When faith becomes an idol

Note to people who didn't grow up as Evangelical Christians:

You probably won't get this blog post if you read it. No more than someone outside your family would get why your folks have been fighting for three generations over What Aunt Jane Said To Cousin Jimmy. Church is like a family - both the wonderful things and the dysfunctional things that happen in families, and often difficult for people to understand if they weren't raised in it. But you're welcome to read on anyway - maybe it'll help you understand some things about Evangelical Christianity.

To those who did grow up Evangelical:
For the love of all that is holy, let's start being the kind of family that Our Father wants us to be.

Over the past few days, I've seen posts about a tenured professor at Wheaton College (my alma mater) who is facing disciplinary action and placed on administrative leave. This professor (Dr. Larycia Hawkins) has been wearing a hijab during Advent in solidarity with Muslims who have been treated... well, everyone knows how Muslims are being treated right now in the USA. That wasn't what triggered the disciplinary action... Dr. Hawkins' statement on Facebook describing why she's doing it included a single sentence to which the College authorities object:

“I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book,” she wrote in a Facebook post on December 10. “And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God.”

To someone who wasn't raised in the Evangelical Christian sub-culture, and didn't attend Wheaton College, this must be baffling. Why would anyone object to that statement at all, let alone object strongly enough to suspend a long-term employee in good standing simply for making the statement?  And how does a Christian college decide that a statement quoting the POPE is so un-Christian that the person making the statement can no longer be allowed to teach young Christians?

Those who know a bit about Islam must also be baffled. After all, my understanding (based on what I learned in a history class at Wheaton, mind you) is that Muslims believe that they worship the same God that Christians do - they just believe we're doing it wrong because we don't believe that Mohammed is His greatest prophet. Muslims even believe in Jesus (though they don't believe he was God, they do believe he was sent from God, and the Q'uran even refers to him as the Messiah.) Muslims refer to Christians and Jews as "People of the Book" - meaning the Bible, which Muslims also take to be Scripture. And most Muslims believe that good Christians and Jews will be saved. The basic sense is "Well, their theology is incorrect, but if they're doing the best they can to follow God given the information they have, that matters more to God than their theology". Which is pretty much what most Christians believe about Muslims.

But Evangelical Christianity isn't "most Christians". It's a very specific sub-culture, with a very specific view of what it means to be a Christian.

I grew up in that sub-culture, lived and breathed it, loved God and my church with such zeal that I nearly decided to become a pastor, and went to Wheaton with that possibility in mind. I only decided against it because I felt I wasn't a good enough Christian to be a leader of Christians. And the thing that made me decide I wasn't a good enough Christian was that I didn't feel I believed enough. If I really believed in God, I'd never have any doubts about His goodness, I'd know with rock-hard certainty what His will for my life is, I'd be seeing miracles happen - because if I had even the faith of a mustard seed, I should be moving mountains. No mountains moving = no faith.

See, that's the focus in Evangelical Christianity. Christianity, to them, is primarily about faith, and faith is primarily about belief. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall straighten thy paths. Sola Fide. If ye have faith as this mustard seed. O ye of little faith, why did ye not believe?

So right belief is all-important to Evangelicals. Teachers are held to a higher standard than anyone else, according to Scripture, so teaching right belief is even more important than having it. On that point, the actions of Wheaton College leadership here are the only way they know to be consistent with their beliefs. They don't object to the professor donning the hijab, and Wheaton actively opposes the insanity coming from other Evangelicals about arming yourselves to stop the Muslims... but they can't condone someone at their college teaching something that they believe to be untrue about God.

I think they really do believe they're doing the right thing. (Even if they don't notice how their actions might be getting influenced by the current cultural pressures to be anti-Muslim; or notice the fact that these same old conservative white dudes said pretty similar things about the commonalities between Christianity and Islam a few years ago but are now prepared to fire a liberal black woman for saying them...) I still think they really believe they're doing the right thing for the right reasons.

The insidious thing that happens to the Evangelical way of thinking is this: We are saved by faith. Faith means belief. That means we have to believe the right things in order to go to Heaven. And that means we must give unswerving intellectual assent to correct doctrine. People who don't believe that Jesus is God will not be saved. People who don't believe the Scriptures will not be saved. (And that, to an Evangelical, often comes to mean that people must agree that every word of Scripture was dictated directly by God to the writers, and that every word is meant to be taken as literally true, and that every word must be interpreted in the specific way that Evangelicals interpret it... otherwise they aren't really saved.) And at the end of that line of thinking, people come out feeling "God doesn't want me unless I think the right things about Him."

