Good News??

 

First thing yesterday, I turned on the TV, going straight to cable news to learn the Supreme Court’s ruling on gay marriage.  I was overjoyed to hear that the federal Defense of Marriage Act was ruled unconstitutional, and California’s Proposition 8 was overturned.  Facebook was abuzz with the good news; it was the subject of the day.

Later, a colleague posted the article below on FB; I was intrigued by the title:  “Christians v. Gays: The Damage Done,” by David Gushee.  It came from the Religious Dispatches Web site, and both the article and reader commentary were thought-provoking. I highly recommend it.

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/7174/christians_v__gays__the_damage_done/

Sadly, much of the conservative, evangelical community was deeply disappointed with the ruling, which legally identified gay/lesbian couples as equal to heterosexual couples, entitling them to the right to marry, to have their marriage recognized as legitimate, to receive the full array of marriage benefits—at least on the federal level.  Those Christians who’ve ardently fought not only gay marriage, but the legal recognition of such marriages as valid, have insisted that not only are such marriages sinful in the sight of God, they will destroy marriage and the fabric of the family altogether.

Gushee’s title describes this battle succinctly:  Christians versus Gays…David against Goliath; good versus evil; God versus satan…a battle for godly social morality, for the soul.  It’s Christians who have waged this war, in the Name of Jesus. 

So as I read Gushee’s article, his readers’ comments, and the many posts and articles my FB friends posted all day long, I pondered the notion of “good news,” particularly as it relates to one’s affiliation with Christian faith and with the Christian “gospel.”

 Once an active, committed, practicing evangelical Christian, I was taught that “gospel” meant “good news”: the good news to an oppressed, sin-filled, hurting world that God had sent His own perfect Son to rescue us forever and restore His loving kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven.”  I looked up “gospel” in a dictionary, which explained that it comes from the Old English godspell, translated from the Greek euangelion, that it really means “good” “news.”

In my 40s I felt compelled to leave evangelical practice, one reason being that I wasn’t seeing much good news coming from the Christian communities I experienced.  I began seeing more judgment, more dismissal of others as immoral, ungodly, and downright unsaved than I saw of good news to a hurting world.  There was a rise in condemnation of the very kinds of people Jesus would likely be hangin’ with, calling friend, teaching, loving, serving if He were here today in human form. Simultaneously I grew troubled by blindness at what I labeled self-righteous “phariseeism” coming from conservative evangelicals—a practice of pointing condemnatory index fingers at others while overlooking entirely the four fingers pointing back at themselves.  There no longer seemed to be much open, unconditional, love and sharing of truly good news.  The “good news” too often came w/ fine print.

Certainly there’s a great deal of immorality, self-serving behavior, greed, “me-ism,” addiction, ugliness, violence, misery (for many people, self-induced), entitlement in our world today.  We need a cosmic time out at the least, if not a heavy dose of damn tough love, for sure; perhaps at the least we need to experience the consequences of our choices.  And the “gospel” should not mean you come to Jesus and then get to live as you please.  Of course on the other hand, often the consequences we reap can lead us into pretty hellish situations, relationships, and lives.

So here we are today and the Supreme Court ruling giving gay/lesbian citizens equal status  in the U.S. (if not—yet—in their home states).  And we have Christians—little Christs (see Acts 11:26)—who’re supposed to be representing Jesus on earth instead filled with judgment…condemnation.  So who has the “good news”? 

Why should anyone have to go to the high court of the land to receive the good news of being treated as equals?  Where’s Christian unconditional love and service to “the least of these” (w/ no regard for who they are or their status)?  Are gays and lesbians imperfect?  Duh!  After all, they’re human… and we all bear our own scars and skeletons; suffering the consequences of thoughtless, self-serving, fear-induced, ugly, misinformed choices—which have NOTHING to do w/ sexual orientation.  They likely need Someone on the other end of a “HELP!” prayer just as much as any of us do.  

At least in my Bible, the  “gospel” writers narrate Jesus’s life:  his closest familiars, who he spent his time with, who he taught, who he touched,  and who he got most put out if not outraged with. But his rage is never directed at the “sinners” he was closest to, sought out, served. Rather, he exploded at those religious individuals who thought they were in a position to serve as judge, jury, and executioner while never looking at themselves in the mirror and their own “sins.”  He even had mercy on a woman caught with her pants down in a capital crime, daring her self-righteous accusers to cast the first execution stone…He brought peace to a heated situation, to a frightened woman. 

Now, in the 21^st century, our world has far too little truly good news.  We all have our daily joys, celebrations, and successes.  But we fear and face far too much violence, division, suffering, alienation…; when we collectively take a positive step forward and up, too often it is followed by several steps backwards…downwards.

Yesterday's news is great news--to be celebrated even though our national journey to equality and unconditional access to human and civil rights is far from finished.  We all--Christian, athiest/agnostic, Wiccan, Muslim, sojourner/seeker--have a lot to do in our own lives and as a collective to build and maintain a just and peace-filled nation and world...Christians certainly aren't the only ones casting judgment and causing problems.  But if we dedicated Christians who are especially called to serve and love unconditionally would fulfill the role that God has "saved" us for in the world, perhaps our collective thirst for good news would be quenched.  Maybe we would no longer have to go to court or fight each other to find it.  

