doubt there will be any more concept albums like Dark Side of the Moon or Sgt. Peppers because music executives only want singles that they can market on iTunes for $.99 or $1.29 a pop. This is only one aspect of the consumer trend of customization. Today consumers have thousands of choices and thousands more choices within choices. We can build computers, cars, clothes, and other items to our exact specifications without any excess baggage we do not want.

This mentality is no longer limited to consumer products. eHarmony can provide us with a perfect mate scientifically selected to be compatible, doing away with all that nasty getting to know you stuff. This mentality, naturally, is now a part of our spiritual lives. Parade Magazine along with CBS Sunday Morning presented a snapshot of the American spiritual landscape with some very interesting results. Americans now pick and choose elements from one or several religious traditions and combine them in a customized package. I call this iTunes Christianity.

Americans are embracing the parts of the Christian faith that they want and ignoring the rest. Americans want churches to meet their increasingly high demands and if one church or denomination fails at this task they simply move on to another. This is indicative of the consumer nature of Christianity where spirituality or faith matters are commodities to be bought and sold, just look at the religion section at Barnes and Noble or turn on TBN.


The report on CBS Sunday morning included an interview with Randall Balmer, professor of Religion at Columbia University and Episcopal priest who said that Christians today have no problem being a member of a denomination while practicing Tai Chi in the park, consulting astrological tables, and doing yoga when they get home from work and see no problem with the mix. Another person interviewed was Garrett Sarley who was an Episcopal, then a Catholic, (do you see a pattern here) and now is a yoga instructor and CEO of a yoga center. He sums up the issue pretty well. “People start to look for how do I produce the experience that I want from my religion without having to adopt the beliefs that don’t seem to match or don’t seem relevant with how I’m living my life.” I will delve into this statement a little later.

This does not just include men and women doing yoga at the Y or checking their horoscope in the local newspaper. This also includes those using their Christianity to promote a certain political or ideological platform. These persons focus on the limited aspects of the Christian faith that match their social political agendas. These are both liberal and conservative. We must ask ourselves, are we using Scripture and our faith tradition to support our politics or are our political beliefs shaped by our faith? One example of this making its way around the Christian blogosphere is the new Conservative translation of the Bible. This translation will literally cut out those “liberal” verses from the Bible. You know the whole taking care of the least of these and love you neighbor business. Instead, it will look for Biblical support of capitalism and private property. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

In any case iTunes Christianity becomes more about personal fulfillment and happiness rather than worshiping and serving God. It becomes what does God and the church do for me? If the answer is not satisfactory then we move on to the next church or the next religion. Garrett Sarley makes it clear. People want the benefits of religion without any of the sacrifice. People want the grace and the good feelings without any of the discipleship and accountability.

The truth is that the real joy of practicing a religious faith is in the discipline. It is in the service. Jesus taught to seek the Kingdom of God first and all other things will come as well. The Hindu and Buddhist faiths teach that with discipline comes enlightenment, albeit in different ways. Being a Christian is not about self-help or self-service but the elimination of the focus on the self and a renewed focus upon God and neighbor.

I also think that religious faith; especially Christian faith should not make you feel good about yourself all the time. If the teachings of Christ do not make you cringe at yourself at least every now and then perhaps you are not being exposed to the fullness of the Christian faith. Discipline and discipleship lead us to be more Christlike and require us to respond to the love and grace of God by conforming to Christ. We have to take the whole thing or none at all. We cannot pick and choose those things we like and ignore the difficult or uncomfortable aspects of Christianity.

Eight years later...

It is hard t o believe that eight years have gone by since 9/11/2001. We all know where we were when those planes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. We all still remember how our hearts broke when the towers fell. We knew that thousands had just lost their lives. Eight years later, where are we in our recovery? I do not speak about those individuals who lost family members and friends on 9/11, but instead I want to talk about the United States as a community. We are a community despite our rampant individualism. Unfortunately, if takes an event of great tragedy to remind us that we are a community.

Any book on grieving will tell you that it is a process and that each person grieves in different ways, but each person must move forward, however slowly, through the process. I do not believe that our country grieved over 9/11. Yes, there were countless TV specials, as I am sure there will be today, and we place our flags on our porches and we post our special 9/11 Facebook statuses. However, I believe that we never really dealt with our collective pain and the gaping wound we suffered as a community on 9/11. We were encouraged to shop after 9/11 and go to baseball and football games. We were told to go out and buy a house or buy a Ford or the terrorists will win. Our leaders, with the exception of some of our religious leaders, never told us to grieve and so our wound never healed. Perhaps, we tried to ignore our pain and now we only bring it our one day a year. Now our unhealed and ignore wound is festering. It festers with the infection of racism, bigotry, and profiling. It led us into two wars with suspicious, at best, connections to Al Qaeda and 9/11. Our grief and our unhealed wound lead us to create a false idol of Americana, where everything is alright as long as you wear a flag pin and put your hand over your heart. We remember 9/11 one day a year and for the other 364 days we will sweep our grief under the rug. However, we must remember that when there is not grieving there is not healing and there is no forgiveness.