I grew up in a church that believed Catholics were going to Hell because they ask the saints to pray for them (when Scripture says there is no mediator between God and man but Jesus). I grew up in a church that believed other branches of Evangelical Christians were going to Hell because they believe incorrectly about whether the bread and wine at Communion are literally the body and blood of Christ, or only symbolically, or somewhere in between (those who partake unworthily of the bread and wine eat and drink damnation unto themselves). I grew up in a church where your Christianity was in doubt if you answered questions correctly on a biology test, because that meant agreeing with evolution (God made the world in exactly seven 24-hour days, thank you very much, no symbolism could possibly have been intended in a story that is immediately followed by a story about a talking snake and fruit trees that bring knowledge or eternal life). There are different branches of THE SAME EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN DENOMINATION that would consider each other excommunicate, except that's a suspiciously Catholic-sounding word so they just consider each other "not really Christians" because they believe different things about whether Jesus will come to reign for a millennium before or after the Rapture. Or, Heaven forbid, disagree about whether there will BE a Rapture.

When faith itself becomes an idol, this is what happens to something that began with "God showed up in person to tell us He loves us and wants us to love each other."

When faith itself becomes an idol, people enter the frame of mind that creates Inquisitions and Jihads to make sure everyone is worshipping God the right way. After all, it's for the good of their souls.

One of the ironic things about Wheaton's stance is this: Wheaton College as an institution LOVES C.S. Lewis - they've got a little museum dedicated to him, Tolkien, and a couple of other Christian authors, and they even have The Wardrobe from Lewis' house. (I tried to get in once, just on the off chance. No luck, and no fauns.) And yet they wouldn't let old Jack teach there these days, because several times in his writings Lewis implies that people who follow other religions can be saved, that even if they believe wrong things about God or have never heard the name of Jesus they can still be saved through Jesus. In The Last Battle (Chronicles of Narnia), a man whose race and religion were clearly meant to be analogous to a Middle Eastern Muslim is accepted into Heaven by Aslan, even though just minutes earlier he'd been killing the people of Aslan in the name of his god Tash. Aslan does clarify that Tash is not the same as Aslan... but that good deeds done in the service of Tash, are taken in credit as service to Aslan (while evil deeds done in the name of Aslan really serve Tash). What the prince believes about Aslan doesn't matter to Aslan... how the prince behaves towards other human beings is what matters.

It's even more ironic to see a black woman suspended for showing solidarity with a mistreated minority - at an institution that was initially founded for the purpose of being a stop on the Underground Railroad. In those days, most mainstream Christians believed that Scripture supported slavery - after all, Saint Paul commanded slaves to obey their masters. But the founders of Wheaton knew that it was more Christ-like to set the captives free, than to go with the literal interpretation of Scripture that allowed people to continue shutting out those who were marginalized.

It's also frustrating to see that Evangelicals - who REALLY, REALLY love Jesus - if you know them as I know them, you know that is beyond question - seem to consistently forget that Jesus Himself considered our actions towards others to be far more important than our theology. When someone asks Jesus what it takes to inherit eternal life, Jesus fires back with a question: "You know the Law, what does it say?" The heckler says "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself". Jesus says "Do this and you shall live". The heckler then, to justify himself, says "Who is my neighbor?"... and Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan. The people whose theology was correct - the priest, the Levite - fall short. The Samaritan - the person whose beliefs are wrong, whose ethnicity is wrong, whose language is wrong, who the Jews dislike even more than the Romans - that guy puts his own safety and his own money on the line to obey the two great commandments. That's the guy Jesus holds up as an example - "Go thou and do likewise."

Again, in the parable of the sheep and the goats, Jesus says the nations shall be judged by how we treated the people who are hurting and marginalized: "For I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me a drink, sick and you ministered unto me, in prison and you visited me." He never says "For I expected you to affirm the Nicene Creed, and to clearly articulate the difference between the Christian Trinity and the Muslim view of monotheism." The final exam for admission into God's Kingdom is not a theology test; it's a practical exam.

