There are moments in my life when I hate to admit that I was right.  There are moments when I want to be wrong, when I will do just about anything to be wrong.  This weekend held one of those moments for me.  Let me explain, in a recent blog post, I predicted that Jennifer Knapp’s recent admission to being a lesbian would erupt into a full-fledged battle in the culture war.  I wanted to be wrong about my prediction.  I would have preferred that my analysis of the underlying event and everything about ir was incorrect.  Sadly, it was not to be.

On Friday night round one in the culture war slugfest that is the Jennifer Knapp dilemma took place.  It happened on Larry King Live of all places.  It included Jennifer, Larry King, Bob Botsford, and Ted Haggart.  The event was cordial and polite with all parties in this round attempting to be on their best behavior, (I guess aiming for style points from the judges mostly).  The politeness with which it took place might allow one to think it was not a bare-knuckled brawl of the highest order, which it was.

It was a polite brawl is the best way that I can describe it.  All the people involved looked exactly as I figured they would, cheap dime store caricatures of who they were.  Everyone looked petty and small in my estimation.  No one came out looking like a rose.  Everyone took serious wounds coming out of the altercation.  The cause of Christ was set back on Friday night.  And new reasons to think Christians are mean-spirited were given to anyone watching that needed one.

It was hard for me to watch.  I wanted to yell, ‘just shut up’ at my television, but I couldn’t, as the rest of my family was sleeping at the time I watched it.  I wanted to turn it off, but I couldn’t.  It was like watching the train wreck you know is going to happen that eventually does.   It made me sad.  And I think it made all of Heaven sad.

Let me explain why…  Everyone involved made the work of the Kingdom all the more difficult as a result of the broadcast.  It made it harder for people truly trying to help their neighbor wherever they find them.  It made it harder for anyone carrying a cup of water in the name of Christ.  It hardened hearts, and closed ears.  It cast mud on the name of Christ, and left every believer trying to be about the calling of their creator with a black eye.

There were no successes as a result of the broadcast.  It wasn’t possible for there to be any.  Why Mr. Botsford went on the show at all is beyond me?  He knew he wasn’t going to be able to change Ms. Knapp’s mind.  He knew he wasn’t going to convince her with rhetorical flourishes and sound logic.  It just wasn’t in the cards.  She wasn’t going to break down in tears and repent on national television.  If the goal was to convince Jennifer on the subject of Biblical truth, then going on Larry King was the wrong venue for it.

These sorts of things have to happen in private.  They have to happen in the context of a relationship.  It is only in the comfort and security of a meaningful relationship that one person can share truth with another one, with any hope of success.  This is something Mr. Botsford I assure you already knew.  Which leads me to ask, why did he go on the show at all?  Why did he seek the confrontation?  I don’t know the answer to my questions right now.  I can only guess at his possible motives, and my mind won’t let me assign pure ones to his actions.

The right way to handle this issue is to show the love of Jesus.  People have to know how much you care before they will ever care what you think.  People of faith need to be expressive of the love of Christ to the wounded and the broken among us.  We need to live the lessons of the parable of the Good Samaritan.  That man didn’t ask how the victim came to that place.  He didn’t query the nature of the victim’s perspective on hot button issues to determine whether or not his neighbor was worthy of his aid.  He rolled up his sleeves, and cleaned his wounds, and bound his injuries.  He took the man to a place where he knew aid could be rendered to the injured, and the paid for the care.

So our response to these issues must be…  We must hold the broken and the battered.  We must help them with their wounds.  We must take them to the healer, (which we aren’t by the way), so that they can get the care they need.  In this description, you haven’t heard one ounce of judgment or condemnation.  That isn’t our role.  That isn’t ever going to be our role in these situations!  Our only role is to be there in the midst of pain and agony.  Our only role is to share the essential nature of our spirit with those in need.  Our job isn’t to judge or condemn.  Our job is to be the hands and feet of God’s grace in difficult circumstances.

It won’t be easy to do this.  We won’t feel comfortable in the process.  Our lack of ease or comfort with the task at hand doesn’t relieve us of the requirement of doing so.  It makes the clarion call upon us all the more urgent to step up to our task.  The more we love without pretext, and share the wealth of our hearts without precondition the less the stereotypes and caricatures will  fit us.  The less we act like heartless bullies on steroids, the more we will be able to help people and actually advance the Kingdom of Christ.

