The Failure (and Ironic Success) of Apologetics

The Failure (and Ironic Success) of Apologetics

        In 1988, a book by Alasdair MacIntyre was published under the title, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?  Without attempting to summarize the argument of its 400 pages, suffice it to say that MacIntyre demonstrates admirably that Justice (and, by extension, morality) is a word or concept that means different things to different cultures and times.  He traces, as a paradigm case, the change from what people meant by "justice" and "rationality" (two ideas MacIntyre claims are always deeply intertwined) from presocratic Greek thought, through Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, through the Middle Ages to Hume and his heirs.  The change, even within Western history, striking.

         Some would argue that this means that there is no such thing as "absolute" justice, morality, rationality and the rest.  The argument being, if so many different cultures disagree on what these terms mean, how can we possibly say that one of them is right and the rest of them are wrong?  This is amplified when we consider that we have a tendency to assume that the rationality, etc. that we are immersed (or grew up) in is "right."  In such a case, how can a claim to be committed to an "absolute" truth of any kind be anything other than a new form of imperialism, where we go into new cultures and, under the guise of spreading "rationality" or "truth," in fact end up spreading nothing more than our own forms of thought and life?

        I am not entirely convinced that arguments like MacIntyre's (and also, in their own way, of Kuhn, Feyerabend, and others within the philosophy and history of science) lead us to conclude that there is and can be no such thing as absolute truth.  Rather, it means that, if there is such a thing as absolute truth, which is not just a characteristic of Christian faith but also is true of philosophical systems like Plato's (as well, incidentally, of Eastern philosophies which do not so much emphasize what is, but what is not which, ultimately, presuppose their own metaphysical convictions), we do not have access to it in any way that somehow manages to bypass a particular language and conceptual framework.

        There has been a longstanding strategy in modern Christian apologetics which gets an awful lot of mileage out of the idea (which, in my opinion, is suspect if not entirely false) that, because all human beings are created in the image of God, we all share a kind of common moral awareness.  By building on that, along with other related claims to commonality, apologists often try to reason that the "whence" of that moral awareness is God, and therefore, since everyone already believes in moral standards, everyone already believes in God.  It should be noted that, while many contemporary apologists for Christian faith would identify as being theologically (if not politically) conservative, this idea has far more in common with the theology of Schleiermacher, the father of Liberal theology, than the example of Paul the apostle and the other Biblical authors.  It should also be noted that, even if this line of reasoning were valid, it would not be a victory for Christian faith but for classical theism.  Any train of thought that simply does not take the actual life, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ is not a distinctly "Christian" argument.

        What is interesting is that, in addition to the fact that this line of argument is not good theology, nor is it good apologetics, it is also fundamentally flawed from a philosophical and sociological point of view.  The irony of this is that anyone who is involved in missionary work can see the flaws.  It does not matter into what culture you enter, there are interesting differences as to what is "just" or "moral" that belie any real confidence in the standard apologetic argument from morality.  The best one could say is that, because every culture has moral standards (though they are often very different from one another), the source of the existence of standards in general (not the standards themselves) is God.  If this line of reasoning is sound, it is no more helpful than the other.  There have been several missionaries in the last twenty years or so who have shared how their experiences in other cultures have called into question their conviction that their own culture was the standard by which to judge the values of others, but this has challenged them to reflect all the more deeply about the nature of justice, morality and truth, rather than abandon them.

        All of this is to say that this line of reasoning (that truth and faith are bound up with moral standards) has become so deeply engrained into our culture that both the theological (and political) left and right believe it.  In fact, it has become something of a basic axiom which people have turned into a means to critique Christian faith from a new angle.  The argument goes something like this.  You are correct that I have a deep moral sense.  It is part of my very identity and I believe it, even when other things seem uncertain.  When I take this moral sense and I read parts of the Bible (or, as often as not, when I hear others tell me what is in the Bible), I find things there that violate my sense of right and wrong and so, therefore, I stand in judgment over what I find there.

        It is significant that, in many ways, this is nothing more than a contemporary, non-Christian (not to say atheistic) appropriation of the apologetical argument from morality.  While Christian apologists attempted to say, "Anyone who reflects for a minute on their sense of morality will realize that the gospel is true," these new non-Christian apologists are attempting to say, "Anyone who reflects for a minute on their sense of morality will realize that the gospel is ridiculous, as well as the Bible in which we read about it."  It is deeply ironic that this way or arguing has demonstrated that the apologists have actually won, even if their victory doesn't look like they wanted.  They have finally convinced the American people of their major premise, that our moral sense ought to be judge of everything else.  The only problem is that people took that major premise and concluded, not that they were immoral, but that the gospel is immoral.  If we combine this with a decreased sense of the majesty of the Christian tradition (which may or may not be too bad a thing), we find that people are unwilling to give the gospel the benefit of the doubt and, when their first encounter is bad, simply dismiss the rest.

        The problem with this is that, in the attempt to reveal Christians as naïve and non-Christians as enlightened, the secular world has joined large portions of the church in their naïveté by becoming every bit as imperialistic and paternalistic as the views they condemn.  We don't say that sex-slavery is wrong because it violates our own, culturally conditioned notion of how we ought to treat other people; it is wrong because it violates universal human rights.  In many ways, this is a more arrogant position than a Christian position that says that, because sex-slavery is clearly against what God would will, as revealed in Christ, it is against God and therefore is wrong, which at least recognizes that we need to be informed by God what really is right and wrong and that we cannot trust our feelings to always be right on the topic of morality, because it presupposes that there is something about humanity that should make it clear what is right and wrong and that people who do otherwise are not just in communities that have not yet been shaped by the gospel but are fundamentally evil and must be restrained from maintaining their tradition.

        If we cannot understand that other people have different points of view from ourselves and that we will need to translate and, at a more basic level, learn to listen, we will never rise above name-calling.  Baptizing our own point of view and using it as the standard by which to judge others does not become magically noble when separated from Christian faith.  Secular culture is every bit as biased and full of agenda as religious culture.  What we must do is learn how to work together and acknowledge the fact that, if indeed there is such a thing as absolute truth (which, as a Christian, I believe in wholeheartedly) it very well may stand in every bit as much judgment over me as it does over you.