To speak of forgiveness for those 19 men on those planes and the countless others who planned and funded the attacks is blasphemous in the United States. How could we, as a community, ever forgive anyone who inflicted such a tragic blow to us? Let me be clear, forgiveness does not mean that Osama Bin Laden and the other perpetrators should not be held accountable and brought to justice. However, forgiveness does mean that we begin to heal the wound of our community. The radical message of the cross is that the same forgiveness that washes over us as Americans washes over those 19 men.

What unity there was in the days and weeks following 9/11 has long since passed. We are divided and angry. Perhaps the fragility of our unity was due to it being based on anger and fear rather than grief and forgiveness. After eight years, I think it is time to begin.

People of Wal-Mart: People of God

There is a website sweeping the Internet and social networking sites called People of Wal-Mart http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/. The premise of this site is people take pictures of people at Wal-Mart dressed in ridiculous or less than desirable clothes or with mullets or funny in some other way. People look and laugh at those who are dressed worse than we are and maybe we feel a little better about ourselves. I must admit that the first time I saw this site I rolled with laughter and I wondered where people’s heads and pride have gone. Perhaps this site is like “You might be a redneck…” where people make fun of themselves a little but because they know they are guilty of the same thing. However, in reading the RCL texts for this week (Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost Year B), I may have a change of heart. James 2:2-4 NSRV reads

For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, ‘Have a seat here, please’, while to the one who is poor you say, ‘Stand there’, or, ‘Sit at my feet’, have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?

We all get a chuckle at the guy with the socks and sandals or the woman with the tube-top a few sizes too small, but what happens when we allow our chuckle to become a prejudice? Are we placing ourselves at a higher level or class when we look at these pictures? I confess that these thoughts cross my mind when I see people in dirty jeans or perhaps those who have not bathed in awhile. What if that person was not a Wal-Mart but at church? How would our attitudes change? Too many times we judge others and ourselves by the clothes that we wear and unfortunately this happens too often at church. The biggest controversy after worship music seems to be the dress code. Should suits and dresses still be the norm or is it anything goes? Does God not care about our dress or should be present our best before God? These seem like irrelevant questions in the scheme of church growth, but what happens when growth works and the people who come in are not what the people expected?

There is nothing wrong with a little humor, especially when we laugh at ourselves. However, we must always remember that the people of Wal-Mart are also the people of God created in the same Imago Dei as the rest of us. Let us not pass over those dressed poorly in favor for those dressed in the Rolex. Remember, Bernie Madoff probably wore a Rolex.

The Health Care Debate Brings Out the Worst in Humanity

Well unless you have been living under a rock somewhere in the desert you know there is a health care reform debate going on in this country and it has gone out of control. This post will not engage in a “for or against” argument of the proposed bill and I will only say that reform is needed in some way. Instead, I want to look at the debate itself and how it continues to bring out the worst in people both as Americans and as humans. There is a laundry list of problems that I see with the debate.

Fear

The use of scare-tactics and fear mongering is sickening. The use of misleading and outright untrue advertising and political commentary has spread like wildfire and only grown in the depths of lunacy culminating in the threat of so-called “Obama death panels” to sit in judgment of the elderly in order to decide the value of a particular human life. This is not only untrue it is irresponsible for elected officials and so-called “news” people to propagate this as fact. This was seen during the election against Obama when McCain/Palin tried to throw everything they could and nothing stuck. It failed then and it will fail now.

The truth is that those “great Americans” on Fox News who scare you with such false accusations are not doing so in order to help you. They don’t care about you. They are using you. They are scaring you in order to use you to further their own agenda. It is as simple as that.

Anger, Hatred, and Racism

Yoda has a great line in a rather disappointing Star Wars Episode 1: A Phantom Menace. When speaking to young Anakin Skywalker he says: “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” There is no better example of this than the health care reform debate. People get scared and then they get angry. We have seen this many times in these town hall meetings. People scream, make signs, and wear t-shirts expressing their anger over the false facts they were fed the night before on Glenn Beck.

This anger leads to hatred and the inevitable ad hominem attacks. Obama and the Democrats are liberals and socialists and un-American and un-Christian. If you support health care reform then you are automatically lumped into the depths of Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Fidel Castro. You not only become un-American, you become subhuman. I have heard as much from conservative talk show hosts. If a person is subhuman then his or her opinion is worthless and he or she can be shut up by force if needed. It really ticks me off when Americans are compared with Hitler. My grandfather and Obama’s grandfather both served in WWII fighting the Nazis and for anyone, Democrat or Republican, to accuse someone of being a Nazi is incorrigible.

Talking about hate leads to racism. We have our first African-American president. I wonder if a white president, even a liberal one, would face the same resistance and fear mongering. We have heard every racist comment one can imagine. Obama is a Muslim. Obama studied at a school for terrorists. This racism culminated with the so-called “birthers” who make the ludicrous accusation that Obama was born in Kenya, this again leads to fear and more and deeper racism. For anyone to make the claim that the election of a Black president somehow ended racism in the United States is foolish and misguided at best.