Acting in this fashion doesn’t justify the sin of others.  It accepts that our role has nothing to do with judgment or condemnation.  The task of making people aware of their sin, the righteousness of God, and judgment to come belongs to the Holy Spirit.  Our impersonation of the Holy Spirit is pathetic at best, and comes off as petty and thuggish.  We have none of the Holy Spirit’s deft and delicate touch.  We are the spiritual equivalent of a bull in a china shop in these circumstances.  We need to seek first to love and to comfort those in desperate need of the Grace of Almighty God!  Anything less doesn’t measure up to the calling that has been place upon our hearts, minds, and souls.

After a hiatus of many years from the recording industry Jennifer Knapp has returned with a new album.  In and of itself, this is a run of the mill event, as artists leave and return many years later all the time.  She left the industry at the height of her popularity for a plethora of reasons, and she stayed away for reasons that made sense and were rational to at least her. 

When she left, she was largely a Contemporary Christian music artist.  She has accompanied her return with an announcement, in extensive interviews in both Christianity Today, and The Advocate  , that she is a lesbian, so most experts are unsure as to where to classify her music right now.  Is it pop, is it rock, is it still contemporary Christian music, most don’t know and aren’t sure.  And when our culture isn’t sure how to label something, isn’t sure which category, which pigeon-hole in which something belongs, chaos ensues.

I sincerely hope I am wrong about what seems to be coming down the pipeline to a theater near you and me, but…  I believe that in the coming weeks and months there is likely to be a heated discussion between the gay community, and mainstream Christianity revolving around Ms. Knapp.  It is likely to be angry, vitriolic, vicious, and bloody.  We are likely to hear some of the worst things possible from both camps about each side.  It has happened before and it is likely that it will happen.  It’s almost as if we can hear the knives being sharpened on both sides for the rhetorical bloodbath that is to come.  It’s as we can almost hear the tools at work preparing the battlements, digging the trenches, and filling the moats to defend each position.

And if that is what this situation boils down to, I think it will be a disgrace.  If this whole matter becomes nothing more than another culture war slugfest between these camps, it will be another black eye for both communities.  It will end up being a box on both houses.  And it will serve as a distinct reminder to the world of how cold and callous we all can be to one another.  It will remind everyone that for six thousand years of recorded history we have advanced in brotherhood so very little.  It will be as repugnant is it repellant to the broader world if this situation devolves into that sort of melodrama.

And let me be clear, I am not taking sides in this debate, and I do not favor any one individual perspective.  I do not favor people of faith not speaking the truth.  My problem is that these debates always seem so far away from the manner and tone in which Jesus responded to them.  When Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well, there was not condemnation in his voice for her.  He didn’t bang his fist into the side of the well, and speak judgment of her situation, as was his right.  He showed a deep and abiding compassion for the woman.  He was willing to break all the laws of Jewish society in his time in order to speak with her.  From the text it is obvious that Jesus displayed a delicate and tender touch as he laid out the truth.

And that delicate and tender touch is, from my perspective, what is missing from how mainstream Christianity deals with this issue in general.  The leaders of most faith communities pontificate on this issue more akin to the Pharisees of Jesus time with their vicious hate filled diatribes.  I can almost see them ceremonially rending their garments and covering their heads with ash as the customary Pharisee might have as they speak their position.  It makes me cringe every time I hear these people speak.  It makes me wonder about the sum total of my faith if that expression is what Christianity is supposed to be about.

Honestly, I wish the hate-mongers and religious zealots and downright whack-a-loons could just shut up.  It makes me reach for my remote every time I hear it.  In truth, I think the Church should not engage in this debate at all.  I believe that Christianity is ill-served in every encounter on this subject.  For obvious reasons, the tenderness with which our savior would approach this situation is absent in our discussion of it.  There is little if any love or compassion in our speech on this subject.  And all it does is leave those who fall into this category feeling ostracized, feeling like an outsider, and feeling like a leper.

