Category: Ethics

Can We Ever Truly Give?

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Stop at any major intersection in Austin and you will see someone with a sign asking for money, food, or a job. It is a given in this city. Some of the people standing there have chosen that as their lifestyle often because of fear of the government and subsequent desire to live off that radar. Most though have fallen on hard times through one factor or another. We like to pretend we know those reasons and use our imagined reasons to justify our judgment and dismissal of them, but that is just about us and has nothing to do with who they are.

The popularity of this recent video revealed some of our assumptions. As an experiment a youtuber gave a homeless man $100 and then secretly followed him to film what he did. The homeless man went to a liquor store and come out with several bags. He then went to a local park where he passed out food he had just bought. The filmmaker then approached him and spent the time to learn his story. It is a touching story about the kindness of one man, but that is not the reason it went viral. The video was made because the assumption was that a homeless person would spend money on something inappropriate like liquor. It was only the fact that he did not live up to our preconceived judgments about him that made the story so popular.

It’s our dirty little habit this judging of people. Assuming that we know them and know what they should and should not be doing with any assistance they are given. Who cares how much money we might spend on alcohol (especially if its money given to us for blow money in college or if we are on the company dime), we insist we know how best the homeless should use charity they are given. Or we see a woman with a smartphone and nice haircut use food stamps and ten rant about people who abuse the system. She doesn’t look “poor” (which we assume must mean dirty and unkempt) so we judge, forgetting that a smartphone and good appearance is the only way she is able to seek a job to improve her situation. Our idea of how we want the world to work dictates how we care for the struggling in our midst.

But our self-centered charity does not stop there.

This struck me yesterday as I was stopped at an intersection and saw a man there holding a sign. As he walked down the line of idling cars, I noticed that he was wearing a hoodie with the Jack Daniels logo on it and carrying a sign that read – “Cuss me out for a dollar.” I had to laugh at his ingenuity. He knows that most people assume the homeless are drunks who need a lecture about their poor life choices. And he called us on that. Go ahead and be the self-righteous jerk who judges the homeless, but stop hiding behind your façade. All he is asking for is a dollar to let you be in public who you truly are in private. Brilliant, I thought, and gave him a dollar wishing him a good day.

iphone homelessI don’t regret that, but it struck me that I rarely give to simply give. I pack bags of food with my kids and we distribute them to the homeless, in part so my kids can learn about those in need. I give money to those at the intersections whose signs I find interesting (like the guy yesterday). “Family abducted by aliens. Need ransom money.” “You might live in a $200,000 house, but I live under a $2million bridge.” I was momentarily entertained by their signs, so I rewarded them. Similarily the guys that stand at the intersection juggling or who offer to wash windshields seem to get more responses. They did something for us, so therefore they deserve our charity.

It happens all the time. Charity auctions raise far more money than straight asks for money. Why? We get something out of it, even if it is just the opportunity to dress up and attend an event. Is this necessarily a bad thing? I’m not entirely sure. As Derrida philosophized, there can never be such a thing as an unselfish gift. We are always looking for something in return, even if it is merely a “thank you.” But it is something we must always be aware of. Too often we do unto others because it is best for us. We get some sort of reward, even if that reward is the ability to judge and impose our ideas of how others should live their lives onto them. Perhaps this can never be fully escaped, but we can at least start being aware of that fact and begin to explore what it might look like to do unto others as they would have done unto them.

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Transfiguring the Everyday

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This is the text of the sermon I preached at Woodland Baptist Church in San Antonio, TX for Transfiguration Sunday March 2, 2014

Matthew 17

Do you ever wonder why so many tales end with a “happily ever after.” The adventure is over, the battle has been won, true love has been found, so therefore there is no more story to tell. The climax is reached, the excitement is past, and the reader must be left with the contentment that all is well. We don’t need to know about the day to day life of the Prince and Princess after they wed, the PTSD of that soldier who can never quite get over the war – all the storyteller wants us to know is that a grand and beautiful thing happened and everyone lived happily ever after.

If you’re anywhere near as big of a geek as I am, you might know that Tolkien originally had an additional epilogue to his Lord of the Rings trilogy. It takes place years after the events in the stories – long after the ring is destroyed and the true king returns to the land. It is of Sam sitting at home with his wife and children telling the story of his adventures, and one of his daughters laments how sad it is to hear the tales because real life is nothing like the stories her father tells. The day to day reality of life, so easily summed up as “and they lived happily ever after,” isn’t all that exciting. There are chores to do, meals to cook, work to go to. One doesn’t feel like one is living an epic adventure in the mundanity of the everyday.

transfiguration-iconI’ve always seen the Transfiguration narrative as one of those moments of epic adventure. Peter, James, and John got to see Jesus revealed in all his glory. As Peter later described it they got to be witnesses to the majesty, to hear the voice directly from heaven, and were moved in that moment to be as lamps shining in dark places. They literally had a mountaintop faith experience that could not help but make them want to respond with offers of service.

It is an experience familiar to many of us. We’ve had those moments when we have been on the spiritual mountaintop in one fashion or another. Perhaps the encounter with the full majesty of Jesus is what brought us to faith or renewed our faith. Perhaps reading a book or listening to a speaker awoke in us that desire to shine as lamps in the world of darkness, working to right the evils and injustices in the world. But as many of us also know, those mountaintop experiences don’t last. We only get a brief moment with the transfigured majesty of Jesus and then we are returned to the everyday.

