Ten Ways Christians Tend to Fail at Being Christian

John Shore

Trying God's patience since   1958

Posted: May 7, 2010 01:43 AM

Speaking as someone who, well, had the conversion experience 14 years ago that I recounted in "I, a Rabid Anti-Christian, Very Suddenly Convert," we Christians too often fail in these ten ways:

1) Too much money. "Wealthy Christian" should be an oxymoron. In Luke 12:33, Jesus says, "Sell your possessions and give to the poor." In Matthew 19:21, he says, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor." In Matthew 6:24, he says, "You cannot serve God and Money." Christians are generally pretty huge on cleaving to the word of God. I just don't see how those particular words could be clearer. (For more on this, see my post "Christians: No Fair Heeding Paul on Gays But Not Jesus on Wealth.")

2) Too confident God thinks we're all that and a leather-bound gift Bible. I'd like to humbly suggest that we spend a little more time wondering how we displease God and a little less time being confident that we do. (See my post "Certainty in Christ: A Blessing and a Curse.")

3) Too quick to believe that we know what God really means by what he says in the Bible. The Bible is an extremely complex, multi-leveled work. We're sometimes too quick to assume that we grasp its every meaning. Take this passage, for instance, from Luke 8: 9-10: "His disciples asked him [Jesus] what this parable [of the sower] meant. He said, 'The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that, "though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand."'" Huh? And that's Jesus "explaining" what is generally regarded as one of his most readily understood parables! Are we really all that confident that we always know exactly what Jesus meant by everything he said? Wouldn't we do well to sometimes admit that the words attributed to God manifested on earth are just a tad, well, Greek to us? (See my post "The Bible's Two Big Problems.")

4) Too action-oriented. We Christians could stand to spend less time acting in the name of God, and more time reflecting on the (ever subtle) majesty of God. We need more passivity, and less activity. More meditation, less machination. More reflection, less correction. More contemplation, less administration. More prayers, less airs. More mysticism, less ... um ... cretinism. (See my post "Doing Christianity vs. Being Christian.")

5) Too invasive of others generally. It is my personal, humble opinion that anyone seeking to mix church and state has failed to understand the nature and role of either. Being founded upon the principle that all men are created equal and deserving of equal protection under the law is what makes the American system of democracy such a gift to mankind. Attempting to mix the inherently exclusionary imperatives of a particular religion into the resolutely inclusive system of the American constitutional form of government is to work against everything that America stands for. Religion is a personal, subjective affair for the individual; politics and public policy is an impersonal, objective affair for everyone. (See my post "Does the Holy Spirit Vote Republican?")

6) Too invasive of others personally. We Christians are too often too eager to get up into the faces of others about their personal religious beliefs. If you believe in the reality of hell, then wanting to save non-Christians from going there is a worthy sentiment, of course. But the bottom line is it's absolutely impossible to talk someone who isn't a Christian into becoming one; in fact, more than anything else it's likely to push the non-Christian further from God. I believe we Christians would do very well indeed to spend our time "just" living as Christians, and let God worry about the non-Christians. (See my post "What Non-Christians Want Christians to Hear.")

7) Too quick to abandon logic. When talking to others about our faith, we Christians too often resort to a language and line of reasoning that leaves good ol' fashion logic sitting on the ground behind us, waving a sad good-bye. "It's true because the Bible says it's true" is, for instance, an assertion that can't help but leave the non-Christian unimpressed, since it's so manifestly illogical. "It's true because the Bible says it's true" is no more proof of truth than is, "Apples are the best of the fruits, because I think that's true." Christians need to more readily admit that the religious experience -- no matter how riveting and real it is to the person experiencing it -- remains a subjective phenomenon, and talk about it that way. (See my "Let's Be Real: No One 'Walks' and 'Talks' with Jesus.")

8) Too fixated on homosexuality. Can we Christians stop already with the gay and lesbian fixation? I know many of us understand our stance on the matter to be unassailably Biblical. I know a great many of us are deeply concerned about the "homosexual agenda." I know. We all know. Maybe Christians could just give that issue a rest for a while. It's not like gay and lesbian people are going anywhere. They'll all be there when we get back. Maybe -- for just a week, a day, a month -- we could concern ourselves with something else, and let them be. (See my post "Christians: When It Comes to Homosexuality, Man Up.")

9) Too insular. When I became a Christian, one of the things that most amazed me about Christians is the degree to which they tend to hang out only with other Christians. We should stop doing that. How are we supposed to share Christ's love with non-Christians (which we're forever saying we want to do) when we barely know any non-Christians? Time to widen that social base, I say. (Plus, Christian or not, we still want to throw good, fun parties, don't we? Well, let's face it: The heathen class has all the good music. We might as well invite a few of them to our next party. Maybe they'll bring their CD's!) (See my post, "My Answer to Christians Denouncing R. Crumb's "Genesis Illustrated.")

