Briallen Hopper is a divinity student at Yale, a faith blogger, and a future leader of the Church of NALT. She shared her Passion Week sermon with me and gave me permission to post it to Slog. Briallen’s heartbreaking “mashup of an It Gets Better video and the Passion of the Christ” gave me hope.
My text today is from the prophet Jeremiah, chapter 31.
“Thus says the LORD:
A voice is heard in Ramah,
Lamentation and bitter weeping.
Rachel is weeping for her children;
She refuses to be comforted for her children,
Because they are no more.
Thus says the LORD:
Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears;
for there is a reward for your work,
says the LORD:
they shall come back from the land of the enemy;
there is hope for your future, says the LORD:
your children shall come back to their own country.”It’s been thousands of years now,
but Rachel is still weeping for her children.
She’s still refusing to be comforted.
But she’s not in Ramah.Right now Rachel is in suburban Minnesota.
Her son Justin bravely came out at age thirteen and endured merciless bullying for two years.
He killed himself last August.
Rachel found his body.Rachel is also in Indiana.
Her son Billy was called a fag at school.
His classmates told him to kill himself.
And so he did.
Rachel found his body too.
Rachel is in California,
Where her son Seth hung himself from a tree in his backyard
After being sexually tortured at school.Rachel is in Texas.
Her thirteen-year-old son Asher shot himself in the head
When he was tormented for being gay.Rachel is in Ridgewood, New Jersey.
Her son Tyler jumped off a bridge
After his college roommate secretly filmed him having sex
And outed him on the internet.Rachel is in Wisconsin.
Her son Cody felt unsafe at school
So he tried to form a gay-straight alliance for Safe Schools.
Before he could create a safe space for himself,
Cody was gone.But Rachel is weeping for more than her dead sons.
Rachel is also in New Haven.
Her daughters go to Yale.
They are hardworking, talented women.
They have been called sluts.
They have been raped.
Last year,
when one of Rachel’s daughters was raped by a classmate,
The daughter went to people in authority for help.
Traumatized and fearful,
She told her story over and over.
But nothing was done,
And now she sits in classrooms with the man who raped her.
Rachel’s daughter will survive,
But the damage will never be undone.When Rachel’s daughter told her mother what had happened,
Rachel held her and they clung to each other and wept together.
And Rachel knew that even though her daughter was still alive,
The trusting, joyful girl she used to be
was no more.Rachel is still crying.
We know these stories.
We read them in the paper,
And we see them close to home.
We know that Rachel and her children are nearby.
We know they might be in this room.
But it’s hard for us to know what to say or do
After reciting this long litany of loss,
And registering the endless hurt.Sexual violence, sexual damage, and sexual shame.
They invade our bodies and pervade our culture.
They wound us
and haunt us
and dissolve our spirits in nausea and nothingness.I grew up in a church that had a rich vocabulary for describing sexual darkness.
As young people growing up in the church,
We knew vividly the damage and sorrow that sexuality could cause.
Of course, the church was also the one doing the sexual violating,
damaging,
and shaming.That is why I am no longer there.
That’s why I am a liberal Protestant.
But sometimes I worry that mainline Protestantism
doesn’t know how to talk about this dark side of sexuality.
Our language about sexuality is so resolutely cheerful.
When it comes to straight sexuality,
Our main message is that sex is good.
We’re not like the evangelicals with their chastity rings
And their abstinence education and their crazy hangups.And when it comes to gay sexuality
We just want to make it clear that church is a safe and happy place,
And we signal that in the language for our stances on LGBT issues.
The Congregationalists are “open and affirming,”
the Baptists are “welcoming,”
and the Methodists are “reconciling.”
The Episcopalians talk about “Integrity,”
and the Presbyterians say “More Light.”We love to talk about welcome,
Tolerance,
Healing,
Even justice.But “Justice” cannot do justice to the stories
Of the people who come through our doors
Reeling with pain,
Trapped in cycles of trauma,
Covered with scars and bruises in their spirits or under their clothes.Sometimes when I think about all the children who are bullied to death
Because of their sexuality,
And all the vulnerable people with no one to protect or defend them
From rape and sexual abuse,I get angry—
Especially because I know that when Rachel and her children come to our churches
They sometimes feel that they are welcomed and affirmed,
But only on condition that they are normal and happy.
They are welcome to be gay or lesbian or bi or trans,
but they have to be relatively unscathed by their experiences with homophobia.
They are allowed to be a rape victim or a sexual abuse survivor,
but they have to have gotten over it.
They have to move on.When I think of Rachel and her children and what they require,
I think of what should be written on our church signs and banners:“East Rock Methodist Church. Welcoming the Disconsolate.”
“New Haven Baptist Church. We Mourn with those who Mourn.”
“Grace Presbyterian. A Weeping and Wailing Church.”
“First United Church of Christ. God is Still Weeping.”So far this has been a sermon about lamentation:
About being aware of sexual sorrow
And making space for it in our congregations.
I think this is urgently important,
But I don’t want to stop there,Because the Scripture doesn’t stop there.
In the words of Jeremiah:“The LORD said:
There is hope for your future:
your children shall come back to their own country.”Or, to put it another way—
In the words of Harvey Milk—“You gotta give ’em hope.”
But giving hope isn’t easy.
For some people, it doesn’t get better.
Their pain is never going to be fully healed in this life.
For years or forever,
They will be too wary to get too close to people.
They will wake up in the dark with racing hearts,
Reliving their nightmare.
Their children will remain dead until the Last Day.
What does the church have to offer them?In addition to creating space for suffering,
The church needs to provide strong narratives
That show people how devastated God is by their suffering,
And how lovingly God sees them.The church needs to make sustaining religious meaning for people dealing with sexual damage.
And the phrase that came to me as I was thinking how to do this,
Inspired by liberation theology,
Was “a preferential option for the gays.”
Or maybe, “a preferential option for those who have suffered sexual violence.”The idea of a preferential option for the poor comes from Catholic social teaching.
It reminds us that on the last day
We will be told that whatever we did for the least of our brothers and sisters,
We did for Christ.The doctrine of the preferential option for the poor reminds us
That through their vulnerability, the poor are identified with Christ.
I believe that those who have been sexually hurt.
Are also closely identified with Christ.
I believe the beauty of God’s love is uniquely revealed in them.As we near Passion Week,
I want you to think about the Passion Story in a new way.
I want you to imagine Our Savior
As a thirteen-year-old American boy.
For a few years now he has found the courage to tell the truth about who he is.
Everyone at his school knows that he is different.
There are a few people who hang out with him,
Who love him and who look up to him and love to repeat the things that he says,
But most of the students avoid him or spread rumors about him.
And there are groups of students who follow him around at recess and after school,
Telling him why he’s wrong,
Trying to get him in trouble,
Trying to set traps for him.He feels isolated from his family.
His religious community doesn’t support him.
Sometimes the stress is too much, and he has to go away by himself
To just pray and try to find the strength to go on.
It’s clear that he isn’t fitting in.
He’s a source of disruption in the school.
Kids have created a facebook page to mock him.
Graffiti about him is scrawled all over the bathrooms.
Something has to be done.A teacher sends him to the Principal’s Office.
The Principal says:
“What do you have to say for yourself?
Is it true what they say about you?”
The boy says, quietly,
“If you say so.”
The Principal says,
“Look, I don’t think you’re a bad kid,
But the other students seem to think you’re strange,
And a lot of the teachers have trouble with your lifestyle.
Personally I don’t have a problem with who you are,
But don’t look to me for any favors.”
And the Principal sent him back out into the hallway.This happened on a Friday.
It breaks my heart to tell this next part, but I know it’s true.
After school, a group of students were waiting for him.
They gathered around him and beat him up.
They kicked him to the ground.
They smeared him with lipstick they’d stolen from their big sisters
And they called him Queen of the Fags.
They wrote it on his forehead.
They tore off his clothes
And they flipped a coin to see who would get his ipod.
When the boy stumbled home hours later
It was getting dark.
He went into the house.
No one was home.
He found his father’s gun
And then he went out into the garden in the backyard and sat down,
Too tired to move.