1 Corinthians 15:12-19 (What the Resurrection Tells Us)

04/29/12 1 Corinthians 15:12-19 Grace UMC

When I was a kid, I remember always being confused by the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas." Christmas, after all, is only one day. It might be the case that we spend a few weeks building up to it, but it is just one day; that's it. Sometimes, we will speak of there being a "Christmas Season" but what do we mean when we say that? We mean the season of Advent. If you were to look at the church calendar, you would find that there actually is a Christmas season, and it is after Advent; in fact, you will find that the twelve days of Christmas are twelve days of celebration starting on Christmas and going until Epiphany. We might not always pay very much attention to it, but there is a whole season dedicated to celebrating Christmas, but what often happens? We tend to talk about Jesus coming into the world during Advent and then stop thinking about it altogether once the presents are opened.

The reason why I bring this up at the end of April is because there is an Easter season, too, and it isn't just the season of Lent. There are six Sundays between Easter and Pentecost, which is just enough time to forget about one and how it connects to the other. Well, I want to do my part to try to make this an Easter season and spend some time talking about the resurrection of Christ, but not so much the Easter story as such but what the fact that Jesus was raised from the dead in glory has to tell us about you and me and this life that we live in this world of ours.

It should come as no surprise that there are a lot of people who are not all that interested in taking the resurrection of Christ seriously. After all, do you know anyone who has been raised from the dead like Jesus was, in glory and never to die again? In the modern era, there has been some concern about whether the church should really be proclaiming such a gospel that includes a physical resurrection since it is so foreign to our experience. In the last few hundred years, there has been a significant reinterpretation of the story of Easter. The whole mainstream of what we call today "modern" theology has tended to say that the story of Easter is far less a story of what actually happened to Jesus in a tomb that morning and far more a story of the experience of the disciples that same day. That is to say, when we say that Christ was raised from the dead, we don't mean, according to this view, that a dead body spontaneously returned to life, got up and walked out of a tomb; we mean that the disciples had a profound encounter with the spirit of Jesus that was so strong that it was as if he was raised from the dead.

Now, what is the problem with that? If you look at it from a particular point of view, it doesn't seem all that bad. After all, if we imagine that Jesus' ministry was primarily, if not exclusively, about telling us how to be good and how to live in harmony with everyone else, what difference does it make whether he was physically raised or not? Not a whole lot. What it means to be a so-called "good person" doesn't fundamentally change if a particular person is alive or dead. In fact, given that we can all agree that we ought to love one another, like Jesus said, and resurrections are hard to believe, maybe we should spend our time talking about the former and kind of ignore the latter, perhaps hoping that it will go away and we won't have to deal with it.

As it turns out, the question as to whether Jesus was literally, physically raised from the dead is extremely important. According to Paul, it is something upon which the whole gospel stands or falls, which is not something he says about just anything. In his first letter to the Corinthians, which we just heard, he lays out an argument that goes something like this. "Now guys, I hear that some of you are saying that there is no such thing as people being raised from the dead, that dead is dead and that is the end of it. Now, if there is no such thing as resurrection, then nobody is raised from the dead, which means even Christ has not been raised from the dead since he is a somebody. Here's the problem, though. We have been proclaiming, and you all believed, that Jesus has been raised from the dead and that it is through this death and resurrection of Christ that God has worked out our salvation and we have been reconciled to God. So, if it is true that there are no such things as resurrections, then Christ has not been raised, which means that the gospel that is built on his death and resurrection is useless, which means your faith is useless, and we have all been deceived. If we trust in a Christ who has died and will live no more, we are the most pitiful people in all the world."

Now, I pointed out earlier, that if Jesus' main point was simply to teach us a good way to live and that we should be generally nice to each other, then it doesn't matter whether he was raised from the dead or not, but Paul seems to think that it makes a huge difference whether Christ is really raised or not. What then are we to conclude from this? If nothing else, it is that Jesus came to do far more than simply turn us into "nice" people. What is it that we learn from the resurrection of Christ from the dead?

We learn that our bodies really matter to God. I remember that I used to imagine that, once Jesus ascended to heaven forty days after he was raised, it was the end of his humanity, that Jesus shed his humanity like a snake sheds his skin. I don't know for sure why I thought that, since the Bible doesn't say that anywhere. I imagine that I thought that, since it was such a tremendous sacrifice for God to become a human being, when the time for being physically present with his people was done, he wouldn't need his body anymore. After all, what purpose would it serve? And yet, what we actually read in the Bible is that God becomes a human being, dies as a human being, is raised from the dead as a human being, ascends to heaven as a human being and will one day come again in final victory as a human being. That means that Jesus is a human being right now and will be forever.

This is really astonishing news. It means that, not only did God enter into our world of space and time in Christ but it means that God has taken our world of space and time back into God's own life in Christ. It means that the God who is so self-sufficient that he never needed to create anything has so loved humanity, has so loved you and me, that he has taken humanity back up into his own life, that human beings are so loved by God that he would join himself to our humanity forever. If nothing else, this means that salvation was never meant to be merely a gift of spiritual joy where we get to go to heaven, as amazing as heaven is. Rather, salvation is something that impacts every area of our lives, both our souls and our bodies.

The resurrection of Christ from the dead means that God knows what it is like to be a human being and to endure all of the trials of life, including that final trial of death. It means that when Jesus sends his disciples out, giving them a Great Commission to go and fulfill, he is not simply doing so as the God of the Universe who has the authority to command and expect it to be done; he does so as our elder brother, as the one who knows our suffering, our hurts, our limitations, our fears as well as our hopes, and entrusts his plan into our hands (which we might sometimes wonder whether it is a good idea to do so). When Jesus says that he will be with his disciples until the end of the age, it is not just that he is going to disperse like a gas cloud to the farthest reaches of the earth but that, through the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ the God-Man will be by their side, in the nitty-gritty of life and the hard work we find ourselves engaged in.

I don't know about you, but I am quite glad to know that I have a God who knows what it is like to live in this world because, in spite of all the differences between first century Israel and twenty-first century Iowa, people are people. We all still have problems with money, with other people, we still have days where we don't like the weather, we have accidents, we make mistakes, and we live with broken relationships that seem like they never heal, regardless of what we do. God doesn't just know about all of that because he is God and knows everything, but because he has actually stepped into the middle of this broken world and experienced it for himself in an incredibly intimate and personal way.

