In the wake of our two Presidential candidates being forced to denounce enough religious leaders to fill a NAMBLA convention (okay, I'll admit that was a bad joke if you admit you chuckled), I've been thinking a lot lately about my own experiences in my church back home in Texas.
To be sure, nothing I experienced there rises to the level of divisiveness and controversy generated by the pastors who've received so much attention this election season, but to Christians, one sermon I witnessed might certainly be viewed with disdain. One young pastor at my church, essentially an intern serving as an Associate Pastor and Youth Leader for a short time before officially being ordained, gave a sermon in which he argued with the translation of certain Biblical passages. He stated that, translated properly, when Jesus speaks of "eternal life" for the faithful, he's not promising that our soul lives on in an afterlife, rather he is referring to life the way we might say an elderly woman looks "so alive" ... a state of bliss achieved while one is still alive. He said that, when we follow Christ's teachings, we are promised to be truly "alive" only as long as we are biologically so.
This kind of "progressivism" is not generally acceptable to most Christians, particularly when it flies in the face of the very basis of their faith, and it definitely was frowned upon by a majority of our congregation. The next week, I met with our Senior Pastor, another progressive Christian, and during our chat, we had occasion to discuss the controversial message. He confided that he thought our Youth Pastor had fundamentally misunderstood the role of religious leader. "My job," he admitted, "isn't to take the congregation where I want them to go; it's to help each individual understand where he wants to go on his journey of faith, and then to help guide him there." He went on to acknowledge that of all the roles a pastor fills, that is the toughest. How do you lead an entire congregation, when everyone is at a different point on their journey? How do you construct a sermon that appeals to everyone, from conservative to liberal, without offending any of them?
What made this so remarkable to me was that every single week, I always felt as though his sermon had been written specifically for me. Without fail, he said the words I needed to hear precisely when no other words would've helped. Of course, I knew he hadn't composed his message just for me, so I marveled at it all the more. I imagined that most other parishioners left with the same feeling I had, that he had looked into their souls and divined the very sermon that would lift them out of whatever had been troubling them.
This is the miracle of faith that I think Rev. Wright and Rev. Hagee, along with our own Youth Pastor, have misunderstood: that it is in nuance that the faithful find guidance. That is how a congregation of 300 or 3,000 can each feel a personal connection with a message, can apply it to their own situations, in ways the pastor or other parishioners could never have imagined. In the years I attended that church, I never learned what our Senior Pastor's political affiliation might be, nor did he ever openly take sides in any political fight. I think liberals and conservatives alike could find inspiration in his words and each group could likely point to excerpts from his sermons that provided foundation for their leanings, whatever they may be.
It was this sense of subtlety that he so wanted to impart to our young intern before he left our church. As I said, his liberal Biblical interpretation wasn't as corrosive as, say, Reverend Hagee's comments, yet I have to wonder what would've happened had anyone in the congregation run for political office. Would Christians across the country be burning the candidate in effigy as a result of what some would call very "un-Christian" comments by the intern? I suppose only if the sermon made its way to YouTube.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Monday, June 2, 2008
Learning a lesson from high school football
The more I listen to the flap being raised by the Clinton camp over the seating of Florida's and Michigan's delegates, which were originally stripped by the DNC for violating the party's scheduling rules, the more I am reminded of a painful memory from my childhood in suburban Texas. If you've never been to Texas, or never seen a movie or TV show about the state, you may not be able to appreciate how important football is to our population. It's the air we breathe, the water that quenches our thirst ... in short, it means the world to us.
Every year, my high school's football team engages in a battle with our cross-town rival, the winner able to claim, for the next year, the privilege of "The Axe", a sort of traveling trophy awarded to which ever team comes out on top in each year's match up. To put this rivalry in perspective, it wasn't just about football. We were the "old school", our rivals, the "new". Our town was populated mostly by the lower-middle-class. Their town was wall-to-wall wealthy. We were Democrats. They were Republicans. Our moms worked, theirs stayed at home. The disdain with which they treated us was palpable. They vandalized our school grounds, burning their big "M" in the middle of our football field. It wasn't just a clash on the football field, it was a clash between ways of life. We took it seriously.
When I was still in middle school, I began attending the high school football games, and one year, things went horribly, horribly wrong for my team. In those days (I sound old now, don't I), overtime was reserved for those games with playoff implications. If the playoff seeds were set, then the game would be allowed to end in a tie. But for the purposes of the coveted "Axe", a winner (and loser) had to be determined. In this particular game, overtime wasn't an option, so the coaches had to agree, before kickoff, on a plan to settle a tie, in the unlikely even such a thing would occur. The teams settled on a solution: if the game ended in a tie, which ever team has earned the most first downs would claim victory.
