A friend of mine posted the following message on Facebook last night:
In my life, my walk of Faith is difficult and fraught with doubt. I have no trouble with believing that Jesus loves me; He proved that to me 2000 years ago on the Cross at Calvary. He loves us all. My problem is that I have said things and done bad things and I have a very difficult time forgiving myself. Does anyone out there relate to me in this situation? I'm a Senior citizen with health issues. In my last years, I want to be useful to God, not running away from Him I was prayed over by five Christian friends today.... Maybe I just need to trust God's Love and help others...
These are common and real concerns that many people have. How do we know love and do forgiveness? How do we help ourselves and help others along as we struggle with questions of faith and meaning? My starting point here is in the Christian Bible with Philippians 4:4-9, but I am not one for giving people a Bible verse and leaving things there. I asked a few trusted people in my life for their reactions and suggestions. I'm going to post their responses as I get them, but please feel good about posting your reactions as well and please check back to see additional responses.
One friend wrote:
When Jesus died on the cross he said it was finished... I struggled with that too but one day someone asked me if the God of the universe forgives everything I've ever done wrong then who am I to not forgives myself. I would suggest prayer and read the bible ask God to help and he will praying for ya in Jesus name. Also tell him to think about Paul the man who wrote most of the new testament. He was a persecutor of christians.
Another friend wrote:
Well . . . To me, this falls in the “What is mine?” category. Forgiveness of my sins is not mine to decide. My opportunity is to ask for forgiveness. My responsibility is to learn how to not do it again. Too much time worrying about my future - obscures my seeing and serving others. [Easier said than done] One more: The future is unknown. We can plan. We can guess. We can discuss. We can worry. How much have we spent on the unknown.
And another friend wrote:
Sounds like that cloud of doubt is trying to block him from really knowing God’s love. God loves us like we love our children, unconditional love. When He looks at us, he doesn’t see our faults and sins, He sees his Son, Jesus, who gave his very life for us. Love beyond measure is hard to accept. We only see our sinful selves. But God looks at us with the eyes of a Father. It brings Him joy to forgive us. He wants to smother us with His love. But we see ourselves as unworthy and miss out on the blessings He willingly gives us. God is love, that’s not a feeling He has, it’s who He is. Sometimes we just need to be silent and feel that love He has for us. We need to stop arguing in our hearts and minds and just be quiet and listen. We get in our own way. I’ll pray your friend finds that peace he’s looking for. More important I pray he sees who God really is.
The Salem-Keizer, Oregon community is blessed to have Pastor Jerrell Williams leading Salem's Mennonite Church. We have posted at least two articles by him in the recent past. These have come from Anabaptist World. In a recent article in Anabaptist World Pastor Williams says the following:
Disappointment with God is a reality we need to recognize. As the church testifies to God’s faithfulness, we have to remember that not everyone has experienced God as faithful.
We have to be prepared to walk with those who feel God has not been faithful to them. As a pastor, I have had the honor to accompany those who are struggling and doubting as well as those who are solidly sure of their faith.
I have sat with people as they have asked me why God wasn’t there for them or for their friends or their families. Though I am tempted to interject my own experiences and ideas, there is nothing I can say that dulls the pain.
At this point we are left with a reminder that so much of modern atheism---at least in my circles---is founded on disappointments and suffering, and it should be fully understandable to people of faith that this occurs and gains momentum and forms of expression. There is also an atheism that develops from the capitalist reality that we all live in. How does anyone manage to maintain faith when every activity is weighed for what it produces and its cost? A competitive and hierarchical system, gendered and racialized and exploitative in its fundamentals, is bound to produce atheism. Pastor Williams does not take these questions up directly, but they are there in the background.
So Pastor Williams is taking up a large slice of our human condition in a short article. Where does he go with this? The entire article can be read here.
A friend has been talking to me about the meaning and feeling of crossroads, or how it feels to at a place where roads cross and what the signifies and how these places often have a special feeling to them. Ms. Abbey Sawyer recently posted the following story on the Appalachian Americans Facebook page. It isn't an easy read but it begins to get to what my friend has been talking about.
Appalachian Story Time- This story has been passed down a few generations. It's so incredible, and steeped in superstition that I had to share it.