He texted all his friends,
Hoping for a word of encouragement,
But none of them replied.
He was alone.
He clutched the gun, and in a broken voice, he prayed,
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
I don’t want to do this.
Show me another way.”I don’t know whether this boy lived or died that night.
But here’s what I do know.
I know, in the words of Isaiah,
quoted by the Ethiopian eunuch,
That in his humiliation, justice was denied him.
And I know that in the words of the Psalm,
This boy is the stone that the builders rejected.
And I know that if he is alive, he is in our church.
And I know that if he has died, his family is in our church.
I know that his story is not something to be ashamed of
Or silenced
Or gotten over.
His story, and the story of all who have suffered like him,
Is the story of Jesus.
It is the foundation of the Good News on which we build our lives.Here is our hope:
“The stone that the builders have rejected has become the cornerstone,
And it is marvelous in our eyes.”If necessary,
Let us tear down our churches
And rebuild them on this story,
This broken body,
This cornerstone.
Pass the kleenex please.
How can I find the mashup?
That’s really powerful, and brilliant: Imagining Jesus as a bullied gay kid could send a very big message. And while asking a certain sector of Evangelicals to see that–to see Jesus as the most persecuted among us–will never happen, that could be an incredibly though-provoking tool for moderate Christians.
man, i consider myself an agnostic at best, but if going to church meant hearing sermons like that i think i would have to reconsider
I’d forgotten today was Easter Sunday. What a great way to be reminded. At first glance I thought, oo, brevity’s not always the soul of the ivy league wit. But by the end I was blown away. A strong echo of the feeling I’d get after the social-justice sermons we used to hear in the old days at St. Joe’s, the few times the family went when I was a kid.
Nicely done, Ms. Hopper, and thanks for sharing it, Dan. Happy NALTy Easter, all.
Religion? TL;DR
Palm Sunday was one my favorite holy days because it was the one day where they gave you free stuff… albeit a folded palm leaf which you could pin to your little jacket.
Sweet Jesus (okay, maybe inappropriate on this thread) gus, don’t freak me out!!! It’s Palm Sunday, you heathen! (I’m thinking, “Easter baskets! Chocolate! eggs! bad mummy!)
Doh. And good morning… !
Hey wait, it isn’t Easter at all today. My bad. Oh well, better lapsed than prolapsed. (Morning, Cancuck!)
….now I’m imagining what a “prolapsed Catholic” looks like…
How beautiful – and heart rending – and hope inspiring. If only all Christians could understand that this is the spirit of religion … not the dogma they repeat to reinforce their bigoted views. I’ll email this to the Christians I know … how could anyone refute her words? (well, of course they could and some will, but they’ll tear their “Christian” costume and be exposed in their ugliness)
Powerful stuff.
I cannot, cannot, can NOT advocate for belief in magical men who live in the sky. That’s just silly.
BUT that is some beautiful stuff, right there.
If contemporary religion focused more on healing and caring like Ms. Hopper and less on condemnation and coerced compliance with arbitrary dictates at all costs, I think you’d see a lot fewer anti-theists like me.
This woman is brilliant – a moving sermon, I hope she delivers it well.
Wow. Just wow. If this woman had preached at my old church, I would never have left.
Easter and Passover always fall close together (and there is some speculation, in fact, that the Last Supper may have been a Passover seder). With the commemoration of the Exodus fast approaching, we Jews are obligated to reflect on the lesson that we were once oppressed, that we were once strangers in a strange land.
Embedded in the myriad laws of the Torah are repeated exhortations to treat foreigners with the same respect accorded native members of the community and to give them the same protection of law as all the Children of Israel.
In today’s global society, the foreigner is no longer so dependent on the kindness of his hosts, and is no longer so irrevocably separated from his native soil. Instead, we should turn the bulk of our outreach to those who are foreigners in their own lands, those who have no homeland to protect them and advocate for them. They are those suffering most bitterly from oppression or abandonment: religious, ethnic, and sexual minorities, the aged or infirm, and those bound by the shackles of poverty.
At the conclusion of a Passover seder, we proclaim together “L’shana haba’a b’Yerushalayim!”
“Next year in Jerusalem!”
As long as there are those among us who are lost, abandoned, or oppressed, we live in Mitzrayim rather then Yerushalayim. And so at this time of the year we are commanded especially to throw open our doors and let the hungry join us at our table.
Thank goodness for preachers and churches who think and speak and love like this.
That was beautiful. Thank you for sharing.
“I believe that those who have been sexually hurt.
Are also closely identified with Christ.
I believe the beauty of God’s love is uniquely revealed in them.”
oh FFS. Is this like Mother Teresa saying that suffering brings you closer to God, so you should suffer more and not get any pain relief? How the fuck can anyone derive comfort from a belief system which says that the most “beautiful” aspect of their deity is in someone who’s been raped? Assaulted? Tortured? Bullied?
I understand BDSM, as sexual acts between consenting adults. But as an all-powerful deity torturing innocent children to get off? Fuck that noise. “The beauty of god’s love is revealed in a teenager who shot himself in the head.” How splendid this deity must be, how warm its affections, how worthy of being worshipped, that the best part is shown in a horrific suicide. God loves you so much that he really really wants you to endure tremendous pain.
There is NOTHING, NOTHING beautiful about pointless suffering. There was no beauty in Tyler jumping off that bridge. There was no “god’s love” there. There was the casual cruelty of the schoolyard, and there was a soul in torment.
This woman may call herself one of the Not All Like Thats, but until she gets over the very Christianist fetishizing of sadistic suffering, she’s Like That too.
@10: like an Episcopalian
I come from a huge Catholic family on my dad’s side (dad has 11 brothers and sisters, each of them had kids – some just 2 or 3, most more). Now more than half of them have “fallen out” of the Catholic church and into Episcopalianism.
Amen!
“Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but [they are commanded] to be under obedience, as also saith the law.”
And let me add to that
“Happy [shall he be], that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.”
So she may be NALT, but she’s not much of a Bible-believing Christian, either.
@22
How appropriate to point this out to you on Palm Sunday:
Luke 19: 39-40
39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”
40 “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”
Personally, I don’t hold for an instant that women shouldn’t speak in church, but anytime, anywhere, the people who are supposed to be speaking out in love, hope, and charity, then everyone else is required, but human decency if nothing else, to speak up.
Sili, who the !@#$% is supposed to keep silent about teen suicide and rape? How DARE you claim someone who speaks out isn’t doing God’s work.
At the same time, thanks for making her point and Dan’s. Now, go back in your hole.
Sermons like this make this agnostic state-school heathen miss his days at a Jesuit high school.
Indeed, that was lovely. I’m glad that you’ve found something to nourish hope, Dan. Hope is a beautiful thing.
You totally miss the point, Action Kate. She’s not saying “suffer and be close to God”; she is saying “those that have suffered are closer to God”. Try to understand the difference.
Dan, that was beautiful – it brought tears to my eyes. maybe you should include it in the next edition of the ‘It Gets Better Book’
Happy Pesach, Venomlash and everyone else on here who’s a M.O.T.
Wow. Normally religious stuff gives me hives, but that… that I kind of want to pass on.
As a man who has not regularly gone to Church in more than forty years, this sermon touched me. Why is it that so many churches try to divide and spurn when I thought the message of most faiths was unite and love? I read this and saw hope. I read this and despaired. How could the Christian faith produce a thoughtful inclusive sermon such as this and at the same time allow the Fred Phelps types to prosper.
As an Australian I look towards America and see the fundamentalist Christians denying rights and liberty to so many who do not believe in their version of the word and I despair. How long before they become the loudest voice in America?
Great stuff here. As a congregationalist in the United Church of Christ – “open and affirming” “God is Still Speaking” – this rings very true with me and even sounds like my own paster. Thanks, Dan, for giving some space to the more enlightened side of the faith journey.
Amen, and amen.
Schweighsr @26: “Those who have suffered are closer to god.” if A=B, then NotA=NotB: “Those who have NOT suffered are NOT closer to god.” Otherwise you’re arguing that suffering makes no distinction about who is closer to god, right? (that A=B and NotA=B) So no, there is no difference. If those who have suffered are closer to god, then the only difference between those who are closer and those who are farther is the suffering. Therefore, one must suffer to get closer to god.