And of course we have to figure out what to do in the aftermath.

It’s fascinating to look at how the disciples tried to cope with something as overwhelming as an encounter with the transfigured Jesus.

Their first suggestion – build tents to house the majesty of Jesus in. Perhaps it was to honor the greatness of the one transfigured, but whatever the rationale, their first impulse was to contain that glory.

They were human. There was a mountaintop moment and they wanted to build a structure to preserve it in. They didn’t want to forget the moment in the mundane everyday, they wanted to keep it close. It was such a significant moment that they needed to impose some order on it to preserve it and keep the experience going.

Is this not how we so often treat our religious experiences? We have dramatic encounters with God, we are moved to care for the least of these, and often our first impulse is to create a structure to contain it. We construct churches and denominations, we develop rituals, we start committees, we plan missions. Not that any of these things are bad things, but sometimes we end up missing the real point because of them. What matters is the encounter – of having our lives transformed by the majesty of God. When we try to preserve that encounter by creating structures around it, our gaze often gets obscured by those very structures. The containers for the encounter become what is most important to us, sometimes even to the extent that we forget the transformative experience itself.

It is like that popular Zen story of the ritual cat which I’m sure many of you have heard. The story goes that once when a spiritual teacher and his disciples began their evening meditation, the cat who lived in the monastery made such noise that it distracted them. So the teacher ordered that the cat be tied up during the evening practice. Years later, when the teacher died, the cat continued to be tied up during the meditation session. And when the cat eventually died, another cat was brought to the monastery and tied up. Centuries later, learned descendants of the spiritual teacher would write scholarly treatises about the religious significance of tying up a cat for meditation practice. What mattered was the meditation and yet it was the ritual that over time became the center of the focus.

Thankfully, Jesus tried to sway his disciples away from such habits on the mountainside. No tents were put up and they were encouraged to focus on that moment of worship instead. At the same time Jesus also knew the danger of the other typical way they could respond to the experience. He had to warn them not to tell about the encounter, for while it was astoundingly meaningful to them in that moment, the telling of it would not have quite the same impact on others. In fact he tells them that many have had the opportunity for such encounters, they saw Elijah, they saw John the Baptist, and it didn’t drastically change their lives. They simply continued to do as they pleased. Maybe they had listened to John speak or had even been baptized, and yet that mountaintop experience was not enough to alter their day to day life.

Jesus knew that the tale could not simply end “and having experienced John’s baptism, he lived happily ever after” or even “having seen Jesus transfigured on the mountainside, his disciples served him faithfully and unwaveringly for the rest of their lives.” Because it simply was not true. We know that not much later Peter denies even knowing Jesus, his disciples can’t stay awake to keep him company in Gethsemane, and almost all of them desert him when he hangs on the cross. This one moment of glory did not change everything. The day to day discipleship proved much more difficult.

On one hand I find this discouraging. If seeing Jesus transfigured before them wasn’t enough to move his own disciples beyond the dangerous tendencies to contain that glory or to lose hope in the everyday, what does that mean for us as we attempt to be faithful disciples some two thousand years later? Oh, we might have our mountain top moments, but nothing compared to encountering Jesus transfigured into glory. How are we as regular people with ordinary everyday lives even to dream of living as hope-filled disciples without falling into the dangers of missing the point behind the known safety of structure and ritual or of simply getting caught up in the everyday mundanity of life? How can we live out that call to daily love God and love others, seeking justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God when even the disciples seemed to have difficulty doing so?

I wouldn’t dare presume to have the answer to that question. But I do want to share a story that gives me some hope.

For those of you who have explored the infrequently read and seemingly daunting Minor Prophets section of the Bible, you may already be familiar with the story of Amos.

A poor herdsman from Judah, Amos was part of a population that was subservient to Israel at the time of the divided kingdom. Judah in that position therefore bore the brunt of the expenses of Israel, with the poor and needy of the land frequently being used and abused to cover the expenditures of those in power. Through the manipulation of debt and credit, the wealthy had amassed more and more of the land at the expense of poor landowners. Some scholars believe that the only thing that would have even brought a poor shepherd like Amos to the big city of Jerusalem was the requirement that he pay tribute to those that controlled his lands at an official festival. It is what happened when he journey to Jerusalem that changed him though. If this was a contemporary event, the click-bait headline would be “Poor herdsman travels to Jerusalem, you’ll never believe what he does next!” For what this struggling working class man saw in Jerusalem was a population that not only lived in extravagance, but one that had stopped asking questions about if they were living in the ways of the Lord. In fact they not only had stopped asking questions about whether their lifestyles based on the oppression of the poor reflected God’s desires, they had been told by the powers that be that it was not proper (or permitted) to ask questions that challenged the ways of Israel.

Seeing this abandonment of the faith in the guise of apathy moved Amos, who was not a religious professional, to speak the word of the Lord to Israel. Although the governing religious hierarchy told him to not prophecy against the ways of Israel, Amos knew he could not remain silent about the injustices he saw. He saw the people going through the rituals of religion as normal while the poor were exploited on their behalf. So this ordinary man took up the mantle of prophet – one who calls people to live into God’s ways. The message he delivered on the streets of Jerusalem was that God hates their worship gatherings and the noise of their praise songs because they have given up on caring about what it actually means to be God’s people. Amos told them – Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory, and lounge on their couches,… who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp, and like David improvise on instruments of music; who drink wine from bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!”