One of the most welcome things that the resurrection of Christ from the dead means is that the way things are is not the way they will always be. It is easy to get into the mindset that, when we see Jesus raised from the dead, its just something for him and has nothing to do with us, other than the guarantee that our sins have been forgiven. And yet there are places in the New Testament where we read things like this, in the letter to the Romans: "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you." Paul wants to make it as clear as possible that the resurrection of Christ from the dead is not just a nice thing to believe and a thing to sing about on Easter Sunday, but something that impacts your life and your future. The good news is not simply that Christ is raised, but that, because Christ is raised, you too shall be raised.

At the end of the day, that is what Paul is saying in the text from First Corinthians. He starts out by responding to the claim that the dead are not raised, which is in many ways a reasonable claim as I pointed out earlier, by pointing out how disastrous such a claim is to the belief that Christ was raised from the dead. But we need to remember that Paul has no interest in doing what many Christians, especially Christians who are interested in theological issues enjoy doing, and I realize that I myself fall into that category; he has no interest in simply arguing a point that has no real impact on our world. At first glance, if we looked at it the right way, we could say that Paul is simply combatting with others over the issue of whether they have the "right" doctrines or not. We could interpret it as a preeminent example of a theological bully, marginalizing the beliefs of others in order to assert his own. But that would be terribly misleading.

After all, Paul is not interested in reinforcing a "party line," a narrow orthodoxy that is more interested in drawing lines to keep people out than sharing good news with them. According to Paul, the reason that we need to take the resurrection seriously is not because we need to pass some doctrinal examination, but because our future is bound up with it. "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied."

In the resurrection we see our future. It is a future of glory, of life, of healing. We see that, as final as death may seem to us, and we have all seen what power death seems to have, for it has touched each of us in one way or another, it is not the last word for us. Our God is a God who conquers the grave, and who not only conquers it for himself, but makes us share in that same victory. There can be no wonder why those first Christians remained bold in the face of persecution. They knew the truth of what Jesus told his disciples, "I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that can do nothing more." The worst the enemies of the gospel could do is kill Christians but they had no power beyond that, and in Christ, we can see that a power that can kill the body but nothing more isn't all that powerful compared to God.

We as Christians are called to be bold, to live strong in our faith in the good news of Jesus Christ. But what is the source of our boldness? It certainly isn't because we are better than non-Christians because it doesn't take much to look around and realize that Christians are sometimes some of they very worst behaved people around. It isn't because we have all our answers right in our heads because most of us give very little careful thought as to what we believe; speaking for myself, I am reminded daily about how much of God I do not know. Rather it is because we follow a God who has overcome the grave and has done so from within our own humanity. We are people who have been liberated from the need to fear death. In the light of the good news, we can say along with Paul, "Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"

The good news of Jesus Christ is not that things will never go wrong. They will. Often. The good news of Jesus Christ is that the things that go wrong are never so wrong as to be the final word. Something I have found myself saying to many people is that, when we as Christians say "It will be alright," we don't mean it in any kind of wishy-washy way. Rather, what we mean is, "It will be alright, even if it kills me." That is why we are called to be bold because, in a very real sense, we simply cannot be stopped. There is persecution of Christians in various parts of the world, where people have to quite literally choose which is more dear to them, their faith or their life; and yet, they are not stopped. How much more so should we here, in the relatively safe and persecution-free community of Spencer, live with boldness knowing that, as John says, "greater is the one who is in [us] than the one who is in the world."

I would like to share words from Paul's letter to the Romans that are quite familiar, but I hope that, as we dwell on the incredible implications of the gospel, they might have greater weight than they might at other times. "What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, 'For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.' No, in all these things we are more than conquerers through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Let us pray.

AMEN

Ephesians 4:1-16

02/12/12 Ephesians 4:1-16 Grace UMC

I cannot speak for anyone else, but I must admit that it feels as though I have been continually pestered by a theme over the last few months. Throughout the whole month of December, we were celebrating the season of Advent, culminating in Christmas. During that time, we were celebrating that the very Son of God has entered into our world of space and time, that when we say that God loves us, we do not only mean that God loves our souls or loves our spirits but loves our entire selves, body and soul. We saw that God did not leave us trapped in a body of sin but rather entered into our physicality and transformed it, offering us physical salvation every bit as much as spiritual salvation.

More recently, we had a Celebration Sunday, where we were reminded that when we talk about celebrating and being joyful in the Lord, we don't simply mean that we should have some kind of disembodied, spiritual joy, but that the joy should overflow and make a difference in absolutely every area of our lives. I feel like I have been reminded, over and over again recently, about the intense physicality of our spiritual lives and the intense spirituality of our physical lives. We cannot separate the things we do for our bodies and the things we do for our souls into different compartments that have nothing, or very little, to do with one another. Our bodies are always bodies-of-our-souls and our souls are always souls-of-our-bodies.

It is with that in mind that I wanted to spend some time talking about something we hear about every so often in the church but that we seldom really dig deep in: the role and importance of community in our Christian lives. It is interesting that it seems as though we live in a world that emphasizes faith as a personal thing, that it is something that each individual has entirely on their own and the faith one person has is so personal to themselves that it does not, or at least it should not, have an impact on anyone else. This last point is so strong that it has, at least in a way, been woven into the fabric of our American constitution. The reason that this is so interesting is that we find absolutely no model, anywhere in the Bible, for being an individual Christian. We hear about disciples (in the plural) and apostles (also in the plural), we hear about churches (groups of Christians) and we hear about the body of Christ (a term used for all Christians taken together), but we hear nothing about a person having such an isolated faith that it is theirs and theirs alone that they can either nurture or neglect based only on their own whims and desires and nobody can ever have a problem with it because it is their faith and their faith alone.

What we find is that the Bible is incredibly consistent about the importance of our interpersonal relationships together as Christians. In fact, the Bible is much more clearly consistent on this topic than on many others. The reason for this is rooted in the very most basic nature of our Christian lives. As much as some would like to convince us otherwise, we are not just isolated individuals on some kind of nebulous "personal faith journey" that has nothing to do with anyone else's nebulous "personal faith journey." Rather, as Christians, we believe in a very concrete spiritual experience. We believe not so much in the importance of faith, but the importance of the object of our faith. We believe that we are forgiven and reconciled to God, not through wishful thinking, not by being "good people," not even because we go to church, but because in Christ, God has met with us, has taken our broken condition upon himself, and has utterly transformed our situation. We as Christians are each made partakers of the ministry of Christ, again not by wishful thinking, but because we are actually taken and, through the power of the Holy Spirit, grafted into Christ himself like branches on a vine and are therefore joined to each other at the same time.