So I've seen a few posts on here about old Appalachian superstitions and old wives tales. It's deep in our roots as mountain people to look for signs, find remedies, and tell stories. I wanted to share an old story about superstition that became very real to my Great-Grandfather in the back hollers of Martin's Fork, Kentucky in about 1914 when he was 9 years old. My great-grandfather Dan Smith was born in 1905 way up in an old holler near Martin's Fork, Kentucky. We're talking miles and miles from town, in a time where folks primarily still road horses to and from wherever they were going. He was one of 4 children, and my great-great-grand parents had a small farm house back up on the side of a mountain road where they had small crops and fruit trees. In the summer of 1914, my great-grandfather, we called him Papaw Smith, was 9 years old. He and his brother were goofing off,as boys do, and were climbing a huge old apple tree out in the field. They climbed about half way up the tree which was about 12ft off the ground. They would search for the best apples, pick them, and throw them in a pile on the ground to pick up and take back up to the house. As Papaw Smith was climbing higher to grab a big beautiful apple, he looked over on the same branch, and saw two of the prettiest blue, blue jay eggs he had ever seen sitting in a small nest. He looked back at the apple, then over at the eggs, and decided he wanted both. He locked his legs on the branch and reached out both hands, one for the apple, one for the nest. As he closed his grasp on each with both hands, he leaned too far and lost his grip on the branch. He fell about 10 feet. As he fell, he reached his arm out, still gripping that apple, and a forked branch snagged his forearm, snapping it and nearly tearing his arm plum off before he fell back to the ground. His arm was broken and barely hanging on, it was in bad shape. He and his brother ran back to the house and my great-great-grandfather and few other men from up the holler ended up having to remove the rest of his arm with a hand saw to save his life. There were few doctors in the backwoods of Kentucky in 1914, so they did what they could to fix him up. Over the next few weeks, my Papaw's stump struggled to heal. They would keep it clean, and dressed, but the wounds were not closing and it was becoming extremely painful. One day, my great-great-grandfather road in to town and was speaking to a few of his neighbors and folks he knew about my Papaw's arm. Now back in those days, with few doctors nearby, there were people in those mountains that were known as "healers", medicine women or men, or sometimes called granny women, that specialized in herbal healings or remedies. Some of which were steeped in superstitions.. Some might call them witches today. Depends on who you ask lol. But, one of those towns people he was speaking to happened to be the kind. An old woman who knew things. The woman started asking him questions about what happened. She then asked him "What did you do with the arm?". My great-great grandfather, perplexed by the question, said, "Well, I buried it up on the hill". She asked "In what fashion did you bury it?". Again confused, he replied, "In a hole". The woman then said, "There's your problem". She then began to explain, to a T, what he needed to do for my Papaw's stump to heal. She said, "Go back on the hill and dig up the arm. Clean it, and wrap it in white cloth. Bury the arm in a new hole near a crossroad or fork in the road facing away from the house, with the palm facing up towards the sky. Do this, and the stump will heal not long after". She explained this with such conviction that my great-great-grandfather raced home and did just that. He dug up the arm, wrapped it in white, buried it near a fork in the road, with the palm facing up. A few short weeks later, my Papaw Smith's stump had healed and he was left with no problems or pain there forth. My Papaw Smith grew up to be a Pentecostal preacher who preached in churches all over Eastern Tennessee, Lee County and Southwestern, VA, and Eastern Kentucky. He was know as "The One Armed Preacher". If you were from those areas and went to church in the 70's and 80's, you knew of him. He told that story to everyone despite being a Pentecostal preacher, and was superstitious about small things most of his life there after. One thing is for certain, always trust an old medicine woman deep in the backwoods of Kentucky, it might save your life.
Sometimes people hear about protests and wonder how they happen or why, and they don't understand why "religious people" would go to certain protests and even get arrested at these events. For the people of faith who go to the demonstrations this is all about providing a living witness of and for their faith and making a statement of some kind. It often feels to me that the two groups don't talk to one another, and maybe even avoid doing so. The folks scratching their heads and wondering what's going on and the activists do have much to talk about, though.
For many Western Christian traditions, today is Epiphany -- the day the magi arrived at Jesus's manger.
More than 2,000 years ago, these wise men experienced the epiphany that this child was the Christ: the Prince of Peace, the Son of God, and the expected Messiah. The magi then stood up to political violence by thwarting the oppressive King Herod's attempt to kill the infant Jesus.
Just two years ago, religion met with political violence once more on January 6, 2021, when thousands of Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other Trump supporters stormed the United States Capitol in the hijacked name of Jesus, convinced that their efforts to destroy democracy were divinely authorized.