In fact, over and over throughout Scripture, Jesus does not appear to be very interested in our beliefs about God. He seems to only be really interested in our behavior towards people. Particularly towards those who are hurting, or outcast, or otherwise marginalized. The woman caught in adultery heard no harsh words from Jesus, but the upright religious people prepared to condemn her were warned off for their own sins. The money-changers in the Temple - doing a legitimate business, with the blessing of the priests, to allow the faithful to perform the sacrifices demanded in Scripture, all consistent with orthodox belief - are the only people that Mr. Blessed-Are-The-Peacemakers ever PHYSICALLY ATTACKED (because they were ripping people off in the holy place). The Pharisees and Sadducees - all good, well-meaning religious leaders who spent a lifetime of study to make sure they understood Scripture correctly - had Jesus killed because He wouldn't stop calling them out for their failure to act on their beliefs. Jesus was killed by the guardians of religious orthodoxy, for sending the message that behavior matters more than belief, and people matter more than principles.

Evangelicals often ask "What would Jesus do?" The answers I kept finding in Scripture were what led me to not be able to buy into the Evangelical way of thinking about God anymore.

I have no animosity towards Evangelicals, mind you. They love Him with a fiery intensity that I admire and miss. I think of the countless hours I spent praying with Evangelicals, hearing them weep because they felt they'd failed Him, hearing them beg Him "Lord, increase our faith", "Lord, cast out our doubts", "Lord, give us boldness to reach the lost so they may know your love for them", "Lord, forgive us our sins, give us strength to do better" ... they love Him with absolute sincerity and commitment.

But: they are convinced that He demands correct belief as a condition of salvation - and don't seem to realize that means they believe in a God who demands that we think in exactly the right way, as a condition of His love. Yet the Bible speaks of faith not as adhering to dogma, but as a pattern of behavior that naturally springs from following Jesus: "Faith without works is dead. Show me your faith without works, and I will show you my faith by my works."

Faith is a vital part of following Jesus. It is not an idol to be placed ahead of obeying His commandments about how we treat other people, particularly those who are already being mistreated.

We were warned to beware of idols, because idols mean exalting our image and idea of God above God Himself. And because the first thing an idol demands is human sacrifice.

I hope that Wheaton College reconsiders sacrificing the witness of a professor who's trying to live out the love of Christ to hurting people. Make an official statement disagreeing with her theology if you like, but also give her credit for trying to heal a division, trying to embody peace and love and unity with a group that our society is pushing us to treat as enemies... because THAT is what matters to God far more than having letter-perfect theology.

Let us not place our faith in idols, not even the idol of faith itself.

Let us place our faith instead in the God who calls us to reach out to those who are different, even to enemies, and to bring peace where there was strife.

This is how it starts...

It does not start with the atrocity itself.

The process that ends in committing atrocities, begins with de-humanizing people.

It begins with thinking in terms of "those people".

"Those Muslims, what the hell is wrong with those people, what kind of god do they believe in that would condone something like this?"

"Those refugees, what the hell is wrong with those people, why don't they stay and fight ISIS instead of coming here?"

"Those conservatives, what the hell is wrong with those people, don't they care about all the innocent people trying to escape from the insane shit ISIS is doing to their countries?"

"Those liberals, what the hell is wrong with those people, don't they know it's dangerous - and impossible - to let everyone enter the country that wants to? Don't they care about our safety?"

"Those Americans, what the hell is wrong with those people, don't they care that they're killing far more civilians than terrorists here?"

"Those Christians, what the hell is wrong with those people, what kind of god do they believe in that would condone something like this?"

"Those people. To hell with those people."

And here's the thing about "those people":


Pretty quickly, we stop thinking of them as people.


And something that isn't a person can't have valid concerns, or needs that matter as much as ours.

Something that isn't a person can't love or be loved, or have people of their own.

Something that isn't a person can't have any common interest to which we might appeal.

Something that isn't a person can be treated as harshly as necessary to protect "our people".

Something that isn't a person can be attacked and destroyed with a clear conscience - even MUST be destroyed if it's a possible threat to "our people".


Something that isn't a person, and yet is human-shaped, is a monster.


And we've seen enough monster movies to know that the only possible response to a monster is to destroy it. Stake it through the heart, smash the head with a blunt instrument, set it on fire - quickly, before it starts killing real people. Our people.