And even if I agreed with your interpretation (which I don’t) she is STILL saying that this suffering — this pain, torture, agony, bullying, destroying of lives — is somehow a beautiful thing. She spells it out very clearly: she thinks “the beauty of God’s love is uniquely revealed in those who have been sexually hurt.” She’s not even euphemizing. Are you even reading those lines? “The beauty of love is revealed in sexual hurt.” Someone has to be raped in order to display how beautiful god’s love is? What kind of fucking psychopathic deity is that?
I find this idea abhorrent. If she genuinely wants to support “Rachel’s children,” then that concept had no place in this work. Seriously, I was with her until that line, but once you start rhapsodizing over how someone is tortured to death — when that is labeled “Good News” — I’m gone.
Beautiful, but there’s a part of me that wants that young man to pull the trigger…after aiming carefully at one of those motherfucker’s knees.
Because, you see, since there is no God, it’s up to us, and since the arc of the universe is completely amoral, sometimes it isn’t pretty.
Or he could pull the ‘blanks in the lunch-room’ trick from “Heathers”—nothing like a jock in brown pants to brighten your day.
…but then he’d just get sent to juvie or prison, where the homophobes do all the usual stuff and add rape of those not manly like them.
Duke61, look toward your own country. No country is without homophobia.
http://unilife.curtin.edu.au/sexualdiver…
sarah68 @34, I don’t think Duke61 is saying Australia is without homophobia, but outside of the Middle East, the loudest, most strident anti-gay voices are in the States. It’s funny (and I say this as someone who grew up in the States) that while we acknowledge the faults of our own country, we are quick to condemn others who make the same observation.
That’s the first time I’ve ever answered back in that fashion to someone from another country, Canuck. If by “we” you include yourself, perhaps you’ve done so more often.
I tend to agree with @19. christianity has a huge fetish for glamorizing pain and suffering. if you actually remove that, you will no longer have christianity. what would it be without worship and adulation of a man brutally killed? pretty much nothing. that said, most of that (poem? song? spoken or sung? set to a popular tune? i’m unclear on the mashup part, i guess) was very well done, particularly the framing of rachel in modern day times. and though i’m an atheist, there’s nothing wrong with metaphor and myth to make a larger point, which this does. so, my congratulations to this NALT.
sarah68, I meant that for all the voices on slog that (rightly) condemn the Christian extremists, it struck me as funny that you singled out the guy from Australia. I mentioned it because I’ve noticed, after living outside of the States for so long, that there is a certain defensiveness that exists…”outsiders” aren’t supposed to comment, and yet people in the States feel comfortable passing judgment on other countries. But, I wasn’t trying to start a slog war here, just pointing out that the defensive attitude you immediately had toward a non-citizen is, well, kind of typical. (And of course I no doubt do the same, I was raised on the East coast, after all.)
“Therefore, one must suffer to get closer to god.”
Hey, one must suffer to get closer to just about anyone in this world (love has a way of hurting) and I think that’s very much the point here. Briallen Hopper is quite explicitly calling out fellow Christians who are happy to embrace well-adjusted homos (and anyone else who is well-adjusted) but don’t leave room in their embrace for real suffering and all the messy realities that go along with it. Because to love the beaten gay kid or the poor or the vulnerable is to share in their suffering. One must suffer to get close to them, and that is the sense that one must suffer to get close to Christ, because Christ is standing with (Christ *is*) those who are suffering.
That there are people (and, possibly, a divinity or two) in this world who stand with those who suffer is something I’ll readily call beautiful. It’s not the suffering that makes it beautiful to me, and it didn’t seem to be the suffering that made it beautiful to Briallen Hopper, either. What’s beautiful is the love displayed by those who share the burden of suffering.
I’m nowhere near the front of the line to pick up anyone else’s crosses for them (I wouldn’t die for your sins) so I ain’t critiquing anyone for drawing boundaries and limits to how much they’re willing to sacrifice for others. It can still be fine and good to do what you can for those who suffer without having to suffer yourself. But there is a particular awesomeness to those who make themselves vulnerable alongside those who can’t help but be vulnerable, and when we worship that awesomeness, we’re not “fetishizing suffering,” we’re giving thanks to those who have loved us enough to suffer alongside us when we suffer.
At least, that’s where I’m coming from as a Christian.
You explained that beautifully, JackDitch.
That is quite an astute observation, Kate. The problem is that this trite line that is in keeping with the greatest hits of christian martyrdom (an obscene catch all to justify needless suffering and explain away the existence evil in some incoherent “god’s plan for us all” way, sidestepping the very real problem of evil wide a mile. Redemption on life support), is that it doesn’t say ONLY those who have suffered are closer to god, whatever that means. And literally, it isn’t meaningful. Trying to get the religious to clarify what they mean is often chasing down the will o’ the wisp. But it’s language used to stir emotions rather than provoke critical reasoning. Subdue critical thought through emotion manipulation. It’s a sermon offered to fellow travelers, not a serious moral inquiry. Without being too obnoxious (but obnoxious), this is ghoulish, as is the case whenever scripture is used to define the parameters of real world horror, tragedy and loss. A good example of how the bible can be used to package any message. It lacks a certain sincerity that subtracts from the profound loss of tragedy. Like receiving a get well soon card with only the sender’s name hurriedly scribbled at the bottom, after being diagnosed with cancer. A generic eulogy, perhaps, or one of those grab bag slogans people offer during difficult times. I suppose the “hope” being endorsed here is in trying to change the hatred theology characterizing mainstream christianity. Good luck with that. Really, good luck (no sarcasm).
As another agnostic who was raised Christian (Lutheran), I also found this exceptionally beautiful, powerful, and moving, and I’m also inclined to share it. It is exceptionally well-worded, and I think the sentiment behind it can be found in agnostics and atheists as well as Christians, despite the Christian context and metaphors.
Also, perfectly explained, JackDitch @39. And venomlash @16, you’re awesome as usual.
very moving and well written… many of the comments are
awesome . thank you for sharing
Beautiful. Definitely just started crying, and I’m a total atheist. The idea of “Rachel” being every woman crying over her children . . . just beautiful. Definitely passing that on.
Jack Ditch@39: If my child falls and skins his knee and comes to me crying because it hurts, of course I’m going to feel hurt for him. But wouldn’t it be better if he didn’t skin his knee and didn’t hurt himself at all?
I’m just a human; I can’t keep him from skinning his knees. But this allegedly amazing deity allegedly knows when every sparrow falls, and allegedly has omnipotent abilities to do anything it damn well pleases — stop the sun in the sky, flood the planet, etc. So this allegedly amazing deity decides to enflesh himself to live among the creatures he allegedly created so he can feel our pain when we suffer, but he can’t be arsed to do anything to stop the suffering from happening in the first place?
I come back to her line once again: “The beauty of god’s love is uniquely revealed in those who have been sexually hurt.” Once again: it takes rape, assault, torture to show us how wonderfully compassionate and empathetic this allegedly amazing deity is? Wouldn’t it be even more amazing and compassionate and empathetic if this alleged deity had kept the rape, assault, torture, and bullying from ever happening?
If Christ loves the rape victim and the bullied gay kid so much, why doesn’t Christ appear with a flaming sword to drive off the rapist and smack the bullies upside the head? “Nah, I think I’ll just lounge around on this cloud listening to the hosannas and waiting for the rapist to get his rocks off, and then I’ll go down and be awesomely comforting to the rape victim. I will just love the dickens out of that poor suffering woman. I will hurt so much for her.”
And if “love has a way of hurting,” dude, use more lube or get therapy.
Action Kate it would be lovely if people didn’t suffer. But whether or not one believes in god suffering is going to happen. I take issue with the language of religion because it often confuses the issue, or as JackDitch @39 so perfectly put it, ‘fetishizes suffering’. I totally get where you’re coming from. I left my church when I was 12 when I realized that because of my differences I would be pitied but never welcomed. People said I should be thankful god trusted me with my burden. Oh dear. I took that as “better you than me”. I still believe that.