That's why early this morning, I joined with dozens of diverse Christian leaders outside the U.S. Capitol to pray, and to offer a Christian witness for peace and democracy. At the "Sunrise Prayer Vigil for Democracy" -- co-organized by Faithful America and our friends at the Christians Against Christian Nationalism initiative -- we denounced Christian nationalism and white supremacy; prayed for healing for every person on Capitol Hill who relived trauma today; and spoke out for the values of love, democracy, and freedom for all.
As the sun rose over the Capitol and darkness turned to light, we felt not only the dawn of a new day but also the hope of the resurrection -- and the promise that together, we will build a better future.
A video and some photographs were provided so that readers could see what took place on January 6. Rev. Empsall's e-mail went on to say:
Today, I prayed that God would grant a new epiphany to those who follow Christian nationalism, and show them that where Christian nationalism spreads violence, hatred, and misinformation, Jesus teaches us peace, love, and truth.
Others who spoke included the Rev. Dr. Cassandra Gould, who prayed, "We come this morning, God, because the blood of our siblings continues to cry out from the ground not just from two years ago today, but from the very founding of this country… We come this morning to say that time is up for white Christian nationalism."
We also heard from evangelical author Shane Claiborne, who said, "Christian nationalism is a perversion of the Gospel of Christ… We call out the principalities and powers of racism, xenophobia, fear, and white Christian nationalism, and we declare that your love triumphs over them."
We appealed to God to give us strength for the work ahead, and also showed journalists and lawmakers that where Christian nationalism seeks to strip away the rights of everyone but conservative Christians, Jesus calls us to build shared power and freedom for everyone, regardless of race, religion, zip code, physical abilities, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
Today's vigil featured friends and allies from local Baptist congregations, the National Council of Churches, Red Letter Christians, Sojourners, Faith in Public Life, Faiths United for Democracy, NETWORK Catholic Lobby, Catholic Vote Common Good, Faith in Action, the Interfaith Alliance, authors like Jim Wallis and Jemar Tisby, and so many more. We at Faithful America are so grateful to everyone who turned out to pray -- and who takes concrete action grounded in that prayer.
Wishing you a peaceful and blessed Epiphany season,
- The Rev. Nathan Empsall Executive Director, Faithful America
If you read up on the issues mentioned here and think about where the United States is at right now you will probably agree that this is pretty important. I want to encourage you to check out Faithful America and some of the organizations mentioned above.
Friends, this is our third post from Steve Cline. Steve lives in West Virginia. I think that this post carries a great message to end one year and begin a new year with. We all have tough climbs, and some of them are dangerous and not everything that we cling to along the way is going to be helpful but our journeys have meaning and value and can take us to new heights and better vistas with the proper solidarity and guidance. This post also helps reinforce a point that is a basic premise of this blog: wisdom, beauty, and creativity are all around us and amongst us.
Dr. Ralph Stanley's "Great High Mountain" carries a similar testimony and message.
The following was lifted from the Center and Library for the Bible and Social Justice. Amy Dalton of the Center writes that "CLBSJ was founded a little over a decade ago out of the conviction that Biblical scholarship needs the perspectives of activism in order to accurately understand the Bible, and that activists need the insights of Biblical scholars to disarm the ways that the Bible has been used to undermine movements for justice. We are working in slow-cook mode to build this project as a deeply cooperative effort, and we need you to do this. CLBSJ has been built almost entirely out of the volunteer energy and generous giving of individuals like yourself." They need money, and you can help by checking them out on Facebook or going here.
Brian Zahnd provides a helpful reflection on one of the Christmas lectionary passages, John 1:1-14:
"The relationship of John the Baptist to Jesus Christ is analogous to the relationship of the Bible to the Christ as the true Word of God. John is to Jesus what the Bible is to Jesus. Think of it like this: There was a book sent from God whose name was Bible. It came as a witness to testify to the Light, so that all might believe through it. The Bible itself was not the Light, but it came to bear witness to the Light. The True Light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. The Bible testified to him and cried out, “This is he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”
Indeed, what is true of John the Baptist is also true of the Bible. Jesus came after John and the Bible but ranks ahead of John and the Bible because as the Eternal Logos he was before them both. The true witness of the Bible is to point us to the True Light that is Jesus Christ. Our question is not, can we find it in the Bible; the question is, can we find it in the life of Jesus Christ. We can find many things in the Bible that we cannot find in Christ. Wars of conquest, ethnic cleansing, the institution of slavery, capital punishment, and women held as property are all things present in the Bible but absent in Jesus. If we go to the Bible to find the light of truth, the Bible will faithfully point us to the True Light who is Jesus Christ. Some parts of the Bible belong to a dim archaic past, but the Light of Christ never dims. The light of Christ is the true enlightenment.
