Update from Rob Martin

An Interesting View for a Picnic

Yesterday I posted about an attempt from The Simple Way to speak to the injustice they see in Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter’s proposed ordinance basically abolishing feeding the homeless unless you have permits and do it at approved places. My friend Rob Martin decided to participate in this gathering, and wrote about the experience over at his blog (Abnormal Anabaptist). Here is a taste:

So, despite all my panic, it was a very subdued, low-key event of a bunch of folks just spending time together.  What did we accomplish?  Well, in the eyes of the world, worried about laws, regulations, and government agencies, not a whole lot.  We didn’t change the law.  We didn’t change any politicians minds.  To that extent, we failed.

To the man who stocked up on sandwiches for the week, it wasn’t a failure.

To the man who stood there while we loved on him with a sandwich, a cupcake, an apple, and a bottle of water, it wasn’t a failure.

To the young man who, strange though he was, found a bunch of folks that just accepted him no matter how outrageous he acted, it wasn’t a failure.

You see, we were with Jesus.  Two or more believers gathered, and Jesus was there.  We fellow-shipped with each other and with other people made in the image of God and Jesus was there.

This was the third way.  This was the way of Christ made flesh.  This proved that it was possible to act counter to justice in a way that did not sacrifice grace, mercy, compassion, and love, even for those with whom we disagree.  Instead of attacking the counsel, we fellow-shipped.  Instead of shouting angrily, we fed quietly.  Instead of chanting slogans, we laughed together.  We demonstrated to everyone who saw us that there was something different, something other going on.

This is what faith can do.  It can change the world.  It’s subversive.  It gets under the skin and transforms people without them even knowing it.

“We’re with Jesus”.

If we remember that, if we take that every where we go, imagine the possibilities.  Imagine what we can accomplish when we decide that, when we’re acting for Jesus, we are acting with him.

And it’s uncomfortable.  When we decide to spend time with Jesus, we’re going to be taken in some very strange places and directions, places that we would never decide on our own to do.  I hate meeting new people, I despise walking into a strange situation where I know no-one.  And yet, that is precisely what God required of me so I could spend time with Jesus.

You see, this is a radical faith we have.  Following Jesus is not safe, it’s not comfortable, it will take you out of your normal life and you will never be able to go back to it the same.  For me, I’m no longer satisfied with living a “normal” life.  I’ve encountered God and the experience has changed me forever.  For those Christians who only know a faith of “agreement” and don’t know that radical, gut-wrenching, whole-body, throw caution to the wind kind of faith, I feel sad.  I know many who don’t know that.  I know many who are satisfied with their life as it is.

“I don’t think I would change anything of my life, even if I wasn’t a Christian”.

Yes, I’ve heard that from some.  And it saddens me.  It tells me that, as much as they may “believe” something, they haven’t yet experienced that transformation that comes from diving in head-first into the terror of a faith lived on the edge.  And it is that experience that I find in Hebrews 11.

If you haven’t experienced that yet, I hope you will stop, think, and start to look around with a new set of radical eyes, seeking for where God is moving.  And if you have experienced it, well… you know EXACTLY what I’m feeling right now.

“We’re with Jesus”.

Picking on the Homeless: Update

My friend Rob Martin will be heading into Philly to participate in an act of civil disobedience with The Simple Way this afternoon around 4:00. Here are some of the detail

On Thursday 22nd March, The Simple Way and family will be having a little love feast/radical “food sharing” at Thomas Paine Plaza. We will break some bread together around unjust regulations like these feeding ordinances. This coincides with the “Food is a Human Right Rally” which starts at 4pm and the final meeting of the Board of Health around the food sharing regulations in Philadelphia.

JOIN US. We will be wearing teeshirts with the slogan “Jesus didn’t need a health permit”. We will bring blankets and supper–with enough extra to share with those who don’t have.

Sharing food is a matter of conscience, and an act of faith, a spiritual practice, an exercise of religious freedom. There are many of us who believe that to be Christian means to be “born again” where we have a new definition of family that runs deeper than biology.