People do what they need to do to get by. Personally, I don’t do religion. I do, however; get people like Briallen Hopper and JackDitch. There’s NALTS and there’s the mainstream. The irony is not lost on me that 5 years after leaving my church I got the validation I needed that it’s ok to be female, it’s ok to have a disability, it’s ok to be just odd from, of all places, the bible.
I’m not entirely sure I believe in god. I know I don’t believe in god as Santa Claus. I don’t need to justify the twists and turns of my life as god’s plan. If there is a god I’d say thank you for giving me some common sense. Life ain’t fair but it can get better.
For lack of a better term, I have a heart for hurting people. And, I make every effort to stay present with people, especially in those weeks, months, anniversaries when grief can manifest as anger, depression, and isolation. Not because I enjoy suffering, but because I’ve seen that the burden of putting on a cheerful face has great costs to those who are still suffering. We humans are very busy creatures and we easily become absorbed by that which affects us and we, likely without malice, expect others to have their shit together and not inconvenience us with their grief. And, it is hard to sit with a woman on the anniversary of her being raped. It’s hard. And, it’s made worse if she laments feeling like a failure for not being over it. She feels the burden of putting on a happy face for the world. The expectation that she not inconvenience others with her struggle had added a layer to her suffering. An expectation that she have it all together, be ‘perfect’, or be rejected. The second great command of Christianity, according to Jesus of Nazareth, is to love your neighbor as yourself. I think that is the heart of this sermon, at least that is what stands out most to me. To love one’s neighbor is to put yourself in their shoes and treat them as you would wished to be treated. Easier said than done, but powerful in its ability to inspire compassion and the conviction to seek justice. As always feel free to disregard my $0.02.
@19 and @45
Like #13, I don’t believe in magic sky men either. But I think you’re misunderstanding the sermon. I’m totally with you on Mother Theresa as a sick puppy who fetishized suffering.
But I think in saying the sexually abused are identified with Christ, this woman is not sending a message that there is some beauty in abuse, rather she is saying that how we treat “the least among us” is what we will be judged on. She wants people to treat the bullied gay kid with the same kindness they would bestow on Jesus if he showed up at their school.
So I don’t see it as saying that we need bullied kids (or suffering of any kind). But that we should be judged by how we treat those who suffer.
Maybe I’m the one reading it wrong, but that’s a message I can get behind.
Oh, I see where you are coming from, Action Kate. You would prefer that God take a way free will so that no one would suffer, ever. My point is that as long as we have free will there will be people who suffer. Innoncent people will suffer because of the actions of cruel people, they will suffer through negligence, they will suffer because the laws of nature are unforgiving. But there will be suffering – that is what life is. For example, people get old or sick and die – and the loved ones they leave behind suffer in their absence. We can’t end that kind of suffering without ending death [and that opens a whole ‘nother kettle of worms].
The sermon calls on us to embrace those who have suffered, to feel compassion for them, to ease their pain. It doesn’t say ‘suffer needlessly so that you can be close to God’. It says that to comfort someone who is suffering, to feel compassion, to aid the injured, is to act in a Christ-like manner. I mispoke in my previous post – it isn’t suffering that brings us closer to God, it’s being compassionate to those who have suffered [including ourselves when we suffer] that brings us closer to God.
You sound like a person who has suffered a terrible loss. My point is that losses happen; but compassion is a choice. It’s a choice we should make because it makes us closer to God, because it makes us better people and most importantly because it will make the world a better place to live in. I hope that you can forgive whomever caused your loss, if only because it will make YOU feel better.
@48, that’s probably what she meant, but she covered that part beautifully here:
At which point,
simply jars and veers off into Mother Theresa territory. JMO. She could have left that stanza out and my socks would have truly been blown off into orbit 🙂
Overall, I do think it’s very powerful, particularly to those who identify with and/or believe in Christian precepts.
Nice to get the theological juices flowing this week for Passover and Easter – thanks everyone.
Sermons like this, and the people who give them, are the reasons I still love and support my church.
I cried through that, thanks for sharing it.
“..now I’m imagining what a “prolapsed Catholic” looks like…”
It Gets Better for some of us, too. But only after leaving.
Beautiful.
Action Kate,
Others said much of what I would say. The idea that free will necessitates suffering is central to the theology of it all. I buy into that proposition, but I know that it can be REALLY tough to swallow. Especially when we’re suffering, we want God to be on OUR side standing AGAINST our enemies. It seems like only a bastard would give the people who hurt us the free will to do so. But Christ is busy loving our enemies too, and telling us to do likewise, and the only comfort is that he’s suffering with us at their hands–if that’s comfort at all.
Still, in those of us who aren’t omnipotent, we nonetheless revere such a choice. We revere the passive resistance of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Oscar Romero and others who may have had the power and charisma to physically restrain their enemies, but instead turned the other cheek. Even secular circles speak of breaking the cycle of violence, the need to make ourselves vulnerable and forgive those who hurt us rather than perpetuating hurt for hurt. “Hate cannot drive out hate,” says Martin Luther King Jr, “only love can do that.” For me, Christ on the Cross is taking that to its limit. The worldly result of doing so, as it was for all those I mentioned, tends to be assasination. But there is a power and yes beauty in their sacrifice that is unmatched by those who simply impose their will against our enemies.
I don’t get too hung up on God’s omnipotence. The idea seems to mostly come from Greco-Roman philosophy and it hasn’t held up over time. I think God can do anything that’s possible, but that doesn’t mean everything we can imagine is possible. So it seems like a cheap shot to fault God for allowing suffering. However much power God has, I think the only way she’d be able to stop suffering in this world is to take a harsh hand against those who cause it, which at a certain point means a harsh hand against damned near everybody. The alternative I see in Christ is to take a harsh hand against damned near nobody, and die at their hands.
I’ll admit that there might be a middle ground that is ultimately more desirable to all good people. Not to tempt Godwin, but there’s definitely evil in this world where I don’t get why God saw the need to turn the other cheek instead of just smiting, places where I’m glad *someone* stepped in to do some smiting. On a more mundane level, though, it’s easy enough for me to understand why we worship the pacifist on the cross rather than the harsh hand of justice. For all the times that I’ve got two loved ones ready to condemn each other, for all the times that they’re both right to condemn because they’ve both caused suffering, and they’re both wrong to condemn because they both have lovable qualities worth redemption, the best I can muster is to share in their suffering, love them both and encourage them to love each other.
And to tie it all back to abused gay teens, I definitely wouldn’t make “love those who persecute you” the first (let alone only) thing I tell them. Like I said in my last post, I’m fine with people drawing boundaries, and abused gay teens certainly deserve boundaries against the abuse. But at the same time, I know I have found greater love and peace in this world by forgiving those who persecute me when I’m able. Without such forgiveness, I think humanity would’ve judged itself to death a long time ago. So blessed are those who can face persecution with forgiveness and love. In them, I see our salvation.
I do understand that the writer is saying that compassion for the most vulnerable and needy and hurt is a wonderful thing, and that the compassion should be practiced and celebrated. I think she got too far into her religious code-speak and used the wrong buzzwords.
@49: No, I don’t think we shouldn’t have free will. I’m saying that if the least bit of logic is applied to religious doctrine, it frequently falls apart, because as was eloquently stated above, religion appeals to the emotion and ignores logic. It’s not meant to be thought about; it’s meant to be felt. I don’t even have to take doctrine to a logical “extreme” to point out how easily it can be questioned or subverted. If god controls everything (omnipotence), you can’t say he’s not responsible for bad things; and if we have free will and he’s not responsible, then he’s not omnipotent. Either the bad shit is his fault just as much as the good shit or none of it is his doing.
Compassion is a choice, and it does make us better and the world better — without question. But I am not compassionate because the Great Bearded Sky Fairy would pat me on the head for it. I am compassionate for the sake of those human beings around me who are hurting.
And there are some things which cannot be forgiven. But that’s an entirely different discussion.
I’d totally go to her Church of NALT.