One of the nagging thoughts in so many people's minds who can take a minute to breathe and think during this time of year is how we can know when God is present, or if God is ever present. We are so doped by movies and other media that many of us think that if the sea isn't parting and if there isn't a loud authoritative voice speaking directly to us from above the sky then we're left to pray alone or in church on Sundays or that there is no God, or no God that cares for creation any longer. In searching for belief and faith and something to hold on to we can easily become despairing and give up.
Doubt and atheism are not "wrong" or invalid under modern conditions. These are understandable given the pressures of modern-day capitalism. And if you're not struggling with despair, whether you're a believer in God or an agnostic or an atheist, then you're not paying attention. If we're going to ask where the search for faith leads us under these circumstances, and if one valid answer is despair, than we also have to ask where agnosticism and atheism lead us, and for some people the answer will be belief and faith. Leonard Cohen's "You Want It Darker" and his "Hallelujah" answer one another because faith and belief and whatever their opposites are are not really so far apart from one another.
Pastor Jerrell Williams, the pastor of the Salem, Oregon Mennonite Church, has written a brief article that is fundamental to a discussion of these themes in the contexts of Advent and Christmas. He knows what he's talking about. He graduated from Bethel College in Kansas and from the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary with his Master of Divinity. He thinks a lot about these questions and you can trust his wisdom. Besides all of that, he's a parent, he's young, and he's Black and so he has a different stake in how these questions get answered than I do.
Pastor Williams' article opens with the following:
Christmas time is here! This is a day in which we gather with our families, friends and church communities to celebrate and remember when God entered our world to be with creation. While this is the central focus for Christians, here in the U.S, this time of year is not always the hope- and awe-inspiring season that we anticipate. Often, the Christmas season is riddled with capitalism and consumerism. There is the stress of constant gift buying. There is the mourning that takes place, because the Christmas dinner table may be missing a few members due to sickness or death. I myself am guilty of not being in the “Christmas spirit” this year. Maybe it is the cold, dark and rainy season that has me down. Maybe it is the constant busyness of work and personal life. Either way, I have noticed God’s absence more than I ever have recently.
As I have gone through the Advent texts from the lectionary with my congregation, I have been reminded that my feelings are not foreign to God’s people. They were carrying God’s promise with them for years, waiting for God to finally do something. Imagine the stories of this promise being passed down from generation to generation. It’s not often that I feel that I can identify with the Biblical narrative, but I do know what anticipation feels like. I also know what absence feels like: the constant asking of God to do something, trusting in the promise that God will not abandon you for good.
One question that I have been sitting with this Advent season is: “How will we know when God is here?”
How will we know that we are on the right track towards restoration? Recently, I was reminded that Jesus answered a similar question in Matthew’s Gospel. When John the Baptist was in prison, he had a message sent to Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” (11:3 NRSVUE). This is not only a question an uncertainty, but it is a question of hopeful anticipation. John knew his role in this story. He knew that he was the forerunner, and that the Messiah was coming soon. What he did not anticipate was that the Messiah would look like Jesus. Jesus sent word back to John by pointing towards the evidence. “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with a skin disease are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me” (11:4-6 NRSVUE).
Really, you do want to finish the article by going here. A good sermon only ends after you think about it, integrate what you can take from it into your life, and move on and keep growing.
I don't know where this originated, but it is making the rounds and it does have my support. If you're reading this and if you know me and want to talk about this, please let me know.
What the hell did you expect me to do?
You told me to love my neighbors, to model the life of Jesus. To be kind and considerate, and to stand up for the bullied.
You told me to love people, consider others as more important than myself. "Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight." We sang it together, pressing the volume pedal and leaning our hearts into the chorus.
You told me to love my enemies, to even do good to those who wish for bad things. You told me to never "hate" anyone and to always find ways to encourage people.
You told me it's better to give than receive, to be last instead of first. You told me that money doesn't bring happiness and can even lead to evil, but taking care of the needs of others brings great joy and life to the soul.
You told me that Jesus looks at what I do for the least-of-these as the true depth of my faith. You told me to focus on my own sin instead of trying to police it in others. You told me to be accepting and forgiving.