Israel was enjoying the prosperity injustice and oppression of the poor gave them and therefore had accepted the injunction against questioning the practices of the government and economic system (because why would they question something that let them live a comfortable life?). Amos, this ordinary guy from the countryside, called them to instead to stop exploiting the poor and let justice roll across the land. He begged them to ask the hard questions of themselves and of their rulers – to be disciples despite the cost to their day to day lives. But, of course, questioning the status quo is dangerous. Jerusalem had no interest in hearing the word of the Lord that challenged their economic prosperity. The powers that be moved to silence his prophecy and evicted Amos from Jerusalem. And yet the witness of this man who was moved by the day to day reality of the world to be a better disciple and to call others to do the same stands as scripture in our Bibles.

So while at first it may seem that the story of a guy who has his own book in the Bible might not seem like the best encouragement for us everyday people, I find it to be quite inspiring. Why? Because for Amos, the everyday reality of the world was transfigured in a way that led him to acts of worship much in the same way the disciples who saw the transfigured Jesus were moved. Amos saw the suffering of those around him, the injustice of those who lived comfortably at the expense of others, and the silence of the religious community on such matters and his world was changed. This was his everyday world and it moved him to serve as a prophet of God – calling God’s people to actually live in the ways of righteousness and justice that God demands of them.

And just like Amos – this is our everyday world. Our world is filled with injustice. Women trafficked into sex slavery. Workers repeatedly cheated of wages in sweatshops so that our clothes and electronics can be cheap. People who are hungry. People without access to clean water or affordable medical care. If we open our eyes we can see the same injustices in our world that Amos did in his – and if we choose to look in the right way, such can be our daily mountaintop experience calling us to lives of discipleship – not to lose hope or try to contain it in meaningless structures somehow, but to lives as prophets of God turning the world to God’s ways.

jesus benchFor you see, Jesus is transfigured every day at every moment in the world around us. We are reminded in Matthew 25 that whatever we do for the least of those amongst us, we do for Jesus. Jesus is transfigured every day in the guise of the hungry, the poor, the immigrant, the oppressed worker, the homeless, and the sick. We might not have access to one great dazzling mountaintop moment where we encounter the transfigured Jesus, but if we have the eyes to see, we encounter the transfigured Jesus every moment of every day. When we eat food grown by slaves or buy clothes made by oppressed worker we encounter Jesus. When we deny medical care to those who need it or stay silent as aid for the hungry is slashed in our country, we are doing those things to Jesus.

C.S. Lewis referred to this transfiguration of the everyday as being burdened with the weight of the glory of others. If we had the eyes to see we would be overwhelmed he wrote to see that the world is populated with those whom we might refer to as gods and goddesses if we were to see the full glory of God that is in them. To carry the burden of upholding the image of God in our neighbor, to see in them the transfigured Jesus, is our daily task of discipleship. It is not as simple and no where near as easy as ‘happily ever after.’ It truly is a burden to deal with the glory of the everyday but it is far more hopeful.

So when we lament that the thrill of mountaintop experiences may pass or when we get lost in the rituals and structures we build to try and preserve our moments of encounter with Jesus, we would do well to think like Amos instead and see the glory in the every day. To bear that weight of glory by doing to the least of these as we would for Jesus. To transfigure the everyday and become better disciples for it.

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Responsible Relationships

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I have not had much time to blog recently as I am in the midst of end of the semester craziness, but I thought I’d post this excerpt of a paper I wrote for my ethics class –

A few weeks ago my husband and I arrived home from a rare evening out to see a homeless man camped out in the driveway of the empty house next door. I had seen this man wandering the neighborhood and had taken to referring to him as “the wizard” on account of his pointy beard, the wide-brimmed hat and long duster-coat he wore, and staff he carried with him. My husband went out to offer him some food and ended up having a lengthy conversation with this man who even goes by the very wizardly name Hawkeye. He declined the offer of food and mentioned that he has set himself up as the protector of the neighborhood and had information that the empty house next door needed someone to watch over it that night.

This encounter with Hawkeye served as a reminder that homelessness is not just some abstract issue for which the church needs to develop a response, but that the homeless are real individual people with real stories. Yet all too often in our modern economy it is easy to lose sight of these stories. The message that the culture feeds us is that our highest priority should be pursuing our individual security. We participate in the economy for our own sake, assuming the responsibility of providing for ourselves and protecting that which we manage to obtain. Those that fail to make it are viewed as issues to be dealt with (such as the homeless) and rarely as fellow beings made in the image of God that we are to be in solidarity with. In fact the cultural assertion that we are responsible only unto ourselves has led to our ignoring the stories of others that are suffering often because of our own prosperity.

In contradiction of this cultural trend, the biblical witness and the tradition of the church hold that Christians have a responsibility to care for the needs of all people. This mandate goes beyond simply the giving of alms, but to the ensuring that as people of God the church is expressing righteousness by pursuing justice in all of its relationships. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus in his mission to proclaim the kingdom of God describes his role as one who brings good news to the poor and proclaims release to the captives (Lk 4:18). Earlier in the Gospel Mary described the kingdom of God as a place where the powerful are brought down from their thrones and the lowly lifted up (Lk 1: 52) and John declared that to truly follow God “whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise” (Lk 3:10). Jesus also told Zacchaeus that salvation had come to his house once he repented of his economic exploitation of others. To live in the ways of the kingdom of God as revealed in scripture is to be in right relation economically with others.