These are our brothers and sisters! The very name of our City comes from the Greek words “phileo”, meaning “I love”, and “adelphos”, meaning “brother” – hence the “City of Brotherly Love”. Phileo specifically describes the kind of deep love that brothers and sisters have for each other.  We hope our City lives up to its name.  We are committed to making sure that it does.
Date: Thursday March 22nd, 2012
Time: The rally starts at 4. We will be sitting down for a love feast at 4:30.
Place: Thomas Paine Plaza, JFK and 14th Street, Philadelphia
What to bring: A blanket to sit on, food to eat and enough extra to share around.

Here is The Simple Way’s public statement on these regulations.
http://www.thesimpleway.org/about/archive/philadelphias-new-food-sharing-ordinance/
We strongly encourage everyone who joins us to “Know your Rights”. You can find more information here. http://www.aclupa.org/issues/freespeech/kyrataprotest.htm

It will be interesting to hear from Rob how it goes. I’m sure he’ll post something about it on his blog, so I’ll be sure to update my reader(s) about it!

Picking on the Homeless

In recent weeks, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and the department of health in the city have been championing regulations that would prohibit outdoor distribution of food to the homeless. This seems like the worst of big government intervening with sweeping legislation to solve an occasional problem. I thought I would share the following thoughtful response from The Simple Way.

On March 14, 2012 Mayor Michael Nutter announced a plan to ban “outdoor feeding” in the City of Philadelphia. In effect this would make it illegal to share or distribute food in public places without a permit.

We understand that there are some concerns from the Board of Health regarding health and safety of the food that groups share with the homeless. We are glad to see energy devoted to classes that educate and equip groups in food preparation, storage, and distribution so they can more carefully feed folks who are hungry. We share the desire of the Mayor and Health Department that folks eat in dignified settings. We echo the Mayor’s dream that every person be able to have a nutritious meal sitting around a dinner table, and we look forward to the day when homelessness and poverty are history. But homelessness and poverty are not yet history. They are a reality facing many of our brothers and sisters and fellow Philadelphians.

It is certainly appropriate for the City to intervene when there are specific groups that are sharing food in a way that is unsafe, unsanitary, or irresponsible. However, a citywide ban on food sharing is neither a necessary nor a sensible response to these exceptional cases. We are deeply concerned that these new regulations and policies – and the Mayor’s ban on sharing food – do more harm than good. They create bureaucratic barriers to compassion.

The very name of our City comes from the Greek words “phileo”, meaning “I love”, and “adelphos”, meaning “brother” – hence the “City of Brotherly Love”. Phileo is one of the three Greek words for love, and it describes the kind of deep love that brothers and sisters have for each other.  We hope our City lives up to its name.  We are committed to making sure that it does.

The proposed regulations suggest the requirement of permits when providing food for more than three persons, and other unreasonable requirements, such as providing a menu of food to be served as far as a year in advance. Our fear is that these regulations specifically target and will be selectively enforced against some of our most vulnerable citizens. It is hard to imagine every barbeque cookout, religious service with a potluck dinner, family reunion, or block party being prohibited from sharing food. Of course, failure to equally enforce this type of legislation would be a clear civil rights violation as well as an act of discrimination. The parks and public spaces of our city should be enjoyed by all citizens, rich or poor.

Sharing food with those who are hungry is a fundamental act of human conscience. The thousands of people who share food in any way, both inside and outside, make the world a better place. The economic challenges facing our nation have awakened in us a sense of solidarity, knowing that there is a fine line between “us” and “them”. Additional cuts in City funding threaten to make such acts of generosity even more necessary. Philadelphia’s Deputy Mayor Schwarz has noted that most funds for the City’s human services come from the State, where a new budget threatens to cut $41 million in social service funding, representing a 20% cut, threatening even those services that currently exist – and do so much good.

For many of us, sharing food is not only a matter of conscience, but is also an act of faith, a spiritual practice, an exercise of religious freedom. There are many of us who believe that to be Christian means to be “born again” where we have a new definition of family that runs deeper than biology, making it just as essential to care for those we are biologically unrelated to as those we are. This new legislation potentially makes it illegal for a church youth group to take pizzas to homeless folks in a park, or a family to take the delicious leftovers from a Bar Mitzvah to folks sleeping under a bridge. It is unconscionable.

In the Bible, Jesus even goes so far as to say that when we feed the poor, the “least of these”, we are feeding Christ himself.  When Jesus speaks of the final judgment he says we will be asked by God, “When I was hungry did you feed me?” Can you imagine if our response was, “Sorry God, the city would not give us a permit?”