I payed attention.
I took every lesson.
And I did what you told me.
But now, you call me a libtard. A queer-lover.
You call me "woke." A backslider.
You call me a heretic. A child of the devil.
You call me a false prophet. A reprobate leading people to gates of hell.
You call me soft. A snowflake. A socialist.
What the hell did you expect me to do?
You passed out the "WWJD" bracelets.
I took it to heart.
I thought you were serious, apparently not.
We were once friends. But now, the lines have been drawn. You hate nearly all the people I love. You stand against nearly all the things I stand for. I'm trying to see a way forward, but it's hard when I survey all the hurt, harm, and darkness that comes in the wake of your beliefs and presence.
What the hell did you expect me to do?
I believed it all the way.
I'm still believing it all the way.
Which leaves me wondering, what happened to you? . Grace is brave. Be brave.
The following lines come from an article by Pastor Jerrell Williams of Salem, Oregon's Mennonite Church. There is a link to the full article below the excerpt.
Let’s be honest: This has been a depressing few years for many of us. Through all of the sickness, financial struggles, climate disasters and political tension, I have gotten more pessimistic. I do not know how we can make things better anymore.
It seems that for every happy -moment there has been a terrible -moment. The circumstances I have gone through over the past three years have changed me.
And yet: Joy is still possible. I think of God’s people 2,000 years ago carrying God’s promise with them as they walked through the hardships of their lives. They were waiting for God to do something. God finally responded by entering their world — our world — to walk with us.
Advent gives me hope that God has not abandoned us. It gives me hope that God is moving, sometimes in mysterious ways.
Bishop William J. Barber, II was at St. Mary's Road United Methodist Church in Columbus, Georgia today and delivered a powerful message about voting and what's at stake in the runoff election now underway there. What he has to say here affects all of us and every state. What do we take into consideration when we think about politics and vote? Why is what happens in the South so important to the future of the United States?
There are always several things happening at once. Some of those old-time preachers who I listen to are laying it on pretty thick when it comes to liberals, abortion rights, and some people who they’re not naming who are supposedly rewriting or ignoring the Bible. This got heavier to carry around election time. I continue to be quite moved as I watch the services at Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina and listen to Bishop William J. Barber, Jr., and Rev. Shyrl Hinnant Uzzell who are there. My heart sometimes aches because I can’t find a church near where I live that is anything like that.
Also, I recently read the book Raising Lazarus by Beth Macy and I remain caught up with some of the examples that she gave of people, many of them struggling with their own substance abuse recovery issues and getting almost no help from the institutional church, giving deep help to people with substance abuse issues, and sometimes having to do so in violation of the law. I’m questioning my own and other’s Christianity in light of our lack of faith in the resurrection of others from dope sickness and death right now, today. Are we really called to let hundreds of thousands of people die from substance abuse and deaths of despair?
But another one of the drivers on this rant is something that happened in church recently. There is a passing-through, filling-in minister there who seems to push pretty hard on fundraising. That doesn’t bother me so much, but I wonder how other folks hear this. Part of that congregation is doing okay, and the church bank accounts are full to overflowing, but some of the folks in the pews must be struggling like I am, or harder. The church is in a nice part of town. It does a little to assist people in the community but you don’t see many people in the church stepping up on anything controversial. Large numbers of Christians in the United States will do great charitable work, but we’re collectively resistant to taking on the people and conditions that make charity the necessary band-aid that it is.
They say that Sunday mornings are the most segregated times in the United States because people of color go to their churches and whites go to their churches. I have attended a few integrated churches over the years, but very few. These were Roman Catholic and Pentecostal Holiness churches. And since that saying about Sunday mornings became popular, masses of people have left or remained outside of the churches, adding another dimension to our discussion. I take the point that we’re dealing with forms of segregation, but this has many dimensions to it. People of color walk into white space and know if they’re welcome or not pretty quickly. No one has to say anything; it’s just there, and it’s real. Something like that can happen with working-class or poor people entering middle-class or wealthy church space; you feel that you’re walking into something that will not be yours, and that's real. I’ve seen Roman Catholic churches that didn't have this class differentiation built in, but those are exceptions. Sermons often tell us what that space holds. They describe in words what we sense in our hearts or heads.