That isn’t the character we see abundant in the ministry of Jesus at all.  Jesus dealt with these situations usually quietly away from the crush and press of the crowd.  In the rare instance in which he was forced to deal with it publicly, he didn’t take the sinner to task.  He took the accusers to task.  He challenged their right to stand in the judgment seat at all.  He said powerful things like, “Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone.”  I picture him with a stone in his hand saying that, ready to offer it to the first person willing to step up to the plate, knowing full well that none could or would.

I would be remiss if I didn’t say that Jesus did speak the truth to the individuals in these narratives.  However, as a member of the Trinity he had every right to.  He was there at creation.  He was present when God turned the lights on.  He was present when God recorded the details of the lives of every human being to ever live.  He knew everything about Jennifer Knapp before she ever came to be.  He will one day be part of the great white throne judgment of all humanity.  He will be sitting on that throne.  Neither I nor anyone that acts as an accuser in this life will.  It is God’s right alone to judge humanity.  The power of acceptance and condemnation fall solely in the realm of almighty God.  And we as Christians should get truth.  We should bathe in it.  We should let it sink into the fabric of our being.

Christianity should be spending more of its time trying to live the life they claim to.  They should be spending their life smoking what they’re selling.  They should be dwelling in the rich and verdant garden that is a life spent in communion with their creator.  They should be seeking to ensure that the Fruits of the Spirit are growing in abundance in their lives.  They should be spending time learning to show the love of Christ to others.  Not the phony, fake, plastic thing that passes as love, but leaves people feeling cold and alone, but rather the warm, nurturing, and dare I say intimate, kind of love that leaves no one feeling as such.  The kind of love that was abundant in the ministry of Christ.  The kind of love that turned ordinary Galilean fishermen into apostolic giants in their time is what’s needed here.  The kind of love that turned the world on its head in the first century, as it upended the political, social, and cultural world of its day is what’s called for now.

If you need evidence for this, the people of Antioch called the followers of Jesus, ‘christians’ because they had love one for another.  The nature of the faith they espoused was so characterized by the love of their rabbi that the world couldn’t help but label and identify them as such.  (As an aside, it is worthy of noting that the text says that the people, not the followers of Jesus came up with that moniker.)  The apostle John also says that we show our identification with Christ when we have love one for another.

How does the venomous diatribes that those who claim to lead our faith, measure up to this standard?  How do we measure up to this standard, when we do the same?  I know I am painting with a broad brush here.  I do however feel comfortable in doing so, because the brush I am using also covers me, as I am just as guilty of being like this as anyone.

The path out of this quagmire is simple though.  We need to accept that we are all broken and battered recipients of the stunning grace of almighty God.  We have all sinned and come short of the glory of God.  We have all failed God in numerous ways.  And the collective sum of our failures put Jesus on the cross.  There is no single sin that put Jesus there more than any other.  The sin of homosexuality is no more revolting to God, than any other sin under heaven.  The truth is that all sin is an abomination to God.  All sin serves to separate the sinner from their creator.  I am no better than anyone else and my sin God finds just as nauseating as any other person’s. 

Honestly, if I haven’t sinned numerous times before I leave the house in the morning, it’s a good day.  I thank God daily for the grace he displays for my sin.  Should I be any less graceful to others?  Am I being the unmerciful servant when I refuse to accept the grace of God as it falls on others, or in my dealings with others that have committed more obvious sin?  My sins committed in secret being just as detestable to God as any other.  How big is my God when I approach my life in such a fashion?  Is there room for the omnipotent God of heaven and earth in such a faith?

We shouldn’t allow this situation to become a binary black versus white debate.  We shouldn’t allow Satan the power to divide us in such a fashion.  A black and white debate fails to bring healing, and unity, and brotherhood.  It fails to provide a vehicle for the love that should be the hallmark of our faith to be expressed.  In the end, such a debate leaves everyone and everything looking like some dime store caricature of what our creator intended.  It allows the wolves in sheep’s clothing in both camps to lead us into the abyss that is a morass of hate and anger and failure.