In fact, better barricade ourselves in with our people and fire at everything human-shaped that approaches the door, in case it MIGHT be a monster.

Better still, let's go destroy the monsters in their nest, before they get a chance to come for us and our people.

And we'd better just assume that all of "those people" are monsters and therefore must be destroyed. Just to be safe.

And once we're at that point, we're willing to do anything, willing to destroy even ourselves, in our zeal to destroy "those people". After all, it's now necessary, even noble, to die in the effort to protect "our people" from "those people".


Allahu Akbar!

For God and country!


It starts with forgetting that "those people" are ALSO "our people".

Even when some of those people have done unforgivable things that must not be allowed to continue.

Even when many of those people are saying horrible things they have no right to say.

Even when many of those people have started to think of our people as if we're the monsters.


My people - all people - even if you think of me as "those people":

It starts here.

Do we have the courage to stop it here?

© John M. Munzer

Saying goodbye to Community Inclusion

Today was the 15-year anniversary of my being hired for my first job in my chosen field. 

I spent it packing up my office. 

I haven’t lost my job. But I’ve lost the part of my job that I loved most.

For those who aren’t familiar with my job and my field – I’m a Behavior Specialist, working with people who have developmental disabilities. My role is to figure out what need a person’s behavior meets – attention, control, stimulation, escape from physical or emotional pain, etc. – and make a plan to help them meet it without doing dangerous or inappropriate things. It’s a wonderful, interesting, fun job, and despite its challenges and the modest size of the paycheck I can’t imagine doing anything else.

Before I was a Behavior Specialist, I worked in a Community Inclusion program. It was for adults with severe cognitive and physical disabilities, and the emphasis was on helping them to achieve their own goals. If they wanted a job, we’d help them find one. If there wasn’t one, we’d create one. If they didn’t have the ability and desire to do any kind of job, we’d find out what they COULD do and what they DID want, and go out and do the hell out of that. We had people learning to read, learning to communicate more effectively, learning to order their own food, learning to make paper, learning to paint and draw, learning to play music, learning to hold and count their own money, learning to feed themselves, learning to take care of plants, learning to talk to people they met in the community, learning to cook… going to parks and zoos and fairs and stores and bowling alleys and swimming pools and restaurants and concerts and bars… and just trying all kinds of new things to find out what they could do and what they liked doing. 

And it was GOOD. It had joy. It had fun. It had a sense of hope that people could be doing better a year from now than they are today. It met people where they were at and helped them get closer to where they wanted to go. It had people smiling and laughing and socializing and learning, who used to do nothing but scream and hit. It had people who were not able to work, still able to do SOMETHING worthwhile. It was a beautiful thing in the lives of the people we served there, and in my life. 

 

And when I got promoted to Behavior Specialist, I stayed involved in that program to the extent that I could. Eventually my office was there, and that worked great because it meant I’d see most of the people on my caseload every day, and I still got to help them participate in the part of their day they loved most.

And I poured the best of myself, my best work, all the creativity and effort and passion and humor and love I have, into that program.

That program has been shut down.

It closed not because it was failing to accomplish what it was made to accomplish, but because political and legal decisions are made by politicians and judges – by people who have no actual experience with the things they’re making decisions about.

There was a series of funding changes over several years that gradually made it impossible to do the job with the amount of money the state would pay for the work. Each change, to an outsider, would make logical sense; but to someone actually doing the job, it was an obvious mistake. And each time the government cut the funding, they never considered that the needs of the people we serve hadn’t decreased just because the funding had. They still needed physical assistance to eat and drink, use the bathroom, get in and out of chairs, and communicate… let alone the help they needed in order to learn new physical skills, experience new places and activities, learn and practice the rudiments of social interaction that would help them be more safe and appropriate in community settings, follow the routines that they depended upon in order to feel happy and safe and in control of their lives. All the things that Community Inclusion programs were created for. Apparently, the government thought these things aren’t important for people with disabilities. 

What’s important to the government is that we pour the majority of the (limited) resources into getting people jobs. And that’s a worthwhile goal, it really is. Having a job gives people money, which gives people control, and that’s something people with disabilities often lack. In fact, most of the challenging behavior I see comes from people who have a lack of control, and I am all for helping them get control in safe ways. By all means, if someone can get a job, we should support them in doing so.