It's tragic and a sin against God and ourselves that we have this segregation. I say “against ourselves” because we are missing some marks here by not trusting and loving one another in the images given to us by God. There are theologies specific to the experiences of working-class people and people of color that will overwhelm you, fill your heart and be a blessing to you, give you the reassurance that you need if you will open yourself to them. But you can’t very well open yourself to them if you can’t find the right church or if the experiences of working-class people and people of color or LGBTQIA+ people are marginalized.
The readings for the one recent Sunday that brought this to me were 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13 and Luke 21:5-19. There is a lot there to take up a long sermon: “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat,” Jesus’s prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, deep social and political chaos and how believers process those, and repression and society falling apart and how believers deal with those in faith all come up as major themes and all of them have implications that affect how we live and structure our faith. But what we got was another fundraising pitch.
Segregation, churches accommodating to the system, the lack of prophetic action in the church, and the lack of social analysis in the churches are real scandals. But the common conservative complaints are about other things instead.
I remember several years ago on Easter Sunday hearing a minister at this church say that Jesus was dancing on the cross. And on one Christmas Eve a minister there gave a reassuring sermon that told us that all was well. Went I got in my car to head home I heard the news that there had been a massacre of Christians in Africa. The first sermon sets the conservative’s hair on fire. It has no basis in Scripture and could do some damage. It's a terrible image, I think. Perhaps the real harm being done with this kind of talk is that it takes away from the political nature of Christ’s crucifixion. He was not the first or last to die on the cross, and his death (and, in a deep sense, his resurrection) unites him (and should unite all believers) with everyone who has ever been persecuted and every person who has been on a death row and who has been executed. The second sermon was neither prophetic or analytical, and we need both badly. Let’s tell the truth: very little in the world is well, but people of faith are also people of resurrection and can make positive change.
Polemics around this are steps backward. I don't want any part of competitive tensions and criticism. The ways forward are through prayer, calling on the presence of the Holy Spirit, organizing, and (I think) eventually restructuring our relationships and our institutions. The minister doing the fundraising pitches is working within a system, and that system is driven by money and money exists now in order to ration things and maintain exploitation. We need to see that bigger picture.
I’m not aware of any Christian rewriting the Bible, as the conservatives claim. I did recently read a book by a fellow who pastors a large faith community and who wants us to put our Bibles away and find new revelations. It took me awhile to come to this, but I decided that his arguments are conservative but are dressed up to sound radical and counter-cultural. Throwing out the Bible would spark a huge conflict with no predictable end. The Bible guides us through the sorrows, struggles, and victories in this life and gives us a plans for collective salvation (liberation). Marx had it right. Religion “is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” And because that is true the Bible and religion are needed, and the visions of liberation that have been contained within the Bible, and often hidden from the people, must be brought into the light.
The accusation of rewriting the Bible may be aimed at churches and church leaders who are gay-friendly or who are trying to build diverse and inclusive churches. I imagine that this is usually the case, and it is unfair and inaccurate. There is a certain amount of privilege and hypocrisy involved if I’m right. Don’t go calling my hogs home if yours are still in the woods. People often take the Bible and its teachings to heart and put it in terms they can understand and teach with and that can be a beautiful and saving. I was once in a Bible study about Genesis 32:22-32 that turned into good discussions about pro wrestling, hip replacement surgery, and barbecuing and I’m an certain that most everyone present came away with a better sense of the text. Here is another great example:
God's Highway--The Stanley Brothers
I’m highlighting a few problems here that I see: the conservatism of so many of the preachers, pastors, ministers, and priests; our collective failure to fully appreciate and lift up the theologians and Spirit-filled people we have among the poor and in the working-class; the tendencies that Christians have to compete with one another rather than to serve the people by joining serving the people to serving God in prophetic ways that demand justice; the racial and class divisions that hold us prisoner; the fundraising that replaces prophetic witness; the weaknesses of liberal reassurances; and the false claims by conservatives and liberals. I don’t mind politicization in the pulpits and pews as a matter of principle, but if that’s going to happen then we need the correct politics and neither reactionary conservatism that supports the empire or weak liberalism make the grade. But, really, why can’t we put the drive into a politics of the Kingdom of God and that is in the first place about Biblical and ethical social justice?