You can obviously tell how this story ends: the game was fought to a 21-21 tie. When the clock finally hit zero, our coach walked out onto the field, shook hands with the opposing coach, and handed him the Axe. They had earned 17 first downs to our team's 14. They had won. We couldn't know then it would be just the first of four consecutive wins for our hated rivals. As my dad and I were filing out of the stands, dejected and disappointed, I said to him, "This is crazy! The team with fewer first downs should win, since it means they took fewer plays to reach the same score! That's clearly the mark of the better team."
Apparently, some in the press agreed with me, because our coach took no end of grief from the local punditry, complaining loudly that he should have protested the decision to award the game to the other team. The coach said simply, "You can't protest when the rules you agreed to don't work out in your favor." I never forgot that.
It's the same principle I apply when eating at a restaurant. Sometimes I like to try new things, and once in a while, I order something and end up hating it. I'm often told by those with me, "Hey, send it back. Tell them you want something else." But I look at this way: I got what I ordered. It's not the cook's fault if it turns out I don't like it. The fact is, we rarely are afforded a glimpse of the consequences of our decisions, but that doesn't make the consequences any less real.
What's sad, though, is that sometimes we know exactly what the result of our decision will be, and even then, some among us feel it's okay to whine and cry about how unfair the whole world is for making us accept responsibility for our choices. This is where Clinton and her supporters fall. They knew the rules of the game when they suited up and stepped on the field, and now that they've lost, all you hear is "If the rules were different, she would've won. *sob* It's so unfair. *cry*" (By the way, have you noticed how Obama's supporters aren't crying that only 10 days ago, Puerto Rico decided to hold a primary instead of the originally-scheduled caucus just because they wanted to boost turnout for Clinton?) "If the Democratic primaries were winner take all ..." "If only big states counted ..." "If there weren't caucuses ..." "If the popular vote dictated the nominee ..."
Yeah. And if our coach hadn't agreed to the stupid "Whoever gets the most first downs" rule, who knows how things would've turned out? But he did agree to it, and at least he was mature enough to live with his decision.
Every year, my high school's football team engages in a battle with our cross-town rival, the winner able to claim, for the next year, the privilege of "The Axe", a sort of traveling trophy awarded to which ever team comes out on top in each year's match up. To put this rivalry in perspective, it wasn't just about football. We were the "old school", our rivals, the "new". Our town was populated mostly by the lower-middle-class. Their town was wall-to-wall wealthy. We were Democrats. They were Republicans. Our moms worked, theirs stayed at home. The disdain with which they treated us was palpable. They vandalized our school grounds, burning their big "M" in the middle of our football field. It wasn't just a clash on the football field, it was a clash between ways of life. We took it seriously.
When I was still in middle school, I began attending the high school football games, and one year, things went horribly, horribly wrong for my team. In those days (I sound old now, don't I), overtime was reserved for those games with playoff implications. If the playoff seeds were set, then the game would be allowed to end in a tie. But for the purposes of the coveted "Axe", a winner (and loser) had to be determined. In this particular game, overtime wasn't an option, so the coaches had to agree, before kickoff, on a plan to settle a tie, in the unlikely even such a thing would occur. The teams settled on a solution: if the game ended in a tie, which ever team has earned the most first downs would claim victory.
You can obviously tell how this story ends: the game was fought to a 21-21 tie. When the clock finally hit zero, our coach walked out onto the field, shook hands with the opposing coach, and handed him the Axe. They had earned 17 first downs to our team's 14. They had won. We couldn't know then it would be just the first of four consecutive wins for our hated rivals. As my dad and I were filing out of the stands, dejected and disappointed, I said to him, "This is crazy! The team with fewer first downs should win, since it means they took fewer plays to reach the same score! That's clearly the mark of the better team."
Apparently, some in the press agreed with me, because our coach took no end of grief from the local punditry, complaining loudly that he should have protested the decision to award the game to the other team. The coach said simply, "You can't protest when the rules you agreed to don't work out in your favor." I never forgot that.
It's the same principle I apply when eating at a restaurant. Sometimes I like to try new things, and once in a while, I order something and end up hating it. I'm often told by those with me, "Hey, send it back. Tell them you want something else." But I look at this way: I got what I ordered. It's not the cook's fault if it turns out I don't like it. The fact is, we rarely are afforded a glimpse of the consequences of our decisions, but that doesn't make the consequences any less real.
What's sad, though, is that sometimes we know exactly what the result of our decision will be, and even then, some among us feel it's okay to whine and cry about how unfair the whole world is for making us accept responsibility for our choices. This is where Clinton and her supporters fall. They knew the rules of the game when they suited up and stepped on the field, and now that they've lost, all you hear is "If the rules were different, she would've won. *sob* It's so unfair. *cry*" (By the way, have you noticed how Obama's supporters aren't crying that only 10 days ago, Puerto Rico decided to hold a primary instead of the originally-scheduled caucus just because they wanted to boost turnout for Clinton?) "If the Democratic primaries were winner take all ..." "If only big states counted ..." "If there weren't caucuses ..." "If the popular vote dictated the nominee ..."