In a culture that encourages its members to look after their own needs first, the equality and other-centeredness of the kingdom of God is generally perceived as a threat to the status quo. Instead of developing an awareness of how our economic practices are perhaps contributing to the oppression or defrauding of others, the culture encourages us to assume that economics is a morally neutral area. But without knowing the stories of others and understanding how our economic practices are actually affecting them, it is impossible to be in right relation with others. Our business, our striving to gain security in this world, must concern itself with the others we do in fact interact with as part of that process. Like Zacchaeus who in engaging in the expected role of a tax-collector had defrauded those he did business with, all of us need to be aware of the ways we harm others in our economic transactions.

We as the consumer of a good or as an investor in a business need to know if the workings of that business serve to uplift the lowly or to keep them down. Were the workers mistreated or paid insufficient wages? Were they given a just price for their product that not only covers their production costs but also pays them fairly for their labor? Were they forced to work under inhumane conditions or treated in ways that disrespected their dignity? All these are questions that need to be addressed if one is to live out the equitable norm of the kingdom of God.

But in a culture that encourages individualism, it is far too easy to ignore not only the stories of others but this responsibility to treat them properly as well. The poor, like the homeless, are not just issues to be dealt with but are real people already intimately connected to our everyday economic actions. To live into the norms of the kingdom of God where the lowly are lifted up requires action on the part of the people of God. Those who claim to follow God must accept both relationship with the neighbors with whom we interact with economically and the subsequent responsibilities such relationship entails. As the biblical narrative attests, this may mean repenting of ways we have cheated others, working to bring good news to the poor, and leveling out economic relationships as the mighty are brought down while the lowly are lifted up.

Yet as biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann comments, “amid the limitless prosperity of the U.S. economy (an expectation when not a fact), it is profoundly problematic to hold to a tradition that features sacrifice for the sake of holiness and justice for the sake of neighbor.” Individualism is the antithesis of self-sacrificial actions that care for the needs of others. Individualism ensures that I not only have enough but all I desire without bothering to ensure if others have enough as well or if I am harming others in amassing the things I want.

To undo such harmful effects of individualism that neglects to care for the real stories of others what is needed is a significant mental shift. Treating homelessness, hunger, and poverty just as issues that need solutions imposed upon them instead of relationships we have that demand us to act responsibly fails to live in the ways of the kingdom of God. For Christians to engage in economics as Christians we must not only listen to the stories of Jesus but also the stories of those we interact with economically.

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If We Burn, You Burn With Us?

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This week I am reflecting on some of the difficult questions The Hunger Games trilogy raises for readers – today the focus is on violence and oppression.

In reflecting on the events of Holy Week, I find it interesting that one of the common interpretations of why Judas handed over Jesus to the authorities is because Judas desired to push Jesus to assume the political role of the Messiah and lead a rebellion against the occupying Romans. Looking to the historical example of the Maccabees who purged Israel of the evil influence of the Greeks through violent rebellion and ethnic cleansing, perhaps Judas thought that when confronted with political arrest and trial Jesus would too come to the rescue of Israel and save them from the Romans. The other disciples’ tendency to carry weapons and their attack of the soldiers arresting Jesus hint that they too expected something more akin to violent rebellion. Jesus obviously had something different in mind – calling them to a way of life that did not use power to overcome but love to subvert and undo.

Yet the question has remained throughout history as to whether it is ever okay to respond to such oppression and occupation with acts of violent rebellion. It is the question that tormented Dietrich Bonhoeffer under the Third Reich with him eventually deciding that even though it was wrong to murder, he had no choice but to attempt to assassinate Hitler. And it is the hard question that The Hunger Games trilogy proposes as well. Panem is a country where a rich and luxurious Capitol rules the surrounding districts through oppressive and exploitative practices. The people in the districts live in dire poverty, exist on the brink of starvation, and have had all freedoms denied to them. They must labor to meet the insatiable demands of the Capitol and every year send two of their children as tribute to be sacrificed for the Capitol’s entertainment. It is no surprise that when Katniss, the girl of fire, provides the spark, the country erupts into violent rebellion in response to the injustices of the Capitol. But as the story unfolds, it becomes obvious that the Rebellion commits many of the same injustices as the Capitol once did and causes just as much emotional pain to the people of Panem.
So here’s the hard questions that I found The Hunger Games posing –

  • Is it ever okay to respond to oppression with violent rebellion?
  • Is it inevitable that rebellion will descend into injustice as well?
  • How does the example of Jesus factor into our responses to those questions?
  • Is it possible to change the “game” without giving into violence?
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Procreation, Birth Control, and Choice

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I have a feeling this post is going to get me in trouble with some people. This is a conversation that is so polarizing in our culture that it has become impossible to explore why we hold the views we do and the ways they have shaped our culture without being accused of betraying one side or the other. But I’ve been in an interesting place recently as I’ve been listening to the political rhetoric about birth control as well as almost coincidentally reading traditional church teaching on the sacrament of marriage for my ethics class in seminary. And while I fully admit to not agreeing with all that I have been reading (and acknowledge that the theological stance of the church rarely translates into the understandings of the masses), it is helping me to see the underlying point behind the impulse that has unfortunately become a war against birth control and women. So this post is my thinking aloud as I work through class discussions in relation to these recent debates.