That isn’t impossible, though it is extremely difficult. My faith journey is enlivened by what I see taking place at Greenleaf Christian Church, previously mentioned, and how the worship, preaching, and service there find the right balance between feeding the soul and heart and speaking to the head and mind. I have not heard anyone argue against what Bishop Barber and Rev. Shyrl Hinnant Uzzell are doing at Greenleaf. Perhaps those who oppose them think that ignoring them is prudent or the way of containing what is occurring at Greenleaf and through the Poor Peoples Campaign. My belief is that large numbers of the working-class faithful and large numbers of those who are outside of the church will both catch the holy fire if the hearing the preaching and see the resurrection taking place there. I'm impressed by what I read of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the Catholic Worker movement, the Jubilee Baptist Church in Chapel Hill and some others are attempting. The question is not what’s going wrong or right with these efforts, but why your community doesn’t have churches like these.
People will fuss over our shepherds who are supposed to help us to be fruitful and multiply the numbers of the faithful. Jeremiah 23:1-6 comes to mind, and that stern first warning gives the conservatives an argument. But keep reading. Pretty soon the connection is made between the shepherds and social justice and liberation.
Let’s take this to the grassroots and go a step back to the people who have a testimony and who believe in their hearts that they are saved and another step back to believers who have a different approach.
The struggle and victory salvation stories that I most often hear sound something like this:
I was raised going to church and was saved as a child at a revival. The man that preached that night was a fiery Pentecostal preacher who preached hell, repentance, and salvation. I felt the conviction of the Spirit and went to the altar that night. That preacher said, “If you leave this world without Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior you will split hell wide open!" Those words from God's went straight to my heart. I thank God to this day that I had enough knowledge to know that I needed this man Jesus in my life.
Many tragic events pushed me very far from Jesus for many years, however. Through the years I have failed God. I have left Him more times than I wish to confess. I spent most my teenage life drinking, doing drugs and sleeping around. I let go of my first love for a life of being a slave to sin. A life of trouble, fear, uncertainty, dread, heartbreak. I was the lowest of sinners...you name it... I was quite the PARTIER and very promiscuous. I ran and ran from God, and at times the guilt was unbearable.
After moving around and countless failed relationships I returned back to my roots with my two children. I worked with a wonderful Christian woman who loved me unconditionally with no condemnation. She was a constant witness for Jesus. And one evening she took me to a Christian church for a women’s Bible study and as I drove out from the parking lot I was so overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit that I pulled off the road and I immediately began sobbing. These were cleansing tears. I asked God to forgive my sins, confessed I wanted Him to be Lord of my life, and joyfully proclaimed that I believed Jesus Christ was God's son who died on the cross for my sin, was buried and raised back to life then ascended and has gone on to Heaven to prepare an eternal home for me.
I lifted up my eyes from the filth I had found myself in and I knew that He was there with His arms open wide ready to hold me, protect me, heal me, love me. I can never repay Him for all He’s done for me. Even attempting to do that would be futile. I just want to spend the rest of my life doing whatever He has me to do. I’m on fire to spread my love of Jesus to others. He has used me, and He is still using me, for most of all just trying to spread His Love and Good News on a daily basis to a hurting world around me. So many people need to hear that hell is still burning, heaven is still waiting, salvation is still available and Jesus is still the same.
You can’t doubt the sincerity here or the strength of conviction. These are reasonable responses social conditions that individuals have limited control over. Jesus is being humanized to extent that He becomes a companion and presence in the lives of people who testify and confess their salvation in this way.
I can argue about hell and hellfire because I’m a universalist, but I won’t argue that the people who testify in this way are wrong when they say that they have experienced something of hell in their lives. Hell and heaven so often become stand-ins for what we experience in our lives. I remember attending a Black church on Maryland’s Eastern Shore many years ago and hearing a woman who had left her community there and had gone to Philadelphia and returned testifying for a very long time and talking about her precarious mental state. The transition and disorientation of her move had been too much of her and she was finding her cure in her community and church. Consider how masses of Black people who had migrated from the Black Belt South to Chicago were so receptive to the early mystical teachings of what became the Nation of Islam. From the standpoint of having made it to Chicago their lives in the segregated and violent South often seemed like hell on earth. Every substance abuser whose life is saved is another Lazarus, and most know that. It's not at all far out, I think, that people will feel God's presence by a river or in the woods or with their children or ageing older ones and know something of heaven from those encounters.
Now, not every Christian has the experience of being saved in a dramatic moment or period in their lives, but they are no less Christian for that. My experience as been that many rural and working-class people, and especially people in the coal fields and what gets called the “Rust Belt,” don’t feel that the well-reasoned and intellectual discourse in a middle-class church is for us or open to us while n economically a politically better-off segment will only hear a logical exposition. There is nothing wrong with well-reasoned and intellectual discourse, working out one’s doubts over time, and being one over by argument over a long stretch of time.