It is because we are joined together that the writers of the New Testament encourage us so often to pray for one another, to support one another through difficult times, to take on one another's burdens, to rejoice together and to grieve together. It isn't just because that's what good people do, but because those other people, in a crucial sense, make up part of who we are. There is a sense in which there are no such things as "individuals" in the fullest sense. To speak only of myself, I could call myself a father, but to do so is already to name my son; I could call myself a husband, but to do so is already to name my wife; I could call myself a son, but to do so is already to name my parents; I can call myself a pastor, but to do so is already to name all of you. Even to call me by my name is to tie me up with my whole family. There really is no way to consider a person in complete isolation from all other persons. We are bound together and cannot be isolated, even if we might want to be.

This idea, that things are only what they are because of the relations in which they are found is something that science has had to deal with. Ever since James Clerk Maxwell wrote about electromagnetic theory and, in doing so, pointed out that what we used to think of as individual particles or atoms are actually significant points in a continuous field of force, we have had to deal with the fact that we cannot isolate something without, in some sense, damaging it. The same is true for us. If we try to isolate someone, either ourselves or someone else, we have changed who they are, torn them out of the relationships that make up who they are.

This should come as no surprise to us as Christians. After all, we believe that God himself is Triune, that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit and that these three are one. The Persons of the Trinity are so completely united that everything we say about the Father we say about the Son except "Father," and everything we say about the Son we say about the Father except "Son," and so on. We cannot consider Jesus in isolation from his Father without destroying his identity, we cannot consider the Father except as the one who has sent his Son, and we cannot understand the Holy Spirit except as the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of the Son. This deep connection with others is not something that we invented one day but something that is part even of the nature of God.

All of this brings me to one of the most wonderful and, unfortunately, most forgotten aspects of early Methodism that contributed greatly to the revival and helped to shape generations of Christians both in England and in America. One of the most amazing things about early Methodism was the significance of their small group ministry. If you wanted to become a Methodist, you were asked only one question. Just one. "Do you desire to flee from the wrath to come?" If you could look into the depths of your heart and recognize that you were someone who needed saving by God, you were welcomed with open arms among the Methodists. You didn't need to pass a doctrinal exam, you didn't need to prove that you were reformed from sin, you didn't need to do anything to be accepted other than answer "yes" to that one question. If you did, you were enrolled in the society (remember, in its earliest days, Methodism was a movement of renewal, not a separate church) and, at the very same time, enrolled into what was called a "class."

Now, a Methodist class is not the same thing as a Sunday School class. It isn't a place where you go to learn, at least not in the sense that you have one person who has prepared and teaches the rest of the people. Instead, it is a place for people to gather every week and support each other as they grow in their faith. It is important to notice a significant difference between how small groups were approached in early Methodism and how they are often approached today. Today, most people in any given local church do not participate in a small group that is geared toward sharing life with one another. If someone feels that they desire to go above and beyond their experience on Sunday mornings, they might join a class where they can study a book of the Bible or one written by some significant contemporary Christian leader. Sometimes, such groups spill over from being just a study group to becoming a place where people can share their lives of faith, but this is usually not the primary goal of the group.

By contrast, in early Methodism, everyone was in a small group. And by everyone, I mean everyone. Absolutely nobody was exempt. The only thing that was asked was whether they desired to flee from the wrath to come, which meant that they weren't even asked if they were a Christian. In fact it was, in general, assumed that new Methodists weren't Christians, that they needed to learn how to be Christians, that simply joining a church or even a renewal movement did not imply that one already had saving faith but very likely needed to live in a new way in order to really believe the gospel. In doing so, they were building on the key insight of people such as Athanasius who argued that, if you really want to understand what the apostles have to tell us about Jesus, you have to live in a way consistent with how they lived, that you may have to live like a Christian before you can believe like a Christian.

For those early Methodists, participation in the small group ministry was not something extra that could be tacked on to "normal" Christian commitment, it was understood as an absolutely vital part of Christian life. If someone were to say, "I really love the Methodists. I really look forward to meeting with the larger congregation every week. I love everything about Methodism except those small group meetings. I will do anything you say except be a part of a small group," you were dropped from the rolls of the society. Whatever else you may have been, if you were not part of a small group that was actively helping you to live as a Christian in every aspect of your life, you were not a Methodist. It was taken that seriously.

It is important to understand, however, that the Methodists realized that not everyone was in the same place in their relationship with God, that different people who were in different places spiritually had different needs. If you were not yet a Christian, if you could only bear witness to your need to be forgiven but could not yet testify that you had been assured of your salvation by grace, you were part of a class. You met with between eight and twelve other people in similar life situations led by someone who was more mature in their faith as a guide and facilitator. After you became aware of God's saving grace in your own life and were able to bear witness to God's salvation and its impact in transforming your life, you became a member of what was called a "band." Now a band was intended for those who were confident in the grace of God, who could look back on their life and point to a time when they were not a Christian and a time when they were a Christian and share in concrete ways how God had saved them and delivered them from their sins.

When you joined a band, you were asked the following eleven questions, to which the answer "yes" was expected to each. 1. Have you the forgiveness of your sins?  2. Have you peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ?  3. Have you the witness of God’s Spirit with your spirit, that you are a child of God?  4. Is the love of God shed abroad in your heart?  5. Has no sin, inward or outward, dominion over you?  6. Do you desire to be told your faults?  7. Do you desire to be told all your faults, and that plain and home?  8. Do you desire that every one of us should tell you, from time to time, whatsoever is in his heart concerning you?  9. Consider! Do you desire we should tell you whatsoever we think, whatsoever we fear, whatsoever we hear, concerning you?  10. Do you desire that, in doing this, we should come as close as possible, that we should cut to the quick, and search your heart to the bottom?  11. Is it your desire and design to be on this, and all other occasions, entirely open, so as to speak everything that is in your heart without exception, without disguise, and without reserve?