Let me come out and say that I agree with the premise that one of the purposes of marriage is procreation. But by that I do not assume as it is taught by the Catholic Church (and recently adopted by evangelicals) that sex (marriage?) therefore must be limited to being between a man and a woman who must be open to conceiving children with every sex act. Procreation has unfortunately been co-opted into a very limited (and very culturally modern) view of family that assumes simply producing children is the ultimate goal. But the procreative orientation is far bigger than that.

Marriages should be procreative because all relationships should be oriented around encouraging and welcoming new life in all its forms. Sometimes this involves the bearing of children or the adoption of children into one’s household, but it also simply involves an openness to accepting responsibility for others. Partners, friends, communities all should be procreative – they should encourage life and take responsibility for caring for others in this world. Instead of selfishly turning inward to care only for one’s personal wants and needs (as an individual, couple, or community), it is to accept that we are all responsible for the well-being or the shalom of others. To be procreative is to care for not just our own children, but to support the children in our neighborhood or church by willingly sacrificing our time to care for and serve them. It is caring for the children in our global community who lack proper nutrition, or access to clean water and health care. It is to care enough to work to stop human trafficking and sex slavery that deny many children around the world a right to a whole and healthy life.

To be in relationship is to commit to support and sustain life in such ways. Marriage, at least in the way the church has traditionally understood it, is a public covenant of that commitment. Yes, some influenced by the cultural definition that marriage is simply about feelings of love or two people trying to make each other happy, have accepted a similarly limiting definition of procreation as only being about the biological production of children. For some this restrictive stance leads them to seeing children as choices not as blessed members of the community. So when marriage is just about two people in love, then children are something that the couple must either be protected from (so therefore we must have safe-sex to prevent the unwanted dependency of children) or it is something that couples simply add on as if they were an accessory to make the family picture look complete. On the opposite extreme, this limited view produces the idea that one can impose through legislation restrictions against birth control, same-sex unions, and women’s agency. When individual choice and happiness are the guiding reasons for doing anything, morality (of any sort) can only be imposed by law and sadly gets reduced to such absurd extremes in the process.

When Mike and I got married we chose as our wedding “hymn” “They Will Know We Are Christians by Our Love.” We had a number of people question that choice since the song isn’t about romantic love (what people often assume the sole point of marriage is), but love for God and neighbor. But we knew that we were not entering into a relationship just for our sake, but to mutually strengthen each other to better serve God in this world – be that through one day caring for children or through accepting responsibility for caring for the local and global communities we are a part of. We did end up procreating by having children of our own, but even as we seem to fit this culture’s assumed normative ideas of marriage, we constantly try to work to expand what it means to be in relation with each other and our community. I don’t accept that as a mom my sole responsibility is to make my husband happy and to pour myself into my kids (which these days seems to simply just be about who can pretend to live-up to the perfection of one’s Pinterest board). Yes, loving and caring for my husband and kids is part of my responsibility, but so is loving mercy, seeking justice, and walking humbly with God. I am procreative in my so-called heteronormative marriage – but so are my single friends, my gay and lesbian friends, my childless married friends, and yes, even my children as they learn to live in communally loving and responsible ways.

I reject the absurdity of the birth control debate not just because it is hurtful, but because it misses the point. But at the same time I reject the cultural lie that my individual choices are all that matter. We are all part of a community and therefore our relationships cannot just be about meeting our personal needs, but instead must procreatively support and nurture life in all its forms. If birth control helps some people actually be more supportive of life, then let’s celebrate and fund it. Sadly birth control is often simply viewed as a matter of choice which has allowed us to view children simply as a threat to our (false sense of) independence or as an accessory to our constructed life. But banning or limiting birth control so as to impose a limited idea of procreation onto all people doesn’t solve that problem. To truly support a traditional view of the intent of procreation the place to start is instead to encourage people to think more communally, to see themselves as responsible for caring for the needs of their local, national, and global community (which might include having children), and to work to support and encourage life in whatever ways they can within those relationships. That is what good marriages – good relationships – should do. But somehow I don’t see those publicly speaking out against birth control these days deciding to call people to live communally and to support life (and children) by seeking justice for the poor and the suffering.

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Truth and Reconciliation in the United States

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On Tuesday of this week a new sex abuse lawsuit was filed against the Roman Catholic Church in Montana. While sadly the need for such lawsuits is nothing new, this one is different for being one of the first involving abuse by nuns toward Native American children. Some 45 Native Americans are accusing the nuns (and priests as well) of raping and molesting them during their time in residential schools from the 1940s-70s. Although the time limit to pursue criminal charges has long since passes, their attorney commented that the Native American plaintiffs “want accountability. The perpetrators have never been criminally prosecuted; they’ve never been punished,” but that, “It’s unfortunate that the only accountability that remains for the victims is through the civil system.”