Violence

All of these heated feelings have led and will lead to violence. Scuffles and fights are breaking out in these town hall meetings. Congressmen are burned and lynched in effigy. Several people have been arrested for carrying or attempting to carry firearms into these meetings. I pray that it doesn’t happen, but I really think someone is going to be killed at one of these meetings. I also pray for the safety of our leaders, especially President Obama. I do not always agree with their politics, but they are still people with kids and families.

Selfishness and Greed

Another hateful aspect of humanity that this debate has brought out is selfishness and greed. People feel that money and health care will be taken away from them and given to some undeserving vagrant or worse still immigrant. It is in times of economic downturn when people recede into their shells like a scared turtle and refuse to help anyone but themselves and their immediate families. This selfishness is not limited to money, but I hear many people say that “My America” is gone and it is replaced by a socialist state. What is “My America”? First of all I thought it was “our” America. Secondly, if it is anyone’s American it is the Native peoples who had their land stolen by Europeans.

We cannot allow the debate to continue to deteriorate because at best nothing will be accomplished and at worst someone will die. We need to return to the things that united us rather than divide us. We are all Americans and we all need to work together and listen to one another rather than shout one another down. Remember the words of our greatest President Abraham Lincoln.

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Making and Learning From Mistakes

I made a mistake today. Without getting into too much detail I did not make a pastoral visit when I should have. Instead of listening to my gut, I listened to my head and to another person and I waited. I waited too long for some people's comfort. There were some hurt feelings both theirs and mine. Sometimes it takes mistakes to learn lessons. Unfortunately, they don't/can't teach this stuff in seminary one must learn it on her/his own. I think the best move is to admit you're wrong and learn a lesson from the mistake. Is there a line between one's gut and one's head? How do we know which one to listen to?

How Far Have We Come?

Forty years ago today Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took small steps for men and giant leaps for humankind. Marking this tremendous accomplishment makes me wonder who far we have come? Technology has made gigantic leaps forward. Today's average cell phone has 5x the computing power of the entire Apollo 11 Command module. Computers are in millions of homes and astronauts are tweeting from orbit things that were only found in science-fiction in 1969. We continue to move forward technologically.

We have just elected our first African-American president, something else that was unheard of and even unimagined in 1969. The gap between whites and blacks have narrowed, but are still prominent. How far have we come socially? The KKK recently rallied in my hometown of Pulaski, TN, although to much less fanfare than in years past. Tonight HBO airs a documentary called Prom Night in Mississippi. This documentary details a small town in Mississippi where the white parents want to have a "whites only" prom and in response Morgan Freeman, a Mississippi native, pays for another prom but only if it is integrated. I have not seen the entire film, unfortunately I don't have HBO, but in the clips I have seen this is nothing more than vicious latent racism. "I don't want my white daughter dancing at the prom with a black boy." Although they have no problem with the same black boy running the football or shooting the three-pointer.

Could we go back to the moon? Sure, it wouldn't be that hard relatively speaking. We have come light-years forward in technology. Is there still segregation and blatent racism? Unfortunately we haven't come that far...yet.

Is this the death knell for the ECUSA?

Most of you have seen the remarks made by Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the 2009 ECUSA General Convention. Bishop Jefferts Schori stated that "the great Western heresy" is that "we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God." She goes on to say that "It’s caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus. That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of being."

She is referring to the "sinner's prayer" which is a staple at tent meetings, Billy Graham revivals, and other evangelical extravaganzas. Perhaps, there is a point in the midst of her comments, although we must dig and make assumptions in order to find it. There is a problem when salvation becomes "fire insurance" and is promoted and proclaimed as only an individual pursuit. There is a notion that "I got saved now I am going to go home." Salvation, as Wesley thought, is a life long pursuit that is done in a community of love, grace, and accountability. There is a distinction between this kind of individualistic salvation and establishing a true community of believers. She is calling for the latter as opposed to the former. This is the point that I think Bishop Jefferts Schori was trying to make.

However, her comments or rather her poor attempt to place them in context allows for other assumptions to be made. Is baptism not an individual pursuit? Is the baptism ritual not "reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus?" Where does this heresy begin and end for her? She needed to be much more specific and clear when making a serous charge of heresy. She is calling out Evangelicals using the same tactics that they use. You faith is not genuine because it is not like mine.

There are many people, including Episcopalians, Methodists, and other mainline Protestant Christians, who began their faith with a "sinner's prayer" at camp or at a revival, etc. In calling this heresy, Bishop Jefferts Schori is cutting their faith at the knees. Some might feel that her comments insist that their faith is disingenuous or false. I don't know. Her comments leave a lot of room for interpretation and even misuse.

The ECUSA is already experiencing schism and possible exclusion from the Anglican communion because of its stance on gay and lesbian clergy. I can imagine that the ECUSA and its members are hurting and need words of healing and these were not words of healing. They were a ideological declaration of war on a large swath of Christian history. Her words cut at the heart of many people's faith. I think I understand her meaning, but it should have been done in a better way. I would be interested to hear the thoughts of Episcopalians.