One of the stories of the Gospel involves Jesus doing a miracle where he takes a few fish and loaves and multiplies them, feeding hundreds of hungry folks.  Jesus didn’t have a health permit to do that outdoor feeding. In fact if Jesus had tried to perform that miracle feeding in Philadelphia under these proposed laws, he would have gotten into serious trouble. Jesus bids us come and follow – feed the poor, care for the hungry. We are not willing to allow unjust policies to be obstacles to love.

Our organization, The Simple Way, started nearly 20 years ago as college students shared food with folks on the street in downtown Philadelphia. Over the years our organization has grown and evolved, but sharing food and resources with those in need continues to be at the core of our mission, and of our faith. In fact, as long as folks are hungry we cannot NOT share.

At various intervals in our history we have faced obstacles to our work, like this current policy. We insist on humbly but persistently interrupting injustice.

Twelve years ago the City began passing anti-homeless regulations and policies very similar to the current food ordinances being enacted by Mayor Nutter and the Board of Health. Hundreds of us voiced our concern about the laws, and dozens of us were arrested for sharing food and sleeping in public. In the end, we won a major victory in court.  In fact, the Philadelphia Judge even declared that those of us who broke the law were not criminals but “freedom fighters”, citing the Boston Tea Party and the Civil Rights movement.

We cannot help but see this current struggle as a new chapter in the story of American activism, which has deep roots right here in Philadelphia.

One of the proverbs of the Civil Rights movement in America was: “Noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as cooperation with good.” And it was St. Augustine who said, “An unjust law is no law at all.” This is an unjust law and we are obliged to not comply.

We deeply value dialogue and are convinced we can all do more together than we can on our own. As for this new government policy, we can do better – and we must.

The History of Church vs. State in the U.S.

(Illustration by Jennifer Hewitson / For The LA Times)

John M. Barry offers a little historical perspective on the origins of the church/state relation debate. Not too surprisingly, the debate about the relationship between church and government in the US dates back to the earliest colonies. Barry looks specifically at the Massachusetts Bay Colony and more specifically the thoughts of Roger Williams. Here is a taste. (HT: John Fea)

The church-state conflict began when Puritans, envisioning a Christian nation, founded what John Winthrop called “a citty upon a hill” in Massachusetts, and Williams rejected that vision for another: freedom. He insisted that the state refrain from intervening in the relationship between humans and God, stating that even people advocating “the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or Antichristian consciences and worships” be allowed to pray — or not pray — freely, and that “forced worship stinks in God’s nostrils.”

Yet Williams was no atheist. He was a devout Puritan minister who, like other Massachusetts Puritans, fled religious persecution in England. Upon his arrival in 1631 he was considered so godly that Boston Puritans had asked him to lead their church. He declined — because he considered their church insufficiently pure.

Reverence for both Scripture and freedom led Williams to his position. His mentor was Edward Coke, the great English jurist who ruled, “The house of every one is as his castle,” extending the liberties of great lords — and an inviolate refuge where one was free — to the lowest English commoners. Coke pioneered the use of habeas corpus to prevent arbitrary imprisonment. And when Chancellor of England Thomas Egerton said, “Rex est lex loquens; the king is the law speaking,” and agreed that the monarch could “suspend any particular law” for “reason of state,” Coke decreed instead that the law bound the king. Coke was imprisoned — without charge — for his view of liberty, but that same view ran in Williams’ veins.

Equally important to Williams was Scripture. Going beyond the “render unto Caesar” verse in the New Testament, he recognized the difficulty in reconciling contradictory scriptural passages as well as different Bible translations. He even had before him an example of a new translation that served a political purpose. King James had disliked the existing English Bible because in his view it insufficiently taught obedience to authority; the King James Bible would correct that.

Given these complexities, Williams judged it impossible for any human to interpret all Scripture without error. Therefore he considered it “monstrous” for one person to impose any religious belief on another. He also realized that any government-sponsored prayer required a public official to pass judgment on something to do with God, a sacrilegious presumption. He also knew that when one mixes religion and politics, one gets politics. So to protect the purity of the church, he demanded — 150 years before Jefferson — a “wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world.”

Interesting side note in there about the history of the King James Bible. Funny that it is often seen as the epitome of the unbiased standard against which new version are compared for any attempt to change the language, while it is a biased translation to begin with!