ActionKate, I think that something you’re missing is that there is a huge difference between saying “The beauty of god’s love is uniquely revealed in those who have been sexually hurt” and saying that the beauty of God’s love is ONLY revealed in those who have been sexually hurt.”
The experience of deep transformative love is also uniquely revealed through loving interpersonal relationships in which we open ourselves to vulnerability, or through unselfish service, or through guiding a child to adulthood.
And so on. Each is unique. But they are not exclusive.
I also think one of the points that Hopper is making isn’t just that suffering sexual hurt is unique, but also that in a lot of ways it is uniquely excluded from being dealt with within the context of church and community, even in a church that holds suffering AS a sacred experience. In many ways, it is the suffering that dare not speak its name.
Love and joy and happiness are welcome, and being with people who hurt because of age, illness, or poverty are (to varying degrees) also something that the community gathers to do. But add sex into the mix, and shame and judgment far outweigh compassion and community.
That’s horrible and unChristian even when that suffering is the direct result of personal choices where someone actually could “have known better” and avoided it, but that it is particularly evil when the suffering is the suffering of an innocent or an outcast – when the suffering is not only not recognized by church and community, but when it is directly CAUSED by them.
Remember, too, this is a sermon. That means it is directed to those who hold themselves as responsible to behave as Christians.
@56:
“Either the bad shit is his fault just as much as the good shit or none of it is his doing.”
You’re gonna bash on the logic of religion, then offer up something like this? Either God’s wholly responsible or he did NOTHING? That’s not logical at all.
Like I said before, I don’t quite buy the omnipotence argument. I should have said, “it seems like a cheap shot to fault God for [the existence] of suffering” because I do think the choice God makes is to allow suffering, but that choice is made because the alternative is that he not create anything with free will of its own. “Omnipotence” does not extend so far as to be able to have our free will and avoid suffering, too. If you’re so logical about it, explain how it could logically be otherwise, how we could have free will and put an end to suffering as well. Show me how that would even make sense.
So much of Christianity is about grappling with this tension. I don’t think you can just say, “If God was both good and omnipotent, he wouldn’t have put us in that bind in the first place.” I don’t think even the most potent and good being could create their way out of that conflict. Either you’re giving people the free will to cause suffering, or you’re limiting their free will to prevent suffering. You can do some combination of both, but you can’t do all of both.
We’ll face the same struggle one day, once our computers gain sentience. I do some minor AI programming, and while I’m hardly at the cutting edge, it’s something I do think about as the Creator of programs. Would I give my computer so much free will that it has the power to hurt me? Or would I limit it, even as it develops aspirations and interests that may run counter to my own?
To blithely assert that an omnipotent God could’ve done both is, to me, to simply avoid facing this real struggle. Christians have certainly used the idea of God’s omnipotence in the past to avoid such questions, but it ain’t any better to see a non-Christian do likewise. The tradeoff between free will and suffering isn’t something that was created by ANYONE; it’s just a truth of the fabric from which anything is created. God’s got to struggle with it, just like we do.
Free will necessitates suffering? That’s a logical contradiction of a meaningless notion! That’s not logical at all. So it can’t be logical necessity, or even entailment. There is nothing about “free will” that necessitates suffering, for built into the concept is an understanding that suffering needn’t have been the case for actions which result in it to be freely undertaken. Further, it overlooks agentless suffering or natural evil like cancer, tsunamis, earthquakes, and the like…which clearly cause a lot of suffering but aren’t necessitated by free will. If free will necessitated suffering, then there wouldn’t be anything “free” left for the will, you see. There isn’t, anyway…but you should leave the free will question out of it…it’s far too complicated an issue for most theists (and people, to be honest). Quine said of the freewill issue that people have been puzzling over it for thousands of years, and we’re no closer to answering the question today…so much for it. Just say no to the history of philosophy. Well, I’ve wasted enough time today.
To behave as Christians, Lymis? And what is that behavior? Do we take the history of the world in the last 2,000 years as an example of that behavior? I haven’t read of much “deep transformative love.”
@59:”If you’re so logical about it, explain how it could logically be otherwise, how we could have free will and put an end to suffering as well. “
My kid has free will. He can run around or crawl as he pleases. If he runs fast on asphalt, he has a chance of falling and skinning his knee. If I as his mother were powerful enough, I would change the asphalt to rubber just before he fell, so he would fall (learning the lesson of not running) but not skin his knee (suffer).
So the rapist can have free will, sure. But wouldn’t the cops like a tip that a rapist is about to attack a woman so they can of their own free will get there in time to protect her from being raped? And the bullies can freely choose to shout homophobic slurs, but wouldn’t the teachers, or the kid’s parents, want to catch them in the act so they could be stopped? It’s not that hard to work around your premise. “Not suffering” doesn’t mean “taking away agency.” PugilistPuck (unregistered @60) makes additional points about cancer and tsunamis. What free will was involved in the earthquake in Japan? You’re saying that suffering couldn’t have been avoided by a deity who wanted to avoid it?
Your position of claiming a deity is not omnipotent is rather unusual, so it’s difficult to argue this with you personally. Most religions have deities which can allegedly do anything.
@58: Again, I’m all for compassion. She’s hitting particular code words within her community to make people feel ashamed of their homophobic behavior, and I get that, but I am additionally objecting to the entire story which produces the code words. I find it abhorrent to celebrate the idea that you can only see how truly fabulous this deity allegedly is when someone is raped or tortured or crucified. If no one was tortured, you’d never be able to plumb the depths of this deity’s alleged affections.
Amen!
The identification of God with the suffering isn’t about “if we suffer, we move closer to God, so suffering is good,” but “suffering is bad, so God moves closer to us when we suffer.”
That’s what was happening on the cross. And whenever God goes, to the places of suffering and death, God brings life and resurrection.
At least, that’s what this NALT Lutheran pastor preaches!
Amen!
The identification of God with the suffering isn’t about “if we suffer, we move closer to God, so suffering is good,” but “suffering is bad, so God moves closer to us when we suffer.”
That’s what was happening on the cross. And whenever God goes, to the places of suffering and death, God brings life and resurrection.
At least, that’s what this NALT Lutheran pastor preaches!
MORE TIME! Bwahahahaha. I like this Kate person. I like you, Kate! Let’s ride bikes.
Of course the abrahamic god of judaism, christianity, and islam is the traditional 3-O world creator. That is, an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent thingymajigger ( teapot). Anyone who worships a teapot that fails to be described by those properties isn’t a muslim, jew, or christian, in the traditional sense. However, the meaning of these properties has changed over time, especially in christian theology. So in the same way that there is no such thing as “true christian” or even “true religion,” aside from the noises of approval talky apes make when they’ve embraced a religion or ideology, I suppose one can break with tradition in this case and call themselves a christian (pick and choose like all religion, abandoning its usefulness). But that really gives up the ghost of coherence that people who try to take religion seriously embrace by “making sense”…using words “intelligibly” (i.e., people who can’t reconcile god’s nature with reality ad hoc change god’s nature to resolve the problem…worshipping a new god, presto chango). And it proves that religion is a natural phenomenon like cholera, adapting to replicate itself. We see religious views changing to adapt to cultural norms all of the time, throughout history…as scientific understanding improved, religion’s role in life has steadily been declining, as god is no longer required as an “explanation” (appeal to ignorance)….leaving this logically incoherent anemic belief we see today in the west (e.g., “god is the force of love in the cosmic background radiation”–shit that don’t wanna be understood). And honestly, would you worship superman? Great guy, I’m sure…but is superman a worthy entity of worship? Change god’s nature enough (lower that bar), and you’ll find yourself worshipping an inept temp with a bad attitude. Smart theists I know (and not many religious people are smart when it comes to that…but some are really really smart…just like some atheists are really really dumb) don’t care about the consequences of their beliefs…they’re far more into making their religious beliefs consistent than with any practical implications…because they’re smart…and that means that they’re very bored.
Action Kate writes:
It’s not that hard to work around your premise. “Not suffering” doesn’t mean “taking away agency.”
Well, but all you’re doing is working *around* what I’m saying, based on the notion that God could do anything we can possibly imagine and then some. For me, it’s not a question of what to do when your infant child falls if you could do anything, it’s a question of what to do when your adult child tries to slap you and all you can do is hit back or suffer.