Now, because we live in a different time and because this dynamic small group structure has been conspicuously absent from the mainstream of Methodism since the beginning of the twentieth century, we have a tendency to hear those questions and see them in a very much negative way. We start to wonder why we should allow someone else to ask us questions like this, we start to have serious doubts about whether we actually want to be told what is wrong with us. We might not actually want to let other people into the deep, dark secrets of our lives because, you know, sometimes we have sins that we like committing, that we have convinced ourselves don't hurt anyone but ourselves and that they might not even hurt us, either. If we answer "yes" to those questions, we realize that we might have to be a Christian full-time, that we can't really get away from people who will hold us accountable.

And yet, if we see those questions as being in any way negative, we have missed the whole point and the beauty of early Methodism. We were meant to have those with whom we can be open, honest, and transparent. In a crucial moment in Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic, The Scarlet Letter, Arthur Dimmesdale, the minister who fathered the child that marked Hester Prynne with her badge of adultery while he remained unsuspected, had this to say. "Happy are you, Hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom! Mine burns in secret! Thou little knowest what a relief it is, after the torment of a seven years' cheat, to look into an eye that recognises me for what I am! Had I one friend—or were it my worst enemy!—to whom, when sickened with the praises of all other men, I could daily betake myself, and be known as the vilest of all sinners, methinks my soul might keep itself alive thereby. Even thus much of truth would save me! But now, it is all falsehood!—all emptiness!—all death!" He realized that being vulnerable and honest with at least a few people, is much to be preferred to being loved and respected with guilt on his heart.

The beauty of the classes and bands is that it provided an opportunity to really put faith into practice, to allow our relationship with God and the salvation we have in grace to be made manifest in every area of life and to take seriously the fact that we were made to live in a community that shapes who we are and to live consistently with that rather than fighting it. It was a structure that professed that it was better to be known truly as a sinner by those who love us and who want to help the victory of grace over sin be realized in our lives than to continue to live tormented by our shortcomings and our falsehoods.

You see, nobody likes being corrected; nobody likes being reminded that they have done wrong but if I can be convinced that when you ask me if you can tell me everything that is on your heart concerning me, that whatever I may hear, it is coming not from a source of hostile criticism, but of genuine concern and care, that I should be prepared, not to be nitpicked but to be supported and assisted, it will help me to be open to positive change, the change the gospel teaches about, a change away from sin and toward God. If I know that, when you point out my sin, it is because you realize that my sin affects you just as your sin affects me and, because of that, you are willing to participate and give of yourself to help me be transformed by the gospel, and if I know that you say this, not from a position of superiority, but as another sinner, just as broken and in need of support and accountability as I am, I am far more likely to hear you and to hear you with joy.

The point of those questions is not to set up a bunch of rules to beat you with when you make a mistake, but to cultivate a community that is so marked by love and compassion between brothers and sisters in Christ that grace can rule the day, can make us into the people we were meant to be, to truly be God's people. Though we cannot pretend that we can import eighteenth century British Methodism into twenty-first century America without making adjustments for the change in time and place, do we not find ourselves in need of this kind of radical community, a community of people that makes sacrifices for the well being of others? Let us pray that God might bring about such a community in our midst and nurture it so that radical love and support can become the dominant characteristic of Christians in this town. Let us pray.

AMEN

Jesus Christ and Time

12/07/11 Jesus Christ and Time GUMC Youth

We live in a country that has been historically shaped by the Christian message. This shaping has been so strong that there are many who would argue that America is, at its roots, a Christian nation, a nation that does not just have a bunch of Christians who live there, but one that fundamentally is Christian. This, perhaps, goes even farther when we look at our culture here in Northwest Iowa. You have all told me about people who go to school with you who are atheists or otherwise hostile to Christian faith, but if you look around at much of the adult population, you will find that most adults presuppose that Spencer is a Christian town, one that is made up mostly of Christians, who believe in Jesus, who believe in God, and who go to church, or at least, used to go to church.

What I think we find is that, when we are in this kind of culture, we end up with a whole bunch of people who simply assume that everyone is a Christian, that being a good Christian is one and the same thing with being a good American, that right and wrong as understood by out culture must be the same as right and wrong as understood by the gospel of Jesus Christ. When this happens, we tend to lose sight pretty quickly of the things that really matter, the things that make Christian faith what it is. So as we get closer and closer to Christmas, I want to spend a bit of time looking at one of the most important things we are celebrating during Advent and Christmas.

How much thought do you give to time? I don't mean, how often are you late or early to places you need to be, nor am I talking about how you like to spend your time. I am asking, how often do you think about time itself, what it really is, how it functions, what to expect from it. The fact of the matter is that not many people really spend all that much time thinking about time. They don't see how it can matter to their lives and, in a lot of ways, they are right to do so. I have no interest in standing up here and going into a huge analysis of time, but there are some things about time, that have to do with Christmas, that I want to talk about because they actually are important; more important than most people realize.

Many, if not most, cultures throughout the ages have had a conception of time that it is kind of like a big circle. There is a certain way in which this makes perfect sense. After all, days go in a kind of circle. We have a day today, we had a day yesterday, and we will have a day tomorrow. Even our clocks reinforce this idea. Just like the hands of a clock keep spinning round and round, marking the passing of time that never really runs out, just keeps repeating itself over and over, we could say that the day and night cycle is like a circle. Never ending. You can just keep going around and it will never end, only repeat.

In a larger sense, our years follow a cycle. Right now we are in winter, but we don't imagine that the sun is going out, or that the world is just getting colder and colder. Instead, we realize that winter is not the end, but we will eventually get to Spring and Spring will give way to Summer and Summer will give way to Fall, until we get back to Winter again. There are some little differences from year to year, some winters are worse than others, for example, but the yearly cycle is basically the same. You can always count on the fact that the seasons are not just going to stop suddenly, but will keep going, like going around a circle.

What if we thought of time the same way? What if time never really began and never really ended, but just kept going on a loop, like a CD or a playlist left on repeat? There are many, but not all, scientists who say that the universe began with the Big Bang and that it will end with some kind of Big Crunch, where it could explode again in a new Big Bang. What if those big moments weren't just big moments, but the bookends of time itself, that the universe, after it collapsed, would explode again and everything would happen just as it has happened before? What if even this youth group, this message, had been given who knows how many times before and it will be given who knows how many times again, over the course of trillions upon trillions of years? What if the whole universe as we know it is just going to repeat itself over and over again, never ending, never changing, always just going along, like going around a circle?