An Ancient Object Through the Years

This was a fascinating look at the Cyrus Cylinder down through the years. This object has confirmed parts of Scripture, been an important object in the motivation of Christian and Muslim nations, and still has an impact all these years later. Those with interest in the Scriptures or history will probably agree that this talk is a must-watch!

Chris Smith on Why He Abstains from Voting

Chris Smith (photo from GoodReads)

I resonated with much of a piece from Chris Smith from Relevant Magazine. Relevant is currently in the process of offering a series of Christian perspectives on politics. (Previous posts come from a Christian Libertarian, Christian Republican and a Christian Democrat.) Chris is offering an explanation for his choice not to vote. I’ll give you a taste of his philosophy, and then offer some opinions.

“America, it may be, is doing very well upon the whole, notwithstanding these antics of the parties and their leaders, these half-brained nominees, the many ignorant ballots, and many elected failures and blatherers.”  —Walt Whitman

Whitman’s words ring as true today as they did when he penned them over a century ago. And although my rationale may differ from Whitman’s, I think these words get to the heart of why, for almost two decades, I have chosen not to vote.

Let me begin with the caveat that I don’t condemn people who vote. Rather, I simply believe voting is not the most important political practice of the Church—and I am part of a church community where a few of my brothers and sisters share this conviction.

My opposition to voting is rooted primarily in the narrative of Christ’s incarnation. Jesus was born and lived in a particular time and place; the kingdom He proclaimed did not seek to overthrow the Roman Empire and re-order society from the top down. Instead, He sought to reenergize the grassroots social order of YHWH begun in Ancient Israel, a locally embodied polis that functioned most healthfully without a king. Jesus called 12 disciples, a little community that recalled the 12 tribes of Israel, and they shared life together in a way that proclaimed God’s healing and abundance to the people they encountered.

After Jesus’ ascension, His disciples spread throughout the world planting little communities that embodied Jesus in their own particular places. These churches were, in a very real sense, the incarnation of Jesus in these places and the shape of their life together modeled a politics—a way of being together—that was not rooted in greed, power-grabbing or any form of self-interest. (If you want to know more about politics embodied in church communities, I suggest you read John Howard Yoder’s little book Body Politics.) This basic incarnational story of Christ and the Church is the one in which I and my brothers and sisters at Englewood Christian Church on the Near Eastside of Indianapolis find ourselves.

Our main political task, as a local church community, is to follow the mission of God in the church and thus to embody Jesus faithfully in our place and to work with our neighbors toward the health and flourishing of our neighborhood. Whitman’s assumption that there are more important political realities in our land than our elected officials rings true for me. According to theological narrative I have defined here, churches are the most important of these political realities, but also more important is the open dialogue and collaboration of neighbors as they seek to cultivate their places in such a way that they flourish and can be sustained. To invest ourselves in this political work is a viable alternative to voting, and perhaps more effective in shaping the future of our places.

Over the last decade, I have moved decidedly closer to this perspective, but I have not yet fully endorsed it. I have, however taken the attitude that I will not vote along strict party lines, and I will not vote in any election in which I do not feel that I know enough about the candidates to make an educated vote. This has resulted in skipping mid-term elections at times when I have to admit that I am uneducated. At other times, I have voted in some races, but left others blank. The situation continues to be exacerbated by my growing conviction that Chris is correct that local action and involvement in Christ’s movement through His Church is more essential than any election, local or national. If I have the choice between educating myself about the election or acting locally (even simply ministering to my family), I will always choose to act. This has lead to an increasing disconnect and lack of involvement in much of politics. You will likely find my posts here to be devoid of partisan politics unless my theology leads me to find fault or credit due to one side. I think that the world has seen enough of the Church getting distracted in search of earthly power rather than focusing on spreading the Kingdom in which we really claim our true citizenship.

Thanks, Chris, for you insightful piece, and for further stirring my wrestling with the Spirit as to the appropriate response. I look forward to finding time to talk in person some time when we are out in Indy or your family is back in PA!