Sure there’s suffering above and beyond that in the world; whether or not you believe he actually could perform miracles, Christ is said to have performed many in his pursuit of healing people, and the extent to which he does so or is able to do so today doesn’t have much to do with the reason why I’m Christian. Where *we* can perform miracles like healing the sick and raising the dead (which we’re really starting to be able to do) I’d say we should do all that we can.
But *I* can’t just “work around” the difficulties of being hurt by those I sincerely love, or of the suffering it takes to love those who truly suffer. It’s not part of my understanding that any God or other being exists who could just blink away that difficulty if He/She/It wanted to, so pointing out that nothing’s blinking it out doesn’t help me face it. Christianity, for all its imperfections, gives me a solid story and rich tradition with persuasive arguments and examples that help me confront this difficulty head on.
Like I said, I’m a computer programmer. I’m helping to create virtual worlds, I literally control the laws and boundaries of those virtual worlds. I didn’t create the free willed beings that inhabit them, but I’m one of the people creating their ability to act within them. All this arching mythology plays itself out in how we face decisions about how we’ll judge the users of the systems we create and control. I am no Christ in that regard; letting someone I disagree with troll in a space I control is about as far as I’ll suffer to grant them freedom. And I’d even restrict those I love and agree with to avoid suffering at the hands of a bad judge (ie no discussing illegal activities on my chatboards, even if I think the law is stupid, cuz I don’t want to get in trouble.)
But the example of Christ plays a big part in getting me even that far. And where more than hurt feelings are at stake, I’ve got great admiration for people who would make themselves vulnerable to real danger in order to do what is right. I see in the story of Christ (and many others!) someone doing just that, unto death, out of love. That’s what I’m worshipping and finding beauty in. Speculation about the extent of God’s omnipotence is fine, up until it’s used to disregard that point.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVMd39Nhx…
A Youtube clip we made for a class project to real DOMA 🙂 Entitled “Let There Be Love”
@63: still the same thing. So god DOESN’T move closer to us when we DON’T suffer? Happy people are not close to god? Over and over I see this glorification of misery.
@66: “It’s a question of what to do when your adult child tries to slap you and all you can do is hit back or suffer.”
Well, then, there you go. We have a coherent difference in philosophy. I would not permit my adult child to slap me. I have watched that scenario play out in my family too many times. It didn’t work for the adult child and it didn’t work for the parent. If it works for you and your family to permit it to happen, that’s your choice, and I would not deny you the opportunity to exercise that choice. I would only insist that you not tell me (a) my choice is wrong (b) my choice is wrong BECAUSE GOD SEZ SO.
Backatcha, Puck@65: Up and down, up and down, we shall lead them up and down! I’ll bring the lemon cakes, you bring the summerwine, and we’ll go biking. 🙂
Blue Blanket – Andrea Gibson
still
there are days
when there is no way
not even a chance
that i’d dare for even a second
glance at the reflection of my body in the mirror
and she knows why
like i know why
she
only cries
when she feels like she’s about to lose control
she knows how much control is worth
knows what a woman can lose
when her power to move
is taken away
by a grip so thick with hate
it could clip the wings of god
leave the next eight generations of your blood shaking
and tonight something inside me is breaking
my heart beating so deep beneath the sheets of her pain
i could give every tear she’s crying
a year—a name
and a face i’d forever erase from her mind if i could
just like she would
for me
or you
but how much closer to free would any of us be
if even a few of us forgot
what too many women in this world cannot
and i’m thinking
what the hell would you tell your daughter
your someday daughter
when you’d have to hold her beautiful face
to the beat up face of this place
that hasn’t learned the meaning of
stop
what would you tell your daughter
of the womb raped empty
the eyes swollen shut
the gut too frightened to hold food
the thousands upon thousands of bodies used and abused
it was seven minutes of the worst kind of hell
seven
and she stopped believing in heaven
distrust became her law
fear her bible
the only chance of survival
don’t trust any of them
bolt the doors to your home
iron gate your windows
walking to your car alone
get the keys in the lock
please please please please open
like already you can feel
that five fingered noose around your neck
two hundred pounds of hatred
digging graves into the sacred soil of your flesh
please please please please open
already you’re choking for your breath
listening for the broken record of the defense
answer the question
answer the question
answer the question miss
why am i on trial for this
would you talk to your daughter
your sister your mother like this
i am generations of daughters sisters mothers
our bodies battlefields
war grounds
beneath the weapons of your brother’s hands
do you know they’ve found land mines
in broken women’s souls
black holes in the parts of their hearts
that once sang symphonies of creation
bright as the light on infinity’s halo
she says
i remember the way love
used to glow like glitter on my skin
before he made his way in
now every touch feels like a sin
that could crucify medusa kali oshun mary
bury me in a blue blanket
so their god doesn’t know i’m a girl
cut off my curls
i want peace when i’m dead
her friend knocks at the door
it’s been three weeks
don’t you think it’s time you got out of bed
no
the ceiling fan still feels like his breath
i think i need just a couple more days of rest
please
bruises on her knees from praying to forget
she’s heard stories of vietnam vets
who can still feel the tingling of their amputated limbs
she’s wondering how many women are walking around this world
feeling the tingling of their amputated wings
remembering what it was to fly to sing
tonight she’s not wondering
what she would tell her daughter
she knows what she would tell her daughter
she’d ask her
what gods do you believe in
i’ll build you a temple of mirrors so you can see them!
pick the brightest star you’ve ever wished on
i’ll show you the light in you
that made that wish come true!
tonight she’s not asking
you what you would tell your daughter
she’s life deep in the hell—the slaughter
has already died a thousand deaths with every unsteady breath
a thousand graves in every pore of her flesh
and she knows the war’s not over
knows there’s bleeding to come
knows she’s far from the only woman or girl
trusting this world no more than the hands
trust rusted barbed wire
she was whole before that night
believed in heaven before that night
and she’s not the only one
she knows she won’t be the only one
she’s not asking what you’re gonna tell your daughter
she asking what you’re gonna teach
your son
Blue Blanket – Andrea Gibson
still
there are days
when there is no way
not even a chance
that i’d dare for even a second
glance at the reflection of my body in the mirror
and she knows why
like i know why
she
only cries
when she feels like she’s about to lose control
she knows how much control is worth
knows what a woman can lose
when her power to move
is taken away
by a grip so thick with hate
it could clip the wings of god
leave the next eight generations of your blood shaking
and tonight something inside me is breaking
my heart beating so deep beneath the sheets of her pain
i could give every tear she’s crying
a year—a name
and a face i’d forever erase from her mind if i could
just like she would
for me
or you
but how much closer to free would any of us be
if even a few of us forgot
what too many women in this world cannot
and i’m thinking
what the hell would you tell your daughter
your someday daughter
when you’d have to hold her beautiful face
to the beat up face of this place
that hasn’t learned the meaning of
stop
what would you tell your daughter
of the womb raped empty
the eyes swollen shut
the gut too frightened to hold food
the thousands upon thousands of bodies used and abused
it was seven minutes of the worst kind of hell
seven
and she stopped believing in heaven
distrust became her law
fear her bible
the only chance of survival
don’t trust any of them
bolt the doors to your home
iron gate your windows
walking to your car alone
get the keys in the lock
please please please please open
like already you can feel
that five fingered noose around your neck
two hundred pounds of hatred
digging graves into the sacred soil of your flesh
please please please please open
already you’re choking for your breath
listening for the broken record of the defense
answer the question
answer the question
answer the question miss
why am i on trial for this
would you talk to your daughter
your sister your mother like this
i am generations of daughters sisters mothers
our bodies battlefields
war grounds
beneath the weapons of your brother’s hands
do you know they’ve found land mines
in broken women’s souls
black holes in the parts of their hearts
that once sang symphonies of creation
bright as the light on infinity’s halo
she says
i remember the way love
used to glow like glitter on my skin
before he made his way in
now every touch feels like a sin
that could crucify medusa kali oshun mary
bury me in a blue blanket
so their god doesn’t know i’m a girl
cut off my curls
i want peace when i’m dead
her friend knocks at the door
it’s been three weeks
don’t you think it’s time you got out of bed
no
the ceiling fan still feels like his breath
i think i need just a couple more days of rest
please
bruises on her knees from praying to forget
she’s heard stories of vietnam vets
who can still feel the tingling of their amputated limbs
she’s wondering how many women are walking around this world
feeling the tingling of their amputated wings
remembering what it was to fly to sing
tonight she’s not wondering
what she would tell her daughter
she knows what she would tell her daughter
she’d ask her
what gods do you believe in
i’ll build you a temple of mirrors so you can see them!