This was, generally speaking, the view of many cultures throughout the years. It is kind of like the idea of reincarnation, where you never really die, you just become a new person over and over again. There is a certain comfort in this way of thinking. It takes a lot of pressure off, because nothing ever really changes. There really isn't anything you can do to make a truly lasting impact, since things will just repeat, regardless of what you do. For some, it might seem like life is just pointless, but for others, it can be liberating. Things have already happened before and they will happen again. I can just float along and let things happen.

What is interesting is that this is not the view of the ancient Jewish people and it was not the view of the first Christians. If we could say that this first view of time is that time is a big circle that repeats over and over again, we could say that the Jewish and Christian conception of time is like a big line that has a very definite starting point and a very definite ending point. I mentioned earlier that some scientists think that the universe will collapse one day. Not everyone thinks that. There are plenty of scientists who are convinced that the universe will just keep expanding. If that is the case, then the universe can never repeat. It can never get back to its starting point.

How many of you have heard that the Big Bang Theory is very much an anti-Christian idea? Usually, this is because there are many who think that this raises questions about the first chapter of Genesis, where we read that God created the universe in six days. What is interesting is that, when the Big Bang Theory was first put forward, it was suggested by a priest who was also a scientist. When he published his ideas, the mainstream of scientists were offended and said that he was trying to bring religion into science. What is interesting is that, even though the Big Bang Theory is not, I want to stress that not, the same thing as the Christian doctrine of Creation, it is actually closer to it than the idea of an eternal universe. At least the Big Bang allows for God to have created the matter and caused it to explode, where the other views do not. The Big Bang Theory is science agreeing with Christian faith that the universe had a concrete beginning. The universe hasn't always existed. There was a time before it came into being and, many scientists say, there is only this universe; there will never be another one. If something happens to this universe, thats the end of the story.

The point is that the single most important reason why Christians cannot really believe in a repeating universe or an eternal universe is, believe it or not, Christmas. That might sound like a weird thing to say, but Christmas actually has profound implications for the nature of time and how we understand it. First, I want to show you what it means for time and then I want to point out why this actually matters in our understanding of God.

What do we celebrate on Christmas? We celebrate the birth of Jesus, right? But what is the significance of the birth of Jesus? Its significance is that the God of the universe, who created all there is with a word from his mouth, who has interacted with people since the beginning of the human race, has actually stepped into his creation. Think about it, we are talking about God, the one and only God, the God who is all powerful, all knowing, and all-everything-you-care-to-mention coming here. Not here as in Spencer, Iowa, but here as in Earth! This is the Creator of the universe stepping into his creation, this is the maker of humanity becoming a human. This is the almighty God of all, whom the highest heavens cannot contain coming among us, not just as a human being, but as a baby, so small you could hold him in your hands.

What is amazing about Christmas is not only that God actually did this but that he did this for the very first time. It isn't that we had God come among us in our human flesh over and over again, just in different forms throughout the years. It isn't that, in Jesus, we are dealing with just one more human teacher. In Jesus, we are brought face to face with God in all of his majesty in a way that we never experienced before and we could not have experienced in any other way. Jesus is not just one more example of God coming to earth, but the only one there is. God came among us in a very specific place and time, lived in specific towns, met and spoke with specific people, ate specific pieces of food, and spoke specific human words in a specific human language. And not only that but he did this for the first time in all the eternal life of God and he has never done it before and will never do it again.

God coming into our midst is an absolutely singular and unrepeatable event that never happened before and will never happen again. It is because of this incredibly singular event that we cannot really believe that time is just a loop that keeps getting played on repeat. If that is really how time worked, it would mean that Jesus had come over and over again; it would mean that God is just as bound by space and time as we are, which would mean he was not the Creator of the universe, by the way.

So, what does all of this mean to us? Well, there are lots of people who emphasize the fact that Earth is not the only planet out there, that the universe is incredibly large. And yet, out of all those places that God has created, out of all the vastness of our universe, when God enters into it, he doesn't do it just anywhere, but here, on this planet where we live. Not only did God meet us here, but he met us now. I know its been a long time since Jesus came, but especially if we listen to the scientists who tell us the universe is about fourteen billion years old, we realize just how close to Jesus' time we really are.

The point is that God came here. Out of all the places he could have gone, he came here. He didn't go to Mars, he didn't go to the outer reaches of the universe, but came here. When he came, he did not come as just any creature, but came as one of us. By coming precisely when he did and precisely where he did, God in Christ has set that time and place aside and said to us, "Here I am, come meet with me here." And through the power of the Holy Spirit and the testimony of the Bible, we can actually stand with the original witness of God's self-revelation, the disciples, and actually meet him there and then in the here and now.

There are so many people in the world who talk about God as if he were someone who is far off, who does not actually meet with us, about whom there is not much that we can say. And yet, that is not what we read in the Bible and it is not what we believe as Christians. We believe that, in Christ, God actually came here to meet us and to transform us.

So how does this tie in with how we understand time? Well, remember that, because God actually came among us at a particular time, what the scriptures call "the fullness of time," we can't really believe in time as a circle. Instead, we need to think of time as being a line, with certain very precise points on it. The line starts at a specific point, with the creation of space and time by God and then, at another precise point, God came into this world in Jesus of Nazareth. But that wasn't the end of the line. The line continues on, doesn't it? It has continued to this day, where you and I are living and it may well continue on for a while. The point is that it does not continue on forever. There will come a time when time as we know it will be done away with. There will come a time when Christ will return and change the whole game. When will that happen? We don't know; nobody does. And if anyone tells you otherwise, they are mistaken.

The point is, as we celebrate this Christmas season, we should remember every day that Christmas, in many ways, is the center of all space and time. It is where God the Creator stepped into his creation and made it his own in a powerful way that was new, even for God. Christmas is a really, really big deal. It is such a big deal that it impacts all of time and space. So let us celebrate, not any less, but all the more, because our God has come to meet with us. Let us pray.