I Knew Him Way Back When

Peter K. Greer

I don’t usually turn to CBN or the 700 Club for my news, but they had a nice piece on microfinance  yesterday that featured my college friend Peter Greer and the microfinance organization he founded, HOPE International. We were in an outreach group together back in those days at Messiah College, but I don’t think I can take much credit for the good work he is doing. I will say that I have proudly donated to his work several times over the last few years and believe in the power of what he is doing! I can’t post the CBN video here, but be sure to check it out here. You can find previous posts about HOPE by clicking the HOPE International category above.

Thoughts on Gender and Leadership

Thanks to my friend Rob Martin for pointing out an interesting post from J.R. Daniel Kirk at Storied Theology. Kirk is responding to some comments by John Piper in which Piper indicated that Christianity is a masculine religion. I admit that I am unfamiliar with the details of Piper’s description, but the fact that Christ talks about wanting to gather the people of Jerusalem under His wings like a mother hen would gather her chicks (Matt. 23.37, Luke 13.34) makes it seem hard to justify on the surface. This sounds much more like a feminine care and nurture than a masculine display of authority. Kirk looks at the book of Mark to trace how Mark retells the story of the disciples, a collection of males who seem to be the “insiders” in the story, and the women, who seem to reside mostly on the edges and come in and out of the picture, but are never trusted in the inner circle and never specifically empowered to go out and minister.

Kirk points out that it is always the disciples who are clueless as to the point of Jesus’ message. They don’t have enough faith to perform the miracles they are sent out to perform. They tell Jesus that He surely will not die. Peter is rebuked and called Satan! The women in Mark’s narrative fare much better. They are commended for their faith. The widow’s mite is worth more than the rich man’s overflow. The impression that the men are privileged in Scripture and the women are marginalized doesn’t really hold true when we consider the details. The men all run when the time of trial comes, it is the women who remain faithful and follow Him to the foot of the cross (though John’s version places him at the foot of the cross as well).

Here is a taste of the conclusion Kirk draws from the text:

In the story, the disciples do not understand what is entailed in leading the people of God. They think it is about greatness and power rather than service and death.

And so, we have the group represented by Peter. The rock. Is being “the rock” a good thing? In Mark, the rocky soil indicates plants that spring up well, but fall away when danger or persecution arise on account of the word. Mark repeats the language of “falling away” when the disciples scatter, leaving Jesus to die alone.

The Twelve were committed to Jesus, and happy with him–but only as one who came with power. They had no faith in their calling to participate in his way of death. They did not have eyes to see that the ministry of Jesus turned the economy of the world on its head.

Shall we return to the women now?

How are we to assess these women who, in the narrative world, are outsiders, on the margins?

Unlike the disciples who are rebuked for being of little faith, Jesus commends these women as having great faith: “Daughter, go in peace, your faith has made you well.”

Moreover, there is one episode where Jesus ties a human inseparably to the gospel story. It is the episode of the woman who pours out oil over Jesus’ head. This looks to be a royal anointing! But when Jesus defends her he says, “Leave her alone, she has prepared my body beforehand for burial.”

The act of anointing prepares Jesus for burial: Messiahship and death are held together, and here is the only person in the whole story to get it. This is why “wherever the gospel is preached what she has done will also be told in memory of her.”

What does it mean to live at the margins, to be unnamed? How does this compare with being the twelve, the dudes, the insiders?

According to the economy of the world, with its measures of greatness, to be the twelve is to be exemplary, in the place to lead, to exclude others from leadership, to stand close to Jesus and guard the gates of who else can draw near.

And to the extent that we look to Jesus’ selection of them, and the apparent marginalization of the women, as paradigmatic for male leadership in the church, we show ourselves to be people whose minds have not yet been transformed by the very story to which we are appealing.

It is only by agreeing with the disciples’ way of assessing the world that we can see their “insider status” as a true insider status, to be replicated by other men in church history.

Jesus offers another way: You guys don’t get it! It’s the rulers of the Gentiles who lord authority over people. It shall not be so among you.

There is another way. It is the way of the cross.

There is another way. It is the way of the “marginalized” in the worlds eyes lying closest to Jesus in faith and understanding.

Are we really supposed to hold up as our model the “Satan” who denied the gospel of the crucified Christ, and claim that Peter is paradigmatic of the place of men as insiders and faithful leaders in the church?

Or should we not seek out the one who did the good deed for Jesus, holding together Messiah and death from her place at the margins? Should we not seek out the one who sought out Jesus merely to touch the fringe of his garment and learn from her what it means to walk in faith?