pick the brightest star you’ve ever wished on
i’ll show you the light in you
that made that wish come true!
tonight she’s not asking
you what you would tell your daughter
she’s life deep in the hell—the slaughter
has already died a thousand deaths with every unsteady breath
a thousand graves in every pore of her flesh
and she knows the war’s not over
knows there’s bleeding to come
knows she’s far from the only woman or girl
trusting this world no more than the hands
trust rusted barbed wire
she was whole before that night
believed in heaven before that night
and she’s not the only one
she knows she won’t be the only one
she’s not asking what you’re gonna tell your daughter
she asking what you’re gonna teach
your son
Action Kate writes:
I would not permit my adult child to slap me
I probably wouldn’t either, I just don’t see it as so ethically cut and dried, especially when it involves turning them away with no one else to love them. This cuts to the quick of what Briallen was talking about, when she spoke of how we embrace only those who are “normal and happy” and “relatively unscathed.” I used the term “well-adjusted.” It might as well mean, “those who aren’t at risk of slapping us.” It doesn’t take divinity to embrace the healthy and harmless.
I can understand why you’d turn dangerous people away, but what, you want to be thought of as close to God for having done so? Instead of glorifying loving self-sacrifice on behalf of sinners, you want us to glorify that you’ve shunned enough sinners to be happy? Well, hey, yay you. Like you, I’ll do what I must to preserve my own happiness and avoid suffering, but I don’t need to be thought of as close to God for having done so. Turning our backs on those who persecute us is ordinary, sensible and human. Society will keep on fighting over who we must reject to be happy, and hopefully fewer and fewer people will put homosexuals in that category.
I’ll save the glorification for those who can love and embrace the folks that are difficult for everyone else to love and embrace. They’re the ones who get the extra-special “close to God” props. They’re the ones who reconcile us when we fight, especially when we’ve been hitting each other back and forth for so long that “who started it” no longer matters. And if there isn’t actually an all-loving self-sacrificial God out there, then thank the lack thereof that we at least got some folks doing it in less infinite ways to hold humanity together. I’ll call them divine even if there ain’t really such thing as divine.
But not letting someone slap you? That’s not holy, it’s just self-defense.
If someone (understandably) doesn’t like or want to understand Christianity due to their exposure to an ignorant and/or hateful interpretation of Christian theology on the part of conservatives, then it would probably not be best for them to agree with said ignorant and/or hateful conservatives about what the religion inherently means or says.
For the record, a great many religious people, Christian and otherwise, do not believe in scriptural literalism or an omnipotently intercessory god. Also, the idea that suffering is a part of life and that it’s right and good to support and love others in their suffering, even when they’re not being nice and “well-adjusted” about it, is not specific to Christianity, western faiths, or even religion.
@71: “especially when it involves turning them away with no one else to love them.”
Ah, but I never said that. I can love my adult child who is messed up in many ways without permitting that person to slap me, physically or metaphorically.
I have also said, if you read carefully upthread, that I do celebrate compassion. You said “I’ll save the glorification for those who can love and embrace the folks that are difficult for everyone else to love and embrace. They’re the ones who get the extra-special “close to God” props.” I’ll even buy that. But that’s not what the poem said.
Her words, again: “I believe the beauty of God’s love is uniquely revealed in those who have been sexually hurt.”
She did NOT say “I believe the beauty of god’s love is uniquely revealed in those who love those who have been sexually hurt.”
She did NOT say “I believe the beauty of god’s love is uniquely revealed in those who suffer with those who have been sexually hurt.”
She did NOT say “I believe the beauty of god’s love is uniquely revealed in those who have compassion for those who have been sexually hurt.”
She may have MEANT all those things. But she didn’t write them. That’s what pissed me off in the first place. If she wants to celebrate the alleged compassion of a deity for the most vulnerable, she needs to talk about what the alleged deity has done for us lately. If she wants to admonish us (the Royal Us) to be more compassionate to the most vulnerable, then she needs to talk about what we can do for them (and she does, more or less). But the words she WROTE say that “god’s love is revealed in those who are sexually hurt.” And I won’t accept that.
Suffering would be part of life with or without free will. Some gigantic proportion of suffering occurs without anyone doing anything to cause it (except for being born, but that’s hardly an act of free will) — natural disasters, illness, death, etc. So the need for free will does not get God off the hook for creating/allowing suffering, I’m afraid.
“The doctrine of the preferential option for the poor reminds us That through their vulnerability, the poor are identified with Christ. I believe that those who have been sexually hurt. Are also closely identified with Christ. I believe the beauty of God’s love is uniquely revealed in them.” Looking closely at these words, we can see that the author does not exactly claim that those who have been hurt are closer to Christ that those who have not been hurt. But she comes awfully close. In the context of Christianity’s historic sexualization/fetishization of martyrdom, she comes a little too close for comfort (too close for my comfort, at least), especially given her specific emphasis on the “sexually” hurt.
Ms. Hopper, if you’re reading this (and I hope you are), I think we pretty much all agree that your sermon is excellent with the possible except of this one part. I’d love to hear your response to our criticisms if you have anything you’d like to share!
Not all denominations go in for the worship of the suffering as a cornerstone of Christianity. Don’t forget, the teachings of Christ were about Love and Equality and reaching for the Light, both within and without. As then, these are not very glamorous or dramatic topics, and those Christians that make these their foundation don’t get a lot of attention. So, at least so far, the meek have not inherited the earth. Doesn’t mean they don’t exist, or that you shouldn’t seek them out and bolster their number.
Wow..that was probably the best piece i’ve ever read on Christ and homosexuality. Different perspective, enlightening, thought-provoking, articulate…it really has changed my outlook. Bottom-line: We all have something that makes us vulnerable, and through this we can readily idenitify with Christ. For the church to take such a harsh stance towards this is counter-productive and only rejects…but that isn’t what Christ is about. If fact, the opposite it true (He accepts).
Action Kate – I am also an atheist, but I was arguing from a religious context. Jack Ditch has explained it much better than I have, so I defer to him.
I am curious about your statement that you wouldn’t let your adult child slap you. If he/ she were an adult, how would you stop him/ her? [God, that’s awful, let’s just assume your adult child is female, okay?] I could see how if you raised her with respect that it would teach her to respect others and she wouldn’t WANT to slap you, but let’s assume that she did want to slap you; how would you stop her?
I ask because my mother used to slap my face, and even when I was an adult I wasn’t quick enough to physically block her from doing so. Eventually I avoided her, which worked, though. Sorry for hijacking the thread, but I am really curious.
Action Kate? Re-Action Kate, more like.
@77: years of wooden spoon training from my mother. 😉 Okay seriously, “not allow” can be fungible. Obviously if I’m not fast enough to duck or block, she’s going to connect with my face. But if she physically struck me, “not allow” would mean that I would not allow that action to go unremarked. There would be shouting, recriminations, demands for an apology, and depending on how the argument went I might either leave or ask her to leave the premises until we’d cooled off.
If the kid is bound and determined to crack you across the face, short of wearing a hockey mask or keeping the kid at arm’s length all the time, there’s not all that much you can do. The previous conversation was more about the metaphor of “turning the other cheek” than “my kid wants to punch me in the nose.”
Action Kate:
“especially when it involves turning them away with no one else to love them.”
Ah, but I never said that.
But that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about, and you’re headed in that direction…
and depending on how the argument went I might either leave or ask her to leave the premises until we’d cooled off.