These are the Native American children who had no choice but to attend these schools and are just now finding their voice to start healing from their experiences there. For those unfamiliar with the Residential or Boarding school system required of Native Americans (because it is definitely not something taught in most history classes), these were government-funded, generally church-run schools that “were set up to eliminate parental involvement in the intellectual, cultural, and spiritual development of Aboriginal children.” If you’ve seen the film Rabbit Proof Fence you might have some clue about what these schools were like, but they existed in the US and Canada as well (and some are still functioning in the US). Native American children would be placed in these schools – often by force against their parent’s wishes – to have their culture “civilized” out of them as a means of assimilating them to white culture. Often parents would not know where their children were taken, and frequently never saw their children again. Children in these schools were forbidden to speak their own language or practice their own culture. Many of the schools used the children as forced labor for government projects. As stories of these schools have emerged, tales of molestation, rape, abuse, disappearances, murders, and medical experimentation and sterilization are common themes.

The horror of these schools is a reality as are the racist assumptions that lead to their formation. The children who were forced into these schools now have emotional scars that need serious healing. As in any case of abuse, to find that healing and to properly mourn what they lost through what was inflicted upon them, the victims need to tell the truth of their experiences. And in the US, the only legal way to do so is to bring a lawsuit against those that harmed them. Sadly though that opens up the victims to further abuses and pain. Those bringing this particular lawsuit are being vilified for their audacity to accuse elderly nuns of abuse. They are being accused of being greedy for money and that they are only doing this out of a hatred for the Catholic Church. As a numbers of responses have said, how dare the Native Americans mar the good name of these nuns and the Church without proof (as if the testimony of 45 Native Americans doesn’t count as proof). If this is even allowed to come to trial (which is doubtful since the allegations are so old), they will face further struggles as their story is suppressed by the loopholes of the legal system.

In reading about this recent lawsuit all I could think is that this is exactly why we need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the United States. Desmond Tutu’s book No Future Without Forgiveness, describes how it was precisely for this reason of allowing the truth to be told with the least amount of pain for the victims that South Africa set up their commission as they did. They knew that to bring all the acts of injustice to trial would not only bankrupt the nation, but that it would hide the truth as perpetrators did everything in their power to not be found guilty and punished. It would not bring healing to their nation to have the victims constantly be told that they were lying about their pain and abuse. So the Truth and Reconciliation Commission choose to promise amnesty in exchange for confessions of truth. Only by telling the truth – all of the murders, abuses, and sins – could a person be exempt from being possibly punished by the government for their crimes. While this system angered those hungry for revenge, it served the purpose of telling the truth necessary for healing. (And it’s not like perpetrators were never punished – confessing to such crimes often led to ostracism from friends, broken marriages, and even suicides as they came face to face with their depravity). But as the name states – the purpose is reconciliation not revenge.

Canada has created a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for precisely the purpose of telling the truth about the Native American residential schools. The Commission believes they have a mandate to find out the truth of what happened in those schools so as to help with the reconciliation process of all involved. The system is far from perfect, but it is a step towards allowing true healing to be possible for the survivors. Instead of making the victims out to be the bad guys as they search for healing in a system that often refuses to acknowledge their continued mistreatment, a Commission like this in the US would at least start a dialogue that is long overdue. This most recent lawsuit and the responses it has provoked serve as poignant reminders that there is a lot of truth our nation still needs to face. Pretending such things don’t exist by writing them out of our textbooks or washing our hands of any responsibility only leads to more pain – for everyone. The truth will set us free, but only if we are courageous enough to let go of our defensiveness and let it be heard.

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On Scumbags and Scoundrels

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Last week here in Austin a well-known and admired local dentist was arrested for having thousands of images of explicit child pornography in his possession. He was the dad of a girl I grew up with and had won outstanding dentist of the year sorts of awards. Such things are always listed when scandals like these are revealed – in part for the shock value and in part for the implicit irony they hold. “How could a man that uses child pornography ever be given such an award” people ask in disbelief. The revelation of his corruption and ways he hurt others nullifies in the public eye any good he’s done or achievements he collected in the past. If he was truly a great dentist or not no longer matters, his sins now disqualify him as any sort of role model in any sphere.

His story intrigued me. I’m all for forgiveness and rehabilitation, but I also agree that the work of being a dentist cannot be separated from this man’s character. Hurting children isn’t acceptable; praising the work of those that harm children therefore isn’t acceptable. The person and the action must be judged together in order to protect others from harm. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing here that we should always be pointing fingers, refusing to forgive, or live in constant judgment of others. Life is messy; no one is perfect and all that. I’m all for mercy, but at the same time if people are being hurt it has to be stopped. This man is being held accountable for how he hurt children. I hope he can repent and change and find mercy, but to stop the harm he had to be held accountable. The public outrage at his actions will ensure that he is held accountable in ways that prevent him from doing further harm.

But in a world full of suffering and pain, I find it interesting that there are very few “sins” left anymore that can so completely discredit a person and force the community to hold them accountable for their actions. Sure we might think Charlie Sheen or Mel Gibson are crazy and need help, or shake our heads when we hear of yet another athlete or entertainer who beat up their girlfriend, or admit a pastor’s misogyny might be bit extreme even as we buy his books – but falling out of favor or assuming boys will be boys is not the same as holding people accountable so that they will stop hurting others.

What if businessmen when given achievement awards were held accountable for the abuses committed in their sweatshops they own or for the pollution they have created? Or if “sealing-the-deal” gifts of visits to brothels full of trafficked young women were listed alongside a company’s stocks? Would we be willing to hold those people accountable for hurting others in such ways? Would it affect our respect for the company or whether or not we used their product? We freak out and lynch the dentist caught with child porn or even the pastor who has an affair because such things are close to home, but we continue to give awards and our money to those that abuse workers and sex slaves. So, why the double standard? Isn’t hurting people the same thing no matter who does it or where it takes place?