The irony of appealing to the boys as insiders is that in so doing we show ourselves to be adopting the boys’ understanding of power, privilege, and leadership in the kingdom.

And this view is roundly rebuked by Jesus in words of dissuasion and the work of the cross.

The economy of the world is not the economy of the Kingdom. The world thrives on power hoarded and protected. The Kingdom is led by a King who serves and sacrifices so that His people may live. To look at Scripture and find justification for a continuance of a “masculine” religion is to fall into an old trap. Leadership in the Kingdom is not about the same things as leadership in the world. It is not about gaining power or privilege, or wielding control. Remember, Paul said that God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and the weak things to shame that which is strong (1 Cor 1.27). We would also do well to recall:

²⁷ For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. ²⁸ There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; foryou are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3.27-28 NASB)

To claim that the Church is supposed to favor one gender ignores this fact. This is not to deny the reality of differences between the genders, but it is to say that these differences must not be used as grounds for subjugation. Verses about female submission only point out that women need to submit, but so do men! We are all to submit to one another in reverence for Christ. These fights for power do nothing to build up the Kingdom of God. Can we please agree to work together to advance the Kingdom, rather than fight for power and authority within the Body of Christ and act as un-Christ-like as many throughout Church history have managed to do?

On the “Plain” Meaning of Scripture

How is Scripture Illuminated to Us?

Over at the Pangea Blog on Patheos, Kurt Willems explores what he considers to be a flawed way of reading Scripture. He represents it by the concept of what Scripture “plainly” means to the reader. The idea seems reasonable. Why would God make Scripture “tricky” such that the meaning wasn’t clear? The problem with this technique is that this is an entirely egotistical approach to theology. The Bible was handed down to us, but it was not written only for us. It was written to an original audience, with divinely inspired timelessness. Let me give Willems’ take as he puts it:

I believe that this approach to the bible is flawed, which is why I often call it the “surface level approach.” It seems quite arrogant to assume that the Holy Scriptures are simplistic to understand and do not require us to do any homework. The problem is that we live with gaps in-between the text and us. For instance, there is a considerable communication gap between the original authors of the Scriptures and our 21st century culture. We all know what it is like to have a communication gap. Think about it. How many husbands get themselves in trouble for saying something that sounds like something totally different than what they actually had in mind.

Wife says: How do I look in this outfit.

Husband says: It looks ok.

Wife says: Ok… (she says with a tone). That’s about as good of an answer as calling me fat! You jerk!

This is a communication gap to the extreme! Now take this stupid analogy and imagine that there is also a language, cultural, and more than 2000 years in our communication gap; that is what we have when we approach the Bible.

Given the reality of this gap, we need to be careful not impose our ideas onto the text, even if they “make sense” to us. That does not mean that nothing is “plain” in the Bible, but over the past few years I have begun to realize that there is much more to the Scriptures than I had ever known. The bible contains several genres, some of which include: historical narrative (story), didactic literature (straight forward language), wisdom literature (timeless truths), prophetic literature (fore-telling or forth-telling), apocalyptic literature (imagery soaked), and poetry.

Not only so, but there is metaphors, word-pictures, hyperbole, humor, and many other rhetorical devises used throughout the 66 books. What I have come to realize is that if I am going to take the Bible as God’s inspired Word, I need to attempt to interpret every passage in light of the gaps, genres, and rhetoric that the Holy Spirit chose to employ in cooperation with the various human authors. To not attempt to read the Bible in such a way is to ignore God’s complexity, creativity, and incarnational nature.

I think that Willems is on to something here. To interpret each passage on its own merits as it “plainly” appears results in an extremely disjointed and inconsistent faith. Some passages seem to plainly support predestination, while others talk as if we have free will to choose to follow Christ. Most people feel that it is plain that Psalms and Proverbs are poetry, but there is disagreement about whether Genesis 1-3 is poetry or history. Those on each side claim that it is “plain” that they are correct. There must be something underlying our theology that unites these disparate passages in a way that yields a unified whole, rather than the disjointed and inconsistent faith that reads all passages “plainly”.