In reality, the truth of the situation is obvious.  The facts are clear.  We members of the community of faith don’t need to fight to express them here.  What has to be said has been said.  It doesn’t need to be spoken again and again and again.  What we need to do now, is defy the stereotype that people have for us.  We need to show that are not small minded bigots and homophobes.  We need to focus on showing the love of Christ wherever and whenever we have the occasion.  We need to reach out to all our neighbors, regardless of where we find them.  We need to remember that we have planks in our eyes, and we can’t extract the speck in our brother’s or sister’s eye without causing harm to them.  The work that needs to be done here belongs to God.  All that we can and should be doing right now is show the love of God until he comes again without comment or controversy.

In truth, what Jennifer Knapp chooses to do with her life, and how she is working out her salvation with fear and trembling, is not for me to judge.  At the end of her life, she will give an account of herself to her creator, and it will be in the midst of that intimate private audience with the one who breathed the breath of life into her nostrils that it will be conducted.  I won’t be there to accuse her, and no one else will either.  The one that knew her before the foundations of the world, the one who loved her with an abundant and awe-inspiring grace will.  I don’t know how it will turn out precisely, because distilling a mysteriously righteous and holy yet loving and benevolent God is a hard thing that doesn’t fit easily into our finite temporal brains.

At least for me, I plan to pray for her as I do many people.  Not because she is in any more need of prayer than me or anyone else, but rather, because I want to ask God to show His love for her.  I want God to remind her how much He cares for her.  I want her to feel the sheer abundance of that love falling on her like a flood, such that she could never deny from whence it came.  I also plan to enjoy her music.  I plan to revel in her success.  I plan to weep with her failures.   Just as I think God in heaven will.  The rest is beyond my right or my role to comment upon.

Did you or your children ever play little league baseball? Can you remember a time when only the winners of the league (and maybe 2^nd and 3^rd place) took home a trophy? Perhaps like me you have a hard time with the recent trend of participation trophies. I’m not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the way someone got the bright idea that every kid who bought a pair of cleats should get a trophy. Rewarding the kids who work hard, practice and hone their skills is no longer a priority. Why? I’m not sure. Perhaps we’re trying to spare the feelings of the losers. Perhaps the virtue of participation really is more important than the concept of winning. Personally, I think this is a bunch of bunk. Maybe a kid can’t hit a fastball. So what? Let’s help him find his own gift; maybe it’s playing a tuba or swimming. Maybe she’s a natural born writer or scientist. My point is that we should award the kids in an area that they deserve recognition. If every kid that runs onto a baseball diamond gets a trophy, the trophies become somewhat meaningless, right? What’s so special about winning a trophy if everyone gets a trophy?

Right now you’re probably asking yourself what this has to do with pantheism. I’m making a point – trust me.

The Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy defines pantheism as follows:

Pantheism is a metaphysical and religious position. Broadly defined it is the view that God is everything and everything is God. A slightly more specific definition says [that] pantheism … signifies the belief that every existing entity is, only one Being; and that all other forms of reality are either modes (or appearances) of it or identical with it.

This concept of pantheism is common amongst Eastern and New Age religions. Whenever you hear a person talk about “The All” or “The One” you can rest assured they are espousing a belief in pantheism. If I am being honest, the idea or thought processes behind this idea are valid. A person who expresses a belief in pantheism is normally trying to convince others to respect nature. The argument is that we should care for and respect nature and other people because all of it – man, rocks, mountains, trees, animals and etc. – are all part of “The All.” Everything is God so we should treat everything with the proper respect.

This all sounds great doesn’t it? The problem is that this isn’t the Biblical view of creation. Rather, the Bible teaches that we should be able to recognize God based on His creation. Our appreciation of creation and nature should cause us to fall on our knees and worship the true, living God. We may discover the general attributes of God by examining His creation; for instance, He is a God who appreciates beauty, love and friendship. He is a God who loves painting glorious skies and landscapes just to watch our mouths fall open in wonder. However, we must not confuse the Creator with creation. These revelations that can be found in nature are general. If we want to learn the specific attributes of God we must study the Special Revelation found in Scripture and in the person of Jesus Christ. When we confuse the general and special revelations of God we are making the same mistake that Paul addresses in Romans 1:25, “[We exchange] the truth of God for a lie, and worship and serve created things rather than the creator.”