Guns 24/7

Here’s my imagined Dr. Suess ode to the ubiquitous gun:

One gun is fun to carry ‘round

to shoot at this and plink at that,

A cowboy holster and my cowboy hat.

I’ll walk as tall as a Borgonzat!

If one is fun then give me two,

To keep me safe from you…and YOU!

To keep away the wild Mock Turtle [ok a bit of Alice in Wonderland thrown in)

The Grizzly Gnarth, the Big Tooth Pnurdl.

If two is safe then three is safer, don’t tell me “no!” I will not waver

Go get me three guns…HURRY, three…

I need four now, THEY are after me!!!

Who, you ask?  I do not know, but when they come

My five guns will go

BOOM BOOM SHRING CRACKLE

WHIZZ WHOOZ BANG BANG

I’ll win the day, what’s that you say?

No monster here has died today?

Little Amber, baby Jed

They got my gun, bang bang they’re dead?

No, no, can’t be, oh my…oh me.

My guns were here to protect our home;

I brought them here, what have I done?!

Take one gun away please, two and three

Don’t leave me four guns, nosiree

I will not shoot everyone who scares me

Instead let’s build a world of peace.

Ever since the 1990s school shooting epidemic, followed by the Million Mom March and the Second Amendment sisters 2000 gun rallies, I’ve tried to wrap my brain around how a gun could really keep me safe.  I’ve never found an answer.

I recall living in San Diego when someone broke into my North Park apartment in the middle of the night to do me harm.  I didn’t hear him slice away the bathroom window screen, or walk into my room next to my bed.  I was conscious enough to feel his hand run over my body over the covers…I was asleep enough to think it was a blanket falling off the bed.  Before I knew it he was on top of me, trying to get his hand over my screaming mouth…he didn’t…I kept screaming…he ran.   I was fortunate.

I’ve since imagined a gun into that scene. Had I, in that brief chaos, tried to reach into a nightstand for a gun, my intruder could easily have found it before me.  Perhaps being trained in gun use would’ve changed the way I slept; I would’ve awakened immediately alert, ready to shoot to kill without shooting myself in the process or giving him easy access to my gun.  I picture myself in my kitchen, hearing someone break into my bathroom window, my gun in my nightstand, useless to me.  Today, a lifetime later, I imagine myself in two-story town house, a gun for safety in my nightstand upstairs, me in my kitchen, an intruder breaking in my front door, right near the stairs.  Or I’m getting out of the shower and hear footsteps up the stairs…no way to reach my gun. 

Really, to be wholly safe from threat just in my own home, I’d either need at least 1 gun for every room, or a holster or two in which to carry a gun around the house with me at all times.  And I haven’t even considered yet what “security” would require once I opened my door and stepped out into the ever-threatening world.

I see the logic; it’s that logic keeping the U.S. in the nuclear arms race—ICBMs launch ready at all times, just in case, for every threat.  I understand the dangers out there in the world, even here in rural, northwest Tennessee.  There are in fact evil people—willing to harm others for their own purposes, to exploit the moment with violence, to carry out deliberate, deadly acts against others, even children.  I get it. I’m a 60-year old woman, living alone, a good target for someone with sinister intentions. 

But living a life in which I must at ALL times be armed to be safe seems like no real life at all.  The scene in the 1980s kid-flick War Games, where the computer seemed to set off a global, all-out nuclear war, the NORAD monitor lit up like klieg lights from weapons exploding around the world was stunning artistry, but a frightening concept.  And in some ways, living w/ a gun at the ready 24/7 is the same as participating in “mutually assured destruction” in the name of national security.  It’s a shoot-to-kill way of life that brings the potential for deadly conflict into every moment of the present, into every encounter, every plan, every possibility for spontaneity.  It’s a fear-based insanity.  And I genuinely cannot understand why anyone would choose to participate actively in such a gun-centered lifestyle.

I have no easy answers for truly peaceful co-existence, which may not even be possible. If it is possible, it’ll be hard work, especially adding the need to work against those insisting that arming up is the only way to create a safe, peaceful world.   

Did I ever purchase a gun?  Do I own a gun now?  That’s my business, and I’d hope you wouldn’t be inclined to hunt me down to find out…as a peace advocate, I’d be scarred for life shooting you just to satisfy your curiosity.  But I will say that I never want to feel so threatened by those around me that I have to build an arsenal to feel secure or be armed at every moment even at home.  You being armed at all times, no matter how law-abiding you are, doesn’t ease my mind either.

IF guns 24/7 ensure security, and I’m not convinced they do—any more than I think having enough nuclear missiles to destroy the planet several times over makes me feel safe against all possible threat to America (North Korea, Iran, ????)—security is not the same as real, lasting peace.  It’s that truly peaceful co-existence we all need to be working toward—together—regardless of whether or not we’re packin’ heat.