Even worse, some Christians force unity by reading their own prejudices into the text. Some of the founding fathers of our country spoke of “all men are created equal” while holding some men as slaves and unworthy of equality. They backed this up by choosing to interpret the short epistle of Philemon as plainly allowing slavery while interpreting away text that clearly indicated that all men (every nation, tongue, and tribe) were equal citizens of God’s Kingdom. It is all too easy to slip into this trap. I know I have in the past, and likely there are areas where this is still a struggle. I pray that God will reveal these areas to me and reveal to me the Truth.

I’d encourage each of us to look at Scripture more carefully. While it might seem more godly to look only for the “plain” meaning, I think it is offensive to God, and disrespectful of His Word, to treat Scripture as if it were simply a poorly written history textbook full of facts and figures but no nuance, no story, lacking in real literary skill. God is the greatest Author, certainly His Spirit is capable of much more than we have often credited Him with!

Reflecting on Imperfect Heroes

¹⁰ as it is written,

“THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE;
¹¹ THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS,
THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD;
¹² ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVE BECOME USELESS;
THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD,
THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE.”
¹³ “THEIR THROAT IS AN OPEN GRAVE,
WITH THEIR TONGUES THEY KEEP DECEIVING,”
“THE POISON OF ASPS IS UNDER THEIR LIPS”;
¹⁴ “WHOSE MOUTH IS FULL OF CURSING AND BITTERNESS”;
¹⁵ “THEIR FEET ARE SWIFT TO SHED BLOOD,
¹⁶ DESTRUCTION AND MISERY ARE IN THEIR PATHS,
¹⁷ AND THE PATH OF PEACE THEY HAVE NOT KNOWN.”
¹⁸ “THERE IS NO FEAR OF GOD BEFORE THEIR EYES.” (Romans 3.10-18 NASB)

I couldn’t help but think of this as I contemplated the death of Joe Paterno this weekend. I was intrigued, though not surprised, by the reaction. Some of my friends, many with ties to Penn State wanted to put aside the recent revelations about Paterno’s poor handling of what he has admitted he knew about the actions of Jerry Sandusky and simply praise the legend that we all thought we knew to be above critique as a man, if not as a coach. Others wanted to say all of that didn’t matter in the shadow of the Sandusky scandal. I can’t help but think that these extremes, while tempting, are simply easy alternatives to admitting that Paterno was a man, like all of us, who had good and bad times. He often made good decisions, and certainly should be applauded for not simply amassing his wealth for himself and seeking the bigger paycheck. He was faithful to Penn State, and donated millions back to the University.

On the other hand, we must admit that his ego has been reported to be large, especially late in his career. It has been a long time since Penn State has been relevant on the national stage in any consistent sense. Partially, this is due to Paterno’s entrenched opinions and unwillingness to change significantly. While the defenses have been consistently good, if not great, the offense has rarely been the envy of anyone. Coaches on his staff rarely were replaced, despite lackluster seasons. The insulated nature of the staff probably contributed to the culture that allegedly allowed Sandusky continued access to the program and facilities long after allegations of impropriety had caused him to be “banned” from the building.

The lesson? None of us is perfect. Some of us tend to overlook our shortcomings and dwell on the good we see in ourselves. Others are more prone to flagellate themselves over every failure and overlook their many good qualities. The truth is that we should keep both in mind. We should also keep in mind that all of the people around us have both as well. Even the biggest villain has some good attributes, and even the most saintly person we know has inner struggles we may never see. Have the revelations about Sandusky changed who Joe Paterno was? No. They have simply revealed things we didn’t know. We ought always to offer grace and mercy to those around us whose struggles are most visible, and refrain from sanctifying others when we know that they are human, and therefore have issues and struggles we know little about.

I leave the decision on his soul to the One who alone makes that determination, but I pray for mercy, as I would want were I in his position.

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Over at The Way of Improvement Leads Home today, John Fea offers a couple of links to takes on this, but also offers an analysis that agrees with mine, just from his perspective as an historian.

As a historian, I think that there are a few things we have to remember as we assess the legacy of Joe Paterno.

1. It is difficult to give a fair assessment of Paterno’s legacy while we are still caught up in the emotions of his death and the whole Sandusky affair.

2.  When we put our confidence in people, whether they lived in the past or live in the present, we are likely to be inspired by them, but we are just as likely to be disappointed.  There are no heroes in history–we are flawed human beings.  There are no villains in history–we, in the eyes of God, all possess dignity and worth.

You can find his links here.