I would take it one step further and suggest we are in violation of one of the Ten Commandments.  When we worship creation as if it were God we are creating idols. Yes we should respect, preserve, and care for our environment; but only because it is a gift from God, not because it is God.

If we consider all of creation God – you are God, I am God, the trees are God, Squirrels are God and etc. – than there is nothing special about being God; much like little league participation trophies, God becomes meaningless.

Look at it this way … if everything is God, than nothing is God. Pantheism is akin to atheism in the sense that God becomes unnecessary. I prefer to learn about the real, living God as revealed in the Scriptures. Yeah, it takes more effort and more dedication than simply pronouncing that nature is God, but it is more rewarding in the end.

From the nearly the beginning of human history, man has been trying to put God in a box.  This what our finite temporal minds do best.  By nature, we attempt to identify, classify, catalog, and quantify all we encounter.  It’s not a bad thing, honestly.  It was even part of Adam’s charged ministry.  And insomuch as we do this in the physical realm, that’s fine.  It’s our fundamental nature to do so.  It keeps us safe and healthy at the same time.

The problem begins when we take this nature and attempt to apply it to God.  It leads us to say that God is X, or whatever X happens to be based on our flawed and incomplete understanding.  God strongly condemns this practice in many places.  He rebukes those who would follow him from trying to cast him into an image, any image for that matter.  This is in no small measure, because any image, idol, or icon of him fails utterly as an expression of him.

This hasn’t stopped humanity from trying.  The Israelites demanded idols to worship in the desert.  They even turned the Ark of the Covenant into an idol of sorts in one of their confrontations with the Philistines.  In both cases, God handed down some of the harshest discipline in the entirety of the Old Testament, (with the notable exceptions of the Sodom narrative and the captivity periods).

Those examples stand out in stark relief and should prevent us from repeating those tragic mistakes.  Sadly, however, they do not.  Our modern, or post-modern if you prefer, intellects are stilling trying to cast God into a box.  We try to intellectually understand God in concrete terms we can easily absorb.  We attempt to lay hold of the infinite with our pathetic finite brains, and cast for ourselves a mental idol that we can easily make sense of, rationally understand, and work with.  We try to boil God down to some ‘cookies on the bottom shelf’ pabulum that is easily digested by the broadest cross-section of humanity.  It’s what we humans are good at, despite divine commands to the contrary.

My own personal experience speaks volumes to how tragically misguided these efforts are.  In each case, God seemed solidly bent on confounding the box in which I had constructed for him to reside.  I would believe God to be this, that, or the other thing.  I would construct a systematic theology to support this frame of reference, and I would then proceed to live life from this place.  In each and every case, I would feel sure I’d constructed a solid framework which God could work from and reside within.  And in each and every case, the framework would collapse of its own weight, because God either didn’t know the role I’d written for him in the construct, didn’t care to play by the rules I’d codified for him, or wanted to frustrate my every effort to build a box for him mental or otherwise.  As to which one was the most proximal cause of my frustration, I’m sure I won’t know this side of Heaven.  I do now believe that it was a little of all three.

And so it is that I am no longer a spiritual box builder.  I’m tired of building a thing only to find out how pathetic a job I’d done at building the container.  Today, I find myself enthralled by the mysterious nature of God.  I swear that the older I get the more mysterious God becomes.  And the older I get the less interested I am in box building and systematic theology construction that effect to explain God.  I’ll leave the box building and systematic theology construction to the younger crowd.  I don’t have the energy or the desire for it anymore.  I am, today at least, content with the description God gave to Moses, “I am that I am”.  Nothing more works, fits, or effectively applies.

Who am I, after all, to describe effectively a being that exists, a part from the confines of this mortal coil?  Who am I to attempt to rationally explain a being that at its very core is not rational?  I wasn’t there at the moment God turned the lights on by the simple act of a spoken declaration of will.  And it’s unlikely I will be there when he turns them off to replace them with the glorious radiance that is his fundamental being.  I wasn’t there when the God that doesn’t change yet somehow remains mysterious laid the foundations of this world, and all the others.  And, unless I am wrong, I won’t be there when he reveals the new Heaven and the new Earth, (at least in the flesh).