But: it feels like we sacrificed the quality of life of the people with the most profound disabilities, the ones who won't benefit from the employment programs because they lack the physical or cognitive ability to do the kind of work that employers are willing to pay for. 

I understand why legislators and lawyers made the decisions they did, I really do… and maybe they meant well. But the end result is that people’s lives suffered. This beautiful and worthwhile endeavor;

this place that ensured the most easily overlooked people would have a time and place each day to get someone’s full attention; this place that brought joy into lives that had been joyless; this place that gave a predictable routine and rhythm to lives that used to be in chaos; this place that helped the world's most lonely people to build this wonderful, quirky little community where they were happy, safe, and comfortable... all this was disbanded because it was no longer considered worthwhile by people who had never even seen it in action.

All through the past month, I’ve had a line from the Kipling poem “If” running through my head:

“If you can bear to see ... the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools…”

I hope we can rebuild, in some way, what that program had achieved. I sure as hell am gonna try.

But for now, I grieve for what’s been broken.

The real enemy

Is not black 
Is not white 
Is not the poor 
Is not the rich
Is not the police 
Is not the civilian 
Is not the liberal 
Is not the conservative 
Is not the powerful 
Is not the powerless. 
The real enemy 
Is that within each human being 
Which sees other human beings as things. 
Whether things to use 
Or things to abuse 
Or things to destroy 
Or things to ignore 
Doesn’t matter in the end. 
Whenever we treat people as things, 
The enemy is us. 
Let us never forget who the real enemy is. 
Let us join together, 
For only in joining together do we fight 
The real enemy.

© John M. Munzer

My bad habit

I’ve always processed my thoughts and feelings by writing them, particularly when I’m upset. As a kid I did that on paper; now that I can type faster than I can write, I do it on the computer. That’s not a bad habit in itself.

BUT:

I’ve gotten into the habit of doing it, not in a journal or a Word document or even in this blog, but in e-mails and on Facebook posts. Frequently, I start to write them out, look at what I’ve written and realize “That’s something that’s okay for me to feel, but not something that’s kind/ helpful/ wise/ true/ logical/ necessary to say to this person/ an appropriate response to what this person said/ a complete or articulate thought”, and then I hit “Delete” rather than “Send” or “Post”.

But sometimes, the internal editor doesn’t intervene, and I go ahead and send or post something that would have been better written in a journal and then let go. It’s like instead of writing it in a journal, I wrote it on someone ELSE’S journal. Which is being published world-wide.

And that’s when I get myself in trouble. Because I’m more likely to make this mistake when I’m writing about something that upsets me, these things tend to be dripping with sarcasm and invective rather than clearly thought-out, logical points that can easily be followed by people who aren't me. And they also tend to be loaded with anger that isn’t directed at the particular person, or even solely that particular issue, but ALL the anger I have about ALL of the things that are wrong with the world. So I’m not only venting anger inappropriately at the wrong person, I’m not even really explaining what I’m angry about, or that it’s not about the person to whom I’m writing. 

AND I'm doing it in writing, so neither of us are seeing each other's faces, hearing tone of voice, seeing body language. So other people aren't getting the cues that would have told them this isn't about them. And I'm not getting the initial cues that would have told me I was out of line and need to stop and apologize, rather than continue the inappropriate rage-splosion.

Again, all this in someone else's journal. Which is being published world-wide. Where, literally, everyone and their grandmother can read it.

So if I do that to someone who is a LOT more reasonable than I am (which, thankfully, happened last time I did this), the response is simply a baffled “What was that about?” And here, I should offer my deep thanks to the people who are a lot more reasonable than I am, as well as my deep apologies to anyone who's been at the receiving end of one of my misplaced rants.

If I do it to someone who, like me, tends to get defensive if they feel attacked (especially in a public setting) … well, really, when that blows up in my face I’m dealing with the natural consequences of my mistakes there. But it was unfair for me to do this to the person in the first place.

So, I’m going to try and get into the habit of using a Word document that I can save or delete when I’m done venting, rather than venting at the universe in general in a format with a "Send" button.

At the very least, if I'm gonna share a rant with everyone and their grandmother, I'll make sure to edit it so it's at least sorta coherent, and put it in my own blog where it belongs.

In that spirit, I waited a few days after writing this before posting it. I felt that my internal editor needed the practice.