Our ideas of heaven and hell can be more sentimental, and more exclusive and vindictive, than they are Scriptural. I have friends who call this out whenever they hear it, and I have friends who respond with Bible verses laying out the exact opposites of sentimentality, exclusivity, and vindictiveness. The good side of this is that its helpful that whenever someone says something about the nature of qualities of God based on Scripture that they then provide chapter and verse showing the opposite as well. We need to use this kind of reasoning. But most of us are sentimental about heaven for the reasons that our lives have been hard and we want to be with those who loved and protected us and who have now passed on. My advice is that you not stick a pin in people's sentimental balloons unless you are committed to going through life with them and working with them every day to show them something better.
My sentimental idea of heaven now is something like a chain of undisturbed green mountains and valleys as far as I can see, a clean Tug Fork River full of fish, animals around living in peace, a Bluetick coonhound with me, the spirits of Del McCoury and Ralph Stanley and Yara Allen with me, and all of my family members and ancestors and friends and those I sinned against and who sinned against me together and happy and praising God. My less sentimental heaven is a democratic socialism that works, service to one another, constant daily efforts to build justice between people and between people and the environment and animals.
When people ask me if I’m saved or not, or if I have accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and God and Savior, I usually have two responses. One I took from a Wooden Pulpit Podcast done by the Primitive Baptist Universalists (look up "Holston--A Primitive Baptist Universalist Church" on Facebook). Someone on the podcast made the point that the common idea is that we pray for salvation, but it is closer to the truth to say that we pray because we have been saved. Think on that, and if you can see the truth in that then think about if you ever heard that in church. My other response builds on what I heard for years in Orthodox churches. I have been saved through baptism, I am being saved by faith and works, and with God’s grace I will be saved. This is not the absolute certainty of the people whose testimony is given above, and it isn’t prolonged middle-class doubts being resolved through intellectual engagement. Neither of these is fully sufficient because my answers focus on me and salvation is a collective experience. There is a spectrum of valid responses to questions about our salvation, and we shouldn’t let others pressure us into being in a particular camp.
Singles, struggle to let go of a relationship that God saved you from cannot be resolved, as a believer, without trusting in God’s word, believing that your destiny was so important that Jesus hung, bled and died for it, and following the Holy Spirit’s instructions to a place of worship, thankfulness and expectancy.
Haven’t you noticed that God’s praises are no longer in our mouth when it’s time to deny the flesh? When God intervenes and delivers you from Egypt, the enemy will intervene to try to emotionally entice you into believing that your Egypt was your promise. This is warfare, the only way out of Egypt is by faith, surrender and work beloved.
For the last few days I have been making a conscious effort to highlight some of the beautiful things that people around me or who I have run into have created. Scroll through the blog to find these. This is today's offering.
I purchased the candle at a little roadside shop in Welch, West Virginia. The store sells mainly religious items and is run by a couple of very nice women. It's a little dark inside and very comfortable. The candle is jasmine and sweet pea and it smells great and burns very well without being overpowering. The label is stuck on with scotch tape and this is a kind of mason jar. I'm happy with it.
The piece on the right has a more complicated story to it. A dear friend who lives in welch describes it like this:
The contents in the vial are river glass from the Tug Fork River, retrieved by the Reverend Garnet Edwards Jr. To me it has this meaning: river glass starts life as trash that has been tossed in the watershed. Over time, the water and abrasion soften its edges and turns it into something more polished and beautiful. As with recovery and my spiritual beliefs being tied to God in nature, our lives have been transformed from the discarded to something far better. Our edges softened; our very beings changed. And when the light catches it, the river glass sparkles and shines.
I don't know that I could explain anything better than that.
“People always said that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.” - Rosa Parks — Sources: Photograph of Rosa Parks taken in 1955 / National Archives and Records Administration Records of the U.S. Information Agency Record Group 306, record ID: 306-PSD-65-1882 (Box 93) / Wikimedia Commons / Rosa Parks: My Story, p. 116, Rosa Parks and James Haskins (1992) / Wikiquote
is difficult and fraught with doubt. I have no trouble with believing that Jesus loves me; He proved that to me 2000 years ago on the Cross at Calvary. He loves us all.
I just need to trust God's Love and help others...
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