10) Too uneducated about Christianity. Generally speaking (which of course is the most offensive way to speak about any group of people), Christians tend to embarrass themselves by knowing so little about either the Bible or the history of Christianity. Believing that the Bible is the word of God, for instance, is one thing; knowing nothing about the long process by which men decided which texts would and wouldn't make it into the Bible is another. It's not that all Christians should be full-on theologians or historians. But if you're a Christian who doesn't know the Great Schism from The Great Santini, or the Diet of Worms from ... well, the diet of worms, then you've got some homework to do.

Leviticus Loses: The Inevitability of Equal Rights for Homosexuals

by Rabbi Irwin Kula 

Posted:      April 30, 2010 02:37 PM

This past week in synagogues throughout the world, the weekly portion of Scripture included the following verse from the book of Leviticus: "Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abomination." This proscription has obviously been the source of heated and often vicious debate over the past decades as homosexuals have courageously come out of the closet and forced our culture to wrestle with its full humanity. My colleague Rabbi Brad Hirschfield posted an important and nuanced post on Huffington Post -- "Is Homosexuality an Abomination? Wrestling with Leviticus 18:22" -- suggesting that because this cultural change in attitude towards homosexuals is very complex, the debate would be far more productive if people hid less behind Scripture and ideology and focused more on why this particular issue is so important to them personally. In Rabbi Hirschfield's words, "compassion for an idea is hard to generate, but compassion for a real person is less so."

It strikes me that the way human rights issues have played out since the beginning of modernity -- which, not surprisingly, coincides with the separation of church and state -- should give us all reason to take a deep breath. There is a sort of humbling inevitability to the process of inclusion and to where we place ourselves along the continuum of human rights debate. One of the many ways to characterize the modern experience is the ongoing expansion of human rights and the increasing inclusion of marginal populations. The modern political and social dynamic in both general society and within religious communities has been the same: Marginal classes of people are brought inside legal frameworks and given equal rights. Whether recognizing the full humanity of Jews, African Americans, other ethnic and religious groups, women, the physically challenged, and now homosexuals, the process has been the same. First, a small group within the marginal group realizes they are in fact oppressed, that in profoundly unjust ways they are not treated as full human beings equal before the law. This small group begins to "cry" out for freedom. The initial reaction within the marginal group is usually fear of rocking the boat while the reaction of the dominant class is dismissive if not often brutal. But injustice once realized and freedom once tasted, even if only in one's heart and mind, is very hard to put back into a box, and so a process begins within the marginal class, educating its own people to see their plight and organizing increasing numbers of people ready to fight for inclusion and fairness. At some point very small numbers of people from the dominant class begin to see the light and realize that fellow human beings just like them have been denied equal rights simply because they are different. If the modern period is of any evidence, once this movement perceived as one of human rights begins -- though it may entail great struggle, sacrifice, and bitterness -- it inexorably results in the marginal population being given the same legal rights as the majority population. So America of 2010 is far more inclusive than America of 1810; classes of people denied equal rights and barely seen as human in 1810 have gained their rights by 2010.

It turns out that once the thirst for freedom is felt, the only question is pacing, and this is true in the general society as well as within religious communities, who all go through the same fighting process. Sadly, though, religious communities, even the liberals in those communities, tend to be on a time lag relative to the larger secular body politic. Depending on our psycho-spiritual and psychosocial predispositions and the values of the groups to which we feel most connected, we individually and collectively pace ourselves in one of three ways. Some of us, the traditionalists, hold on for dear life and oppose any change; others, the human rights activists, make great sacrifices to bring about change; and still others, the rest of us, are in the middle, slowly brought along to see the humanity of the Other. These three paces are of course all relative to each other, so as inclusion and equal rights expand, passions intensify.

For some, usually those most denied their rights, change understandably moves too slowly, whereas for others it moves too quickly, and for most of us it sometimes moves too quickly and sometimes too slowly. Of course, whatever our pace, we dress up our positions in either religious language or the secular language of grand principles like justice, fairness, and equality, as if it is not precisely the content of those principles that we are debating. At some point, as people meet each other and realize that the Other is a human being whose difference is nothing to fear, a critical mass, usually a healthy minority and not yet the majority, pushes through the change, which drives the remnant of traditionalists crazy. So traditionalists do have much to "fear" as their variety of arguments against inclusion -- the same arguments that they have brought on every human rights issue (e.g., it is not natural, it will lead to moral corruption, it is sinful, it is against god's will, it will undo the family, it will destroy the fabric of society, etc.) -- will increasingly ring hollow to more and more people. They may be able to slow things down, but they cannot stop these changes no matter what the Bible says. Thank God.

Given that we all know how (if not exactly when) this story of equal rights and full inclusion for homosexuals is going to end, the really interesting question is who we are in this drama. Where do we position ourselves and why? After all, we position ourselves where we do because it works for us, giving us just the right psychic gratification -- whether from our anger, self-righteousness, righteous indignation, or aloofness, and whether we are leaders or followers or stand above critics. Social, cultural, and moral change is hard, and in my experience, when I get a bit too angry at the pace of someone else's capacity for "moral development," or when I get a bit too self-righteous about how morally developed I am relative to those "homophobes," it is because I am actually unconsciously disappointed in my own efforts in working to make this a more just society.