Yeah. And if our coach hadn't agreed to the stupid "Whoever gets the most first downs" rule, who knows how things would've turned out? But he did agree to it, and at least he was mature enough to live with his decision.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
McCain seeing red?
It looks like Senator Obama may have gotten under Senator McCain's skin on the issue of the GI Bill revision that just sailed through Congress, despite the aged Senator's objections. When Obama questioned McCain's motives for voting down the measure, which would drastically expand college benefits for those soldiers who serve at least one term in Iraq, McCain shot back, "Perhaps, if Sen. Obama would take the time and trouble to understand this issue he would learn to debate an honest disagreement respectfully. But, as he always does, he prefers impugning the motives of his opponent, and exploiting a thoughtful difference of opinion to advance his own ambitions. If that is how he would behave as president, the country would regret his election."
In case you're wondering, Senator McCain's reason for voting against the measure is clear: he is upset that the Senate defeated his much more conservative version of the bill last week. He is explains it this way: "The most important difference between our two approaches is that Sen. Webb offers veterans who served one enlistment the same benefits as those offered veterans who have re-enlisted several times. Our bill has a sliding scale that offers generous benefits to all veterans, but increases those benefits according to the veteran's length of service."
It sounds reasonable, but think about it in a slightly different way: "I want to get our soldiers to voluntarily accept more tours before they get out, get educated, and we have to replace them." Now it sounds more selfish. Want an even more cynical interpretation? "The more time a soldier spends in a war, the greater the chance he will be killed, and then we don't have to pay the GI Bill benefits at all." Now it's downright cruel.
But the bigger point is this: notice how, when Obama differs from McCain, McCain says Obama's criticisms are "cheap shots" but when McCain continually references Rev. Wright, even while denouncing his own pastoral endorsements, it's fair game?
It sounds to me like we're one, maybe two, weeks away from another of those famous full-blown John McCain meltdowns. And this time, it won't happen early enough to save his party.
In case you're wondering, Senator McCain's reason for voting against the measure is clear: he is upset that the Senate defeated his much more conservative version of the bill last week. He is explains it this way: "The most important difference between our two approaches is that Sen. Webb offers veterans who served one enlistment the same benefits as those offered veterans who have re-enlisted several times. Our bill has a sliding scale that offers generous benefits to all veterans, but increases those benefits according to the veteran's length of service."
It sounds reasonable, but think about it in a slightly different way: "I want to get our soldiers to voluntarily accept more tours before they get out, get educated, and we have to replace them." Now it sounds more selfish. Want an even more cynical interpretation? "The more time a soldier spends in a war, the greater the chance he will be killed, and then we don't have to pay the GI Bill benefits at all." Now it's downright cruel.
But the bigger point is this: notice how, when Obama differs from McCain, McCain says Obama's criticisms are "cheap shots" but when McCain continually references Rev. Wright, even while denouncing his own pastoral endorsements, it's fair game?
It sounds to me like we're one, maybe two, weeks away from another of those famous full-blown John McCain meltdowns. And this time, it won't happen early enough to save his party.
Are we afraid of diplomacy?
All this chatter about Senator Obama displaying "weakness" for advocating a policy of diplomacy over military strikes has me questioning our nation's apparent aversion to talking through our differences with other leaders. It seems as though a large chunk of the electorate favors the "shoot first, talk never" approach offered by Senators McCain and Clinton (and President Bush), but where does this mindset come from?
It can't be an historical lesson, since, if anything, history has proven that diplomacy is almost always more effective than warfare in settling differences. After all, it was diplomacy that ended the Cold War, brought down the Berlin Wall, freed the Iranian hostages (okay, one could argue that money freed the hostages), established the nation of Israel, dismantled the Soviet Union, and on and on (and on).
On the other hand, warfare has proven to be virtually universally disastrous as a means to achieving a meaningful resolution of conflict. One cannot ignore when President Kennedy (presumably in an effort to shake the "weak liberal" label he had been saddled with) committed the monumentally stupid blunder known to us as the "Bay of Pigs" assault, which led to the Cuban Missile Crisis and then the Cold War. For more current proof of the "war will solve our problems" fallacy, we need only to examine the situation in the Middle East. Our war with Iraq has freed Iran from attention, allowing it to amass an arsenal of weapons far greater than we ever (erroneously) thought Iraq possessed. North Korea has been a constant nuclear threat, proving that the Korean conflict did little to dissuade them from taking on the world.