So I am left only to accept that God is, and that my life should be lived from a place of acceptance of that immutable truth.  I shouldn’t posses the wantonly arrogant hubris that believes the Bible gives me anything more than enough information about God to find faith and belief for that God.  To do so is absolute folly, and dare I say utterly foolish.  The Bible is not a handbook for understanding God.  It is not a biology textbook that quantifies God in realistic terms.  It does not function to provide a vivisectionist’s guide to dissecting the divine.  Rather it provides the evidence that confirms the existence of that God, and the route by which that God can be interacted with.  Anything more is vain folly and narcissistic arrogance that places more worth on the spirit of man than his creator confers himself.

As part of a writing project, I have been reviewing different world religions with particular interest in what they teach concerning sin. During my examination of the Wiccan faith, I kept stumbling across Wiccans who refer to the following verse with a mixture of anger and resentment.

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” – Exodus 22:18 (King James Translation)

When reading this verse, it is understandable why there may be hurt feelings. Taken out of context, Exodus 22:18 seems to give Christians blanket permission to kill witches. Considering this is a verse that could be used to justify hate and violence, an in-depth examination seems to be in order.

We must first recognize that the while the King James translates the subject of this verse as “witch,” there are slight variances in other translations. Most commonly, I have seen it translated as “sorceress” (NIV, Holman Standard); however, it has also been occasionally translated as “poisoner” – although I feel this last translation is made from weaker manuscripts. Regardless of the translation, most experts believe Exodus 22:18 is addressing those who practiced occult activities such as séances, divination and spell-casting while eliciting the help of powers outside the one, true God. It is also generally assumed that these magic practitioners were attempting to draw their power in part from Satan. With this in mind, the words “witch” or “sorceress” seem as apt a translation as any.

Although most Wiccans take offense to Scriptures’ use of the word witch, I believe it would be a stretch to compare these witches to the modern adherents to the Wiccan faith. For instance, since Wiccans deny the existence of Satan there seems to be a clear difference between them and witches referred to in this verse. I suspect we are comparing apples to oranges, but for the sake of this discussion, let’s assume that the witches of Exodus 22:18 and the witches of modern Wicca are one in the same. Is the Bible giving Christians blanket permission to hunt and kill witches?

The quick answer to this question is no; however, to truly understand why one must understand the context of the verse.

Exodus 22:18 is presented as part of the Book of the Covenant (Exodus 20:19 through 23:33) and is intended as a guide to teach the Israelites how to incorporate the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20: 1-17) into their daily lives. These commands came at a time when God was attempting to preserve the Israelites as His chosen people in order to use them in His plan to save all of us. While the Ten Commandments are considered laws that transcend time and culture, the commands that are contained within the Book of the Covenant are specific for the Israelites who received them. Thus, to take any of these Israel-specific commands and argue that they apply directly to those of us in our modern, western culture is a misapplication that misses the point of the text; so if the verse was a direct order to kill all witches it was not a direct order from God to us, but rather from God to those particular Israelites living in that particular time and place.

Even with this said, it can be argued that God wasn’t giving those Israelites a direct order to kill all witches. A reoccurring theme of the Old Testament is Israel’s failure to remain faithful to God. Over and over again God’s chosen people were led astray by pagan religions that placed idols and sex ahead of God. The Ten Commandments begin with instructions that we should have no other Gods before the true God and that we shouldn’t make idols. These were the issues at stake concerning the “witches” that lived among the Israelites.

Because, the Israelites were continually being led astray and losing focus, God instructed them to not allow a witch to “live.” The word live in this case is translated from the Hebrew word châyâh (pronounced khaw-yaw’) and refers to both a literal and figurative life. Exodus 22:18 could have just as easily been translated as a command to not allow witches to live and thrive within the Israelite community. This is especially probable considering the rules against the exploitation and oppression of foreigners presented in Exodus 22:21.

In all fairness, a “witch” or sorceress who refused to leave and continued to lead the Israelites astray would have no doubt faced capital punishment on the command of Exodus 22:18, but I tend to believe this would have only been used as a last resort.

Regardless, those who take this verse out of context and use it as a vehicle for violence are just as guilty of academic laziness as those who read the verse and claim it as evidence that Christianity teaches hate. As always, this verse needs to be placed in its proper context before it can be understood.