Gays and lesbians (and bisexuals and transsexuals) are going to gain every single right that heterosexuals have: the right to visit their lovers, partners, or spouses in a hospital; the right to share in pensions, health insurance, and inheritance benefits; the right to marry; and the right to adopt. This is just how it is when people begin to see the Other as fully human, and it will even be so in the vast majority of religious communities -- after all, who would have thought that the majority of the most religiously traditional communities would allow inter-racial marriage?

Knowing all this ought not keep social justice activists (sorry, Glenn Beck) from doggedly pursuing equal rights for homosexuals. But it ought to make us feel just a bit less anxious and therefore a bit less angry with traditionalists. Knowing that as long as we continue to fight for the recognition of the humanity of the Other, such recognition will ultimately be won, we might even be a little less triumphant as we win.

Anyway, at some point in the next decades, the vast majority of us will see this as the obvious moral position; will see those views of a previous era as less morally and ethically evolved; and we will feel appropriately embarrassed, if not ashamed, of those days. Given this, it behooves us to remember that the only difference between human rights activists and traditionalists, relatively speaking to the centuries of injustice finally being ameliorated, is having realized something just a bit earlier -- something that the god of Leviticus should have learned from the god of Genesis -- that all human beings are created equal in the divine image.

Problem Solving EFT Ho'oponopono Guided Meditation

Ho'Oponopono is the ancient Hawaiian art of forgiveness, loving and personal accountability. Since I was introduced to this I use it several times each week to close my day. On a whim, I used it for meditation with some of the adolescent male therapy groups I facilitate. To my great surprise they loved it, and ask for it over and over. It has become a bonding process between all of us, and a process to see All as One.... to engender empathy and create a fresh beginning for a new day.

(The breathing directions are about using EFT techniques and breathing with it, which further enhance the depth of the meditation.)

Obama to Win Landslide Election in 2012

April 22, 2010 by William K. Wolfrum 

It’s April 20, 2010, and let me call it now – President Barack Obama will easily win re-election in 2012. Any discussion you hear about the 2012 presidential election is just a way to wile away the hours between the next Lindsay Lohan and/or Kim Kardashian news.

There’s three indisputable reasons to call this race so early:

1) The economy will be better in 2011 than it is now.

It’s almost impossible not to improve the economy after eight years of George W. Bush’s mad and often confusing slay-the-beast onslaught. It was as if the kids from “Jersey Shore” were running the place. It was a situation.

Basically, if unemployment numbers are less than 9%, or Joe Biden doesn’t accidentally lose all our money, it’s a non-issue.

2) Obama’s re-election campaign will be a shock & awe effort of the likes the political world has ever seen:

Imagine combining the Super Bowl and Carnival, then firing off repeated gold-plated orgasm flairs. That’s going to be every day for 18 months of the Obama campaign. They may do the whole thing in 3-D and have Kathryn Bigelow direct. And that was their first one. The first one will look like a Jr. High pep rally compared to the bombardment of sense and emotions about to be released on the U.S.

3) All the GOP has to run against him are Republicans:

While ranked third, this really is the icing on the cake. The Republicans have not one person who could beat Barack Obama. Not one. The closest thing to a winnable candidate they have is Meghan McCain. Trust me, poll it. Unfortunately, she’s like 19 or something, so she’s out.

As for Sarah Palin, she’ll sooner co-star in a “Very Special Episode of Alf,” (where she’ll frag Alf from a helicopter) before she’ll be considered a serious Presidential candidateby “Real America.”

Newt Gingrich? Bring it. Just bring it.

Mitt Romney? Mitt Romney wouldn’t vote for Mitt Romney.

Scott Brown would be the most attractive candidate, but Tea Partiers will never forgive him for occasionally voting like a human, and he seems far more astute than to commit political suicide at the start of a promising career.

Even Mike Huckabee has to be sick of Mike Huckabee.

Seriously, they have nobody. And the “Policy of Hell No” won’t exactly be winning fans after some voters have already benefited from the health care reform law.

I suppose it is possible a surprise candidate will stun us all and present a real challenge to Obama. Except that I just wrote that to cover my bases; and trust me, there’s no one. The GOP would be best off giving Bob Dole or Walter Mondale their nomination. At least we know they can handle it.

So let me call it now and beat the rush: Obama wins the 2012 presidential election by a landslide over a horrifyingly inept Republican candidate. I guarantee it.

And I guarantee this, as well: The mainstream political talkers will spend a great deal of time discussing how the “Tea Party” somehow made a difference.

PS: Just to come off as slightly topical, let me add my prediction for the 2010 Congress races. About 93 percent of incumbents will keep their jobs.