I remember a number of years ago reading on a feminist website that an excess of testosterone was to blame for our overly-aggressive tendencies, and I agreed with the logic of the assertion. But why, then, does Senator Clinton propose that we wait until Iran attacks Israel and then "obliterate" them? Feminists have long made it their goal to elect a female president to prove that cooler heads could prevail, yet the first woman to have a legitimate chance of winning the presidency has abandoned her femininity and adopted all the worst behaviors of men.
Is it purely biological conditioning, then, that leads us to war over discussion? After all, the survival instinct, from a biological perspective, is purely physical? (Adrenaline gives us the "fight or flight" rush, not the "fight, flight, or share a cup of tea" rush.)
Or is the motivation for war something more sinister, at least on the part of our leaders? After all, they know that nothing gets the flags waving, the banners hanging, the ribbons displayed like a good, old-fashioned butt kicking. This is why, even when we're not at war, we're declaring war on issues at home. Notice how we have wars on drugs, poverty, cancer, crime, guns, etc? As George Carlin once pointed out, war is the "only metaphor in our public discourse for things we don't like". Everything we want to change, we declare war on. "We don't do anything about it; we just declare war on it." It just doesn't whip people into a frenzy when we declare a "round table discussion" against something, so from a public relations perspective, this whole war fervor makes sense.
But why do we confuse war with problem solving when, as we've already seen, the two are seldom related? And worse, why do leaders like Sens. McCain and Clinton seem to argue that talking through our differences with foreign leaders somehow empties the options box? Do they really believe that, if diplomacy fails, Senator Obama wouldn't go to war to defend us or an ally? We all understand that sometimes there is a peace that is to be found only on the other side of war, but some of our leaders argue that war necessarily leads to peace, even in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence.
This evident cluelessness leads me to ask: Just who is the more naive? The man who believes diplomacy can prevent war, or the one who believes war should prevent diplomacy?
No real answers here, just things to ponder.
It can't be an historical lesson, since, if anything, history has proven that diplomacy is almost always more effective than warfare in settling differences. After all, it was diplomacy that ended the Cold War, brought down the Berlin Wall, freed the Iranian hostages (okay, one could argue that money freed the hostages), established the nation of Israel, dismantled the Soviet Union, and on and on (and on).
On the other hand, warfare has proven to be virtually universally disastrous as a means to achieving a meaningful resolution of conflict. One cannot ignore when President Kennedy (presumably in an effort to shake the "weak liberal" label he had been saddled with) committed the monumentally stupid blunder known to us as the "Bay of Pigs" assault, which led to the Cuban Missile Crisis and then the Cold War. For more current proof of the "war will solve our problems" fallacy, we need only to examine the situation in the Middle East. Our war with Iraq has freed Iran from attention, allowing it to amass an arsenal of weapons far greater than we ever (erroneously) thought Iraq possessed. North Korea has been a constant nuclear threat, proving that the Korean conflict did little to dissuade them from taking on the world.
I remember a number of years ago reading on a feminist website that an excess of testosterone was to blame for our overly-aggressive tendencies, and I agreed with the logic of the assertion. But why, then, does Senator Clinton propose that we wait until Iran attacks Israel and then "obliterate" them? Feminists have long made it their goal to elect a female president to prove that cooler heads could prevail, yet the first woman to have a legitimate chance of winning the presidency has abandoned her femininity and adopted all the worst behaviors of men.
Is it purely biological conditioning, then, that leads us to war over discussion? After all, the survival instinct, from a biological perspective, is purely physical? (Adrenaline gives us the "fight or flight" rush, not the "fight, flight, or share a cup of tea" rush.)
Or is the motivation for war something more sinister, at least on the part of our leaders? After all, they know that nothing gets the flags waving, the banners hanging, the ribbons displayed like a good, old-fashioned butt kicking. This is why, even when we're not at war, we're declaring war on issues at home. Notice how we have wars on drugs, poverty, cancer, crime, guns, etc? As George Carlin once pointed out, war is the "only metaphor in our public discourse for things we don't like". Everything we want to change, we declare war on. "We don't do anything about it; we just declare war on it." It just doesn't whip people into a frenzy when we declare a "round table discussion" against something, so from a public relations perspective, this whole war fervor makes sense.
But why do we confuse war with problem solving when, as we've already seen, the two are seldom related? And worse, why do leaders like Sens. McCain and Clinton seem to argue that talking through our differences with foreign leaders somehow empties the options box? Do they really believe that, if diplomacy fails, Senator Obama wouldn't go to war to defend us or an ally? We all understand that sometimes there is a peace that is to be found only on the other side of war, but some of our leaders argue that war necessarily leads to peace, even in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence.
This evident cluelessness leads me to ask: Just who is the more naive? The man who believes diplomacy can prevent war, or the one who believes war should prevent diplomacy?
No real answers here, just things to ponder.
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