I was asking myself these questions last week after this story hit the news and found an interesting response to my musings in the words of Newt Gingrich. As he announced his intention to run for president, news stations brought up his controversial quote about Obama where he said that Obama was conning the American people with his anti-colonial Kenyan mindset and was fundamentally out of touch with how the world works. I agreed in part with Gingrich’s assessment, but not for the reasons he intended. In his view a president has to follow the oppressive and colonial ways of the world in order to achieve power and dominance at any cost because that is just the way the world works. Politicians, businessmen, bankers – the power holders in our world today often operate under a different system than the rest of us. They are looked down upon as weak, out of touch, and con-artists if they seek the good of the whole and not just themselves. We assume that they will abuse the environment and their workers, we expect them to visit brothels and sex slaves, we expect them to colonize and destroy – and never have to take responsibility for any of it, even if caught. Some of us have glimmers of hope when we see people in those worlds attempting to subvert those expectations, but we rarely hold such people accountable for hurting others. In fact we reward them for doing so if they manage to benefit us while they are doing it.

It’s obvious that there are people out there who never take responsibility for the hurts they have caused in the world. But what about our responsibility to hold them accountable for their actions? Most of us don’t even want to admit that we contribute to the systems that cause harm, much less speak out in an attempt to put an end to the suffering of others. We are even unsettled and uncomfortable when we have to face the depravity of men like this dentist who now must take responsibility for the harm they caused children. But I think stories like these need to push us to ask these questions – ask why responsibility and accountability are assumed to just not be part of “the way the world works.” And then choose not to be afraid of actually finding answers.

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Dignity at the Airport

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as posted at the Christian Century blog –

When I flew home this past weekend, I got to see the new TSA screening measures in action. The tiny airport I flew out of didn’t have the new backscatter machines, but TSA agents were selecting passengers to receive the full-body pat-downs. I watched as a very elderly man was pulled to the side and patted down head to toe, the agent’s hands rubbing all over his chest and touching his rear end and groin. The man’s wife stood by looking helpless.

I was appalled by the intrusive nature of the pat-down but even more horrified by how unaccommodating the agents were to the man’s age and frailty. He had to hold his arms out to the side for a significant amount of time. My elementary school teachers used this as punishment, until the district made them stop because it was cruel and unusual. Yet this elderly gentleman was forced to do so to the point of physical strain–I saw him shaking–in the name of national security.

I’ve seen the YouTube videos of young children being stripped searched, of sexual assault victims sobbing because they’ve been touched in ways that resurface terrifying memories. I’ve read conflicting reports as to whether the backscatter machine’s radiation is harmful. I have friends who, when the TSA asks for their cloak, plan to shame the shamers by giving them their tunic too. I’m having a hard time discerning if I am outraged or simply heartbroken.

As more and more people protest this invasion of their bodies, the TSA agents who bear the brunt of the anger have complained to their union, asking for more protection from upset passengers. They don’t like being shoved or called molesters, and they want to be able to do their job professionally without interference. Part of me wants to respond with incredulity–how it is okay for a stranger to touch my breasts but not okay for me to feel violated by that? But I feel for the agents and the difficult position they are in.

What is at stake is human dignity of passenger and agent alike. There’s no dignity in being inspected like an animal–nor in performing the inspection. Ironically, our fear of terrorism has led us to toss aside this dignity.

These security measures are meant to build a safer community for us to live in, but there can be no community when there is no respect for the dignity of other people. When the government mandates acts that in any other situation would get someone fired for harassment or arrested for assault, we have to ask if we have sacrificed the freedoms and community that we’re trying to protect.

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Justice and Women

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We live in a world full of pain and injustice; there is no getting around that fact. We can hide from the truth or try to protect ourselves from reality, but just because we don’t want to know about it doesn’t mean it doesn’t still exist. Our world does its best to hide its dark side from consumer eyes and our school boards do their best to hide most of history from our children. It takes work to keep our eyes open wide enough to see reality. Thankfully, there are people out there who do try to be informed, who try to end injustice, to heal past wounds, and to make amends. Yet recently, as I was reading Eduardo Galeano’s classic book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of Pillage of a Continent, I came across an almost casually mentioned atrocity that jolted me with the reminder that even for the people who are out there actively seeking to fight injustice, there remains one injustice that many would prefer to continue to ignore – the oppression of women. Across the world it is women who often face the worst injustices and yet are often brushed aside as not important enough to seek justice for.

In writing about how the sugar cane industry has destroyed the land and economies of many Latin American countries and led to numerous human rights abuses, Galeano mentioned that in certain plantations in Brazil (at least as of his writing) it was common practice for the plantation owners to claim jus primae noctis, or, right of the first night with the daughters of their workers. Most commonly known to us from the movie Braveheart this is a medieval custom giving to the Lord of an area the right to the virgin night of all the women he ruled. Although in Medieval times the actual consummation was rarely if ever practiced as many families chose the option of “giving” the Lord the bride’s dowry instead (what the Lord was after anyway), Galeano reports that on the plantations the owners would demand the right to have their way with their workers’ 11-12 year old daughters in exchange for the worker remaining in their employment.