AMEN

Why Christians Believe

The following is a response to a friend who has strong ties with pagan thought. He is particularly critical of the tendency of Christians to say, "We need to believe that Jesus is God because the Bible says so. We need to believe the Bible because it is inspired. You need to believe the Bible is inspired because we say so." He specifically asked for Christians to respond. Here was my response.


For right or for wrong, whether you find this convincing or not, here is my response.

I have thought about this issue and ones closely related to it for quite a while and I often find myself in self-conscious disagreement with how many American Christians approach this issue. But first, some history is necessary.

The predominant movement that we know today as "Biblical Innerancy" (with which I disagree, for the record) arose in the second half of the nineteenth century (it existed, in a different form, before that time, but we only get the radically militant form of it that we know today at about that time). It was developed as a response to what was seen as the attack of the "higher criticisms" of the Bible, which argued that we must not treat the Bible as somehow fundamentally different than other books, that is to say, we must be willing to examine the books of the Bible in their historical and cultural contexts, just like we do to other books, and try to understand them at that level as well. For people like me, such a move has only helped me to understand the texts better and to fully take into account the fact that God has moved through human beings, not by bypassing their humanity, history, or culture, but working in and through it (though it does yield some degree of transformation as well).

However, others felt that to do so was to "desacralize" the text and undermine faith as a whole. In order to combat this, conservatives/fundamentalists (they were effectively the same in those days. Fundamentalism was a much less militant movement in its early days) ratcheted up their doctrine of inspiration so that history and context no longer played a role in interpretation. The Bible became nothing more than free-floating oracles, independent of context, that all bear equal weight in interpretation.

Once this move takes place, the Bible becomes the ultimate authority and Jesus becomes a doctrine taught about by the Bible, on the same level as any other thing taught in it. This is precisely where I disagree with such an interpretation. I do not think that a text as a text (that is, as words on a page) can be the ultimate authority, nor do I think it was ever meant to be such. I think that ultimately, the text needs to be a witness to God (to use an idea of Karl Barth) or spectacles through which we look to discern what lies behind them (to use an idea of John Calvin). What matters is not the text as such, but at what the text directs us to.

I don't know how much confidence you have in natural science, but that is precisely the same kind of attitude that has been developing in natural science over the last hundred years or so. There is a tremendous conservative bias in science, when ultimate paradigms are concerned. There was so much support for Newtonian mechanics, both among scientists and laypeople, that Einstein's theories of Relativity had almost no chance of being heard or taken seriously. It was only the fact that, after long and careful scrutiny, it seemed to be a closer and more adequate representation of what really is the case (given concrete expression by its prediction of the change in the perihelion of Mercury) that made it win the day. It was not merely political power (for it certainly did not have that), but fidelity to the truth. If you doubt the hesitancy of scientists to adjust to new ideas, you should read "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas S. Kuhn, and "Against Method" by Paul Feyerabend.

My point is that, at the end of the day, Christian convictions do not, ultimately, rest on what a particular text says. The ultimate conviction is that God stepped into our world of space and time (which is only incomprehensible if we begin by presupposing a dualistic outlook) as an actual human being. Not that God took human "form" and only "seemed" to be human, nor that it was something less than God who came to earth as Jesus of Nazareth, not that Jesus was just one more prophet, but that the human being, Jesus of Nazareth, was very God of very God. This is a conviction that is proclaimed as truth. I would argue that authentic conversion takes place only when a person becomes convinced of this truth, which I do not think happens by intellectual argument (or the authority of a text), but by a personal encounter with this Jesus who has been raised from the dead and lives even now. Because of this, authentic Christian experience is inherently Trinitarian.

Now, one might argue, "How do you know that someone had a genuine encounter with the risen Christ? How can we be certain that it was not simply an illusion, or wishful thinking, or anything of the kind?" If one means "certainty" as, "absolutely impossible to be doubted," like the kind of truth Descartes was searching for, then we cannot be. But, by that same token, the same can be said of anything, as Foundationalism is widely believed to have completely failed. Absolute certainty of that kind is an unattainable, and thus false, goal. There is always room for doubt.

However, if a person claims to have such an encounter and becomes liberated from destructive habits and lifestyles and their life is utterly transformed by it (which does happen), there is reason to believe that something has happened, call it what you will.

My ultimate answer is that real Christian conviction is reached by personal experience, not by argument from a text. The text of the Bible becomes the source and norm of Christian theology, as there is no other text that can not only present Jesus Christ in his time and place, but also present the whole historico-cultural context that led up to it, as well as the impact that he had on his first followers. That experience is always open to doubt, as every other claim to truth and knowledge is, but the Christian believes that their experience is not merely subjective, that it connects, in some way, to a deeper reality that is true, regardless of whether they believe it and acknowledge it or not. This reality might be only imperfectly understood and need to be revised in some way or another (as Newtonian physics had to be refined by Einsteinian thought), but the reality with which they have made contact is fundamentally reliable.

When done well, it is my conviction that Christian theology bears a much stronger resemblance to science than it does to many forms of philosophy.

To return, in closing, to your example of "Why Jesus and not Thor?" I must say that, on one level, there is no reason. After all, from the point of view of historical evidence, we can only learn about them from sources written by human beings, which might very well be wrong. However, my conviction is that Jesus is indeed alive and meets people, myself included (though that does not mean that I equate my theology with the truth, though I hope it bears some resemblance to the truth), whereas I do not believe the same is true for Thor. Could I be wrong? Absolutely. Is it possible that Thor has encountered me and I have just not noticed it? Certainly. I just do not believe it to be so. It can be doubted, but so can any other position, so dubitability as such is not condemning.

Those are just some thoughts. I do not imagine that you will be convinced, but you specifically asked for Christians to respond, so here is my response.

In Christ,
Travis Stevick

The American Political System

The American Political System

Those who know me know that I don't usually like to talk about politics. I find myself fitting neither with the general stance of the Republican party, nor with that of the Democratic party. I feel that, in my experience, the moment a hot topic in contemporary politics gets brought up, both sides retreat to their talking points, which is an incredibly defensive position. There are people with whom I am friends on Facebook who are otherwise calm and considerate people who try to understand issues from every point of view who I am hesitant (not to say frightened) to engage in dialogue on political issues as I have found that they tend to gravitate, just like most people, into extreme positions.