Reading that affected me in a visceral way. In the midst of a litany of oppression, I was reminded that women truly bear the brunt of injustice worldwide. Their bodies are chattel, they aren’t deemed worthy of education, and they are fed leftovers if they get food at all. Because they are women their oppression is magnified. Not only must they endure the poverty and the colonialism, but also the objectification of their bodies and the required subjugation of their wills. When voices for liberation or revolution arise the women are called upon to endure hardships and make sacrifices, but it is never their liberation that is fought for. The few that call out for women’s needs to be addressed and for liberation to come to women are told that in light of the greater injustices and oppression that their cause is just a selfish distraction. I hear it all the time in the church – there are just too many more important things to spend energy on than trying to bring justice to women. We aren’t even worth the effort of those that make it a point to care about injustice and the oppressed.

Feminist postcolonial theologians are quick to point out this imbalance. They ask how can we say that we truly desire liberation if in achieving that liberation women still remain oppressed? They repeatedly insist that equality and respect for women should never be an afterthought to be sought sometime after the real work of combating injustice is done, but an instead should be at the very foundation of what it means to seek liberation itself. Nations and races cannot ever fully work for reconciliation and mutual respect if those nations are built upon oppression from within. But sadly, theirs are not the voices that are commonly heard.

In reading non-Western theologies recently (both postcolonial and evangelical), I have in fact encountered the very opposite. Men, who write on combating injustice and prejudice by calling the church to learn from say Korean or First Nation theologies and church practices, insist upon, as part of that process, an affirmation of gender roles that give men a strong (and sole) leadership role in the home, the community, and the church. They see a firm affirmation of this hierarchy of men over women to be integral to ending race divisions in the church itself. So not only are the needs of women ignored, healing and justice are proposed through the continued oppression and sacrifice of women.

Injustice and oppression make me sick and prompt feelings of rage inside of me. But reading about these young girls being raped as pawns in the never-ending cycle of colonial and commercial oppression left me feeling raw. This isn’t just about greed and economics. It isn’t just about racism and power-plays. It’s rooted in a subjugation of women that denies our worth and turns us into mere objects for men to use as they see fit. Most of the Western world hides behind their ignorance of history and injustice (often willfully sought) as an excuse to uphold the status quo. But when even those who claim to care about justice say that speaking out of behalf of women isn’t worth the effort I can barely respond. How can justice be justice if it is only for men?

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Violence from the Past

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The day after we here in the U.S. paused to remember the men and women who had died fighting for our country, the fight continued from beyond the grave. On Tuesday in the town of Göttingen, Germany, a World War 2 era bomb exploded killing three people and injuring six others. The strangeness of death coming from a conflict long resolved, the destruction of former enemies now become close friends, gave me pause as I read the headline.

My first thought in the “what a tangled web we weave” category, was to wonder if the Allied airmen dropping those bombs some years ago ever thought that their action had the potential to kill their unborn grandchildren. Or that one day we would live in a globalized world where the idea of Germany and America being at war with one another would be utterly preposterous. And still the violence and the hatred of a time gone by had its latest causalities in 2010.

I’m fully aware that if any war could ever be called a “just war” it would be World War 2. I also know that this could simply be seen as a freak accident. But it isn’t just in Germany where the conflicts of the past still reach into the peaceful times of the present — harming generally those with no stake in the fight. The poor farmer in Laos whose legs were blown off when he overturned a bomb leftover from when his country was used as a pawn as the colonial powers of the West fought for control in Vietnam. The three children killed in Columbia when they triggered a landmine while playing a game of soccer. The people in Japan dying from cancers caused by the atomic bombs dropped in their country. The children born with birth defects because their parents were exposed to Agent Orange in the Vietnam War. Wars never end when a treaty is signed or peace declared.

It can be easy to dismiss these as simply the vicissitudes of life, but I wonder if that is just a way to avoid dealing with the issues. Our news channels don’t give us body counts of those we’ve killed in Iraq or Afghanistan because that would make the conflict too real — too human. Thinking about the lingering effects an act of violence might have seems to do the same. In the moment the goal of winning trumps any understanding of the enemy as a real person. Considering that in a decade one might be sitting down for a cup of coffee with the person one is attempting to kill today isn’t conducive to gaining the upper hand today. But the future still comes.

I recall first understanding the strangeness and regret hindsight can elicit when in grad school I sat down for a lunch with a friend from the Ukraine and we joked about the duck and cover drills we practiced in our grade schools. Each of us was conditioned to hate the other, sure that our respective countries would launch an attack at any moment. And now we were in school together, studying missions theology, eating sandwiches at the local deli. It is easy to question why I assumed she was my enemy then, I just wish I had had the courage to do so when I was a child.

I know how simplistic it sounds to suggest that a long-term perspective be applied to the conflicts of the present. Most would answer that the peace of tomorrow can only come through the violence of today. But how many of us would look at our closest friends and tell them that if we could travel back in time we would have no problem killing their grandparents. So why are we interested in killing people today whose children will go to school with our kids in a few years? Are we okay with the bomb we dropped today killing our allies in Afghanistan in 70 years? I hope if anything good comes from this incident in Germany it is that some of these questions start being asked. It’s complicated and messy, but that’s what generally happens when we take the time to think beyond the moment.

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