One day, I found myself wandering on a YouTube trail (where one video leads to another, without any overarching goal in mind), which I usually try to avoid and I ended up watching part of a video of a presentation by Christopher Hitchens. The presentation in question took place during the Clinton administration and Hitchens (who is British) was functioning as a journalist and cultural commentator and not primarily as a militant atheist (which he also does from time to time). How I ended up on this particular clip, I cannot explain, especially as it was only one part out of ten or so, and the only one I watched was somewhere in the middle. I do not know exactly what issue was going on at the time that prompted the observation, but Hitchens made an incredibly insightful comment. He said (words to the effect of), "In America, I have noticed that the word 'partisan' has a distinctly negative connotation, whereas 'bi-partisan' has a distinctly positive connotation." He ultimately concluded by saying, "I think that America is afraid that it might one day become a two-party system."

Now, this comment got some laughs from the (American) audience, because, as everyone in America knows, we do have a two-party system. We have some other parties that show up every once in a while, but they tend to not do very well. Even though we may have more than two parties on paper, in practice, there are two parties in America.

But Hitchens' comment cuts deeper than that. In spite of the fact that, in America, we have two parties that hold opposite views on a multitude of issues, the idea that we ought to strive for truly bi-partisan politics as the ideal, whereas partisan politics is a problem is very much the product of the Enlightenment. Hitchens, who is from England where there are many viable political parties, sees the truth perhaps a bit more clearly than we Americans do.

I think that we in American desperately want to believe that there is one position that is objectively and completely "right," and that, if we all just got together and shared all our opinions and brought forward all the arguments and checked all the facts, we would all come to the same conclusion, we would all agree on what is right, what is wrong, and how we should proceed so that we can be right and not wrong. The contemporary issues surrounding taxation of the wealthy and organized labor, among other things, seems to operate with the presupposition that, if all the facts could be on the table, nobody would be confused as to what we should do. We would all agree. There is clearly a "right" way to go about these things and a "wrong" way to do so. What we need is to get beyond all our political platforms and discern this together.

But there is a problem with this. The fact of the matter is that, while a good portion of Americans can get along most of the time and make compromises on most things, there are certain communities that simply cannot get along. To give some fairly extreme examples, radical Fundamentalists simply cannot get along with the homosexual community (and vice versa) without in some significant manner changing who they are and what they believe. Another example is the KKK and the African-American community. These are two communities that, because of who they are and what they believe, simply cannot exist side by side, short of bloodshed, without some kind of external restraint.

But what happens in the application of external restraint, which must be applied, if for no other reason, than to keep the peace? One group is given privilege over the other, at whose expense this privilege is purchased. Now, the question is, which side do you choose? In the examples I have provided (which are extreme to make the point clearer, though this happens on smaller scales as well), most contemporary people would say that we ought to side with the homosexual community and the African-American community, respectively, if for no other reason than because those groups have tended to be less driven to violence toward their opponents, but, though this is firmly in line with our constitution as classically interpreted (you have rights until your exercise of them infringes on the rights of others) it is still the prioritizing of one community's desires over another.

By the way, we can see, especially in the case of the KKK, where the de-facto decision was in favor of the more violent group and was only later overturned. There is nothing in our law or society that guarantees that we will always operate in the same way.

The reason why I bring up these issues is that there are certain communities that no amount of conferencing and "compromising" will yield a solution that is fully acceptable to both parties (think, for example, about whether it would be possible to find a solution that is fully acceptable to both the KKK and the African-American community). Decision between such communities always has to be made, and made by a third party, who does not necessarily agree completely with either party.

I think that this is the case more often than we would like to admit. If I am particularly wealthy, I am likely (though not guaranteed) to oppose high taxes on the wealthy. Yes it is true that such taxation might be aimed at the greater good, but my willing participation is based on a few presuppositions. First, I would have to believe that the taxes actually do aim at the greater good. It is entirely possible that I might conclude that what we call "the greater good" might actually simply be "what is good for this community in which I do not find myself," only with an absolutized name and a noble sound. Secondly, I would have to believe that this is actually the best way to reach this greater good. Third, I would have to believe that the elected officials would know better how to spend my money than I do for the greater good they are seeking. Fourth, I have to actually believe in this greater good exists and agree that it is something worth striving for. None of these is guaranteed, and the absence of any one of them (let alone more than one) could result in the opposition of such taxation in the defense of self-interest (which, by the way, is what Adam Smith says is the driving force behind capitalism. It seems to be built into our economic system, that we dogmatically export all over the world).

In a similar way, one could easily make the argument that organized labor is not for the greater good, but for the good of those engaged in labor. On some levels, it is not good, or at least is perceived not to be good, to certain businesspeople. If this were not so, there would be no argument about it. A victory for upper management is paid for by labor, but it is equally true that a victory for labor is paid for by upper management. Perhaps we can dress it up in noble garments, that it is the right thing to do, that really, it is the best for everyone involved, or at least the best for enough of a majority (or supermajority) to make it worthwhile. It might also be claimed that upper management can afford to pay for this victory, whereas the opposite cannot be said. All these things might be true, and might be judged as true by those who get to make such decisions, but it does not change the fact that no statement of "better" or "worse" political decisions is made in a vacuum, but reflects the interests of a certain community.

The point that Christopher Hitchens saw so clearly is that we in America want desperately to believe that, if we just work together, we will come to a conclusion that satisfies everyone involved, that, even if we have to settle for something less than our personal ideal, it is acceptable because our desire for the best for the totality of our society is our primary concern. It is a kind of political pluralism. We sincerely hope that both political parties are equally dedicated to independent "ideal" political decisions, but are simply talking past one another, or are momentarily distracted, but can and should be set right. Hitchens was able to see what we often cannot: We are different people with different interests, some of which are mutually exclusive. A victory for one community carries with it the defeat of another community. No political gain is made without a corresponding political loss somewhere else. Nobody gains power unless someone else loses power.

I think that, until we can throw off the mask and see how our own interests color the whole political process, we will never be able to see other people as real human beings, albeit human beings with different, sometimes mutually exclusive, interests and desires, but human beings who are just as self-consistent and just as passionate about their convictions as we are. And I believe it is only when we can do this that we can really move forward in civility and love.