What’s been frustrating with you is that I try to point to all the many times in life where the decisions get this difficult, and all you’ve really done is look away to talk about decisions that aren’t that difficult. I know for me, I come from a family that is atomized by interpersonal dispute, with plenty enough blame to go around. Nothing so violent that anyone would call the cops, but enough strong wills and bitter words that “suffer or avoid” are quite often the only options we have between us. I’m a big fan of not suffering, but having so many of the people I love avoiding one another has brought plenty enough heartache of its own. So I suffer as much as I humanly can before avoiding, and I see beauty revealed in such suffering. I can totally understand people weighing this trade-off differently, but you’ve been talking as if there isn’t a trade-off, as if somehow we’ll always just be able to have our love and our comfort and they don’t ever have to be at odds and so there’s something wrong with seeing the beauty of love in those who suffer. That’s not refuted by my religious beliefs so much as it’s refuted by my rawest experience of reality; my religious beliefs just help me navigate that undeniable reality.
As for your response @73:
Well, she also did NOT say “you should suffer more and not get any pain relief” or mention “an all-powerful deity torturing innocent children to get off” or “God loves you so much that he really really wants you to endure tremendous pain.”
Before any of us stepped in to build on her words, she had already said plenty enough to counteract your accusations: “how devastated God is by their suffering,” “whatever we did for the least of our brothers and sisters, We did for Christ.” She didn’t even actually say, “”I believe the beauty of God’s love is uniquely revealed in [those who have been sexually hurt].” She said “in them” and preceded that with “those who have been sexually hurt Are also closely identified with Christ.” She clearly did not mean what you first said she meant.
I’d find your complaints about her phrasing more credible if you hadn’t kicked this off with such ill-founded accusatory interpretations. Expressing spiritual meaning is difficult enough as it is; there needs to be a good faith effort from the listener not to twist such expression into something vile. And I’ve had to put tons more such effort into reading your harsh words than hers.
As things stand, I think her phrasing was good because it did cut right to the heart of it all–Christians such as myself do see God and the beauty of God in those who suffer. Not for the ugly reasons you tried to lay at our feet, but we’ve still got our reasons. My only hope is that next time you encounter a halfway decent Christian, you investigate their intended meaning a bit more before accusing them of some of the most awful possible motivations.
The moral of the story is:
“Killing yourself because someone told you too is gay.”
The moral of the story is:
“Killing yourself because someone told you too is gay.”
The moral of the story is:
“Killing yourself because someone told you too is gay.”
@80: “What’s been frustrating with you is that I try to point to all the many times in life where the decisions get this difficult, and all you’ve really done is look away to talk about decisions that aren’t that difficult. “
Am I missing something here? I’m not being sarcastic. I don’t know what you expect me to say. Is the right answer “yes, at some point I would stand there and let my child slap me”? Because I wouldn’t, and I won’t, and that’s not a difficult decision for me. I’m sorry if it’s difficult for you. Genuinely — again, I’m not being sarcastic.
I’m not saying that scenario wouldn’t be a strain on the relationship; I would be weeping blood for days. That doesn’t mean I still wouldn’t order her out for slapping me. Not throw her out and tell her I never wanted to see her again, but “leave this room before we both say things we regret and I will talk to you later.” Have you never done that? You’re talking about avoiding — have you never just said “I have to cool off now, so I’ll see you tomorrow”? I am truly sorry if your family members can’t talk to one another that way.
“So I suffer as much as I humanly can before avoiding, and I see beauty revealed in such suffering.”
Yep, well, that goes right by me. Again, not being sarcastic. I have no idea, honestly, how you see beauty in that. You have family members at one another’s throats, and your only choices are to wade in and get hurt or walk away from your family, and somehow you find beauty in that? I literally don’t comprehend that. Beauty in martyrdom? What are you driving at? It’s beautiful to say “I’m just gonna stand here next to you and hurt a lot because I can’t fix this relationship”?
And I have met decent Christians, by the by; I have been friends with “decent Christians” for many years. And to a person they all have this hangup about how awesome Christ was to suffer on the cross. To some degree they all have this fetish about glorifying suffering. So please don’t assume that I’m generalizing from Christianists.
Action Kate:
You have family members at one another’s throats, and your only choices are to wade in and get hurt or walk away from your family, and somehow you find beauty in that?
I don’t find beauty in having to make the hard choice; having to make the hard choice is just the cards that chaos deals. I find beauty in a love so powerful that, faced with the hard choice, chooses to wade in and get hurt instead of walking away.
Anyway, eye of the beholder and all that. If you don’t see beauty in that, fine. I ain’t trying to convert you. I ain’t calling you wrong. But listen, it’s obvious enough you don’t see it when you spout off the nasty stuff you kicked off with here, and when even now you use a diminishing word like “fetish” to describe it. You’ve dissed Christians like you think you understand what underlies our “glorification of suffering” all too well; getting you to acknowledge that you don’t comprehend it is about as far as I’d expect to get on the internet with a stranger.
Honestly, I pray you never find yourself in the kind of fucked up suffering-for-love bind that would make you exclaim, “Oh, I see it now!” Be happy and good luck.
Hey Action Kate, I hear you. I think one of the main purposes of religion is to give meaning to suffering in order to make it more bearable. Buddhists & Hindus do this by saying suffering is paying off karmic debts accumulated in previous lives. Christians do it by saying suffering brings one closer to god, sometimes phrased as a kind of training (“trials they come, only to make us strong”), sometimes as purification of a dirty soul. Unfortunately, in addition to making personal suffering more bearable for the belief-holder, all these arguments can and have been used to justify the toleration and even perpetration of suffering in others — sometimes on a massive scale, as we all know. Therefore I applaud you for rejecting these arguments, and having he courage to “let go of the Big Teddy Bear,” as a friend of mine calls it.
Standing by, accepting, loving, assisting people who are suffering (including ourselves) is a beautiful thing because suffering sucks and through these actions we can help those who are suffering suffer a little less. Compassion is beautiful BECAUSE suffering sucks and we want to mitigate it, not glorify it. Right?
Hey JackDitch, I think what you’re saying is that there are times when a person might choose to suffer more in order to help somebody else suffer less, and that this too can be beautiful. Am I right? If so, I hear you too. The beauty in this kind of suffering comes from acknowledging the fact that suffering itself sucks, and therefore we want less of it, whether for ourselves or for others, and we’re willing to brave some extra suffering now for a larger goal of less suffering overall. Something like getting a root canal — it’s going to hurt, but if you don’t do it your rotting tooth is going to hurt a lot more later. Right?
for a larger goal of less suffering overall
This could spin into a whole ‘nother tangent and I’m running out of steam, but it’s an important nitpick for me. I’d just say, “for Love.” I don’t want to start a huge debate on what that means, cuz thousands of years of philosophers haven’t been able to come to much agreement. But personally, love is about the only reason I’d willingly suffer, and Christian tradition pretty much pounds home ad nauseum that love was why Christ chose to suffer. I take “turn the other cheek” as an example of what flows from loving your enemies, not really something to do if you don’t actually love your enemies.
The fake impersonal love of priests and ministers (and secular ideologues) just looking to tell large groups of relatively powerless people when to suffer is one of my biggest religious turnoffs. The beauty of the sacrifice is in its love, and really not much else.
Okay, yeah, I get that. It is an important nitpick, I agree.
Can I just ask you one more question: Why would god who loves us and is devastated by our suffering create a universe where love requires suffering? Why would he/she make a system in which somebody must suffer (Jesus, for example) if other people are to be saved? I know that’s a big question, but I still want to ask it.
@86: “Standing by, accepting, loving, assisting people who are suffering (including ourselves) is a beautiful thing because suffering sucks and through these actions we can help those who are suffering suffer a little less. Compassion is beautiful BECAUSE suffering sucks and we want to mitigate it, not glorify it. Right? “
YES, someone finally read what I wrote back up at #56. 🙂
@85: Jack, I hope that someday things straighten out in your family so that you are not all hurting one another. I hope you find peace.
@89: I’ve not seen a satisfactory answer if we take God’s omnipotence as given, but as I said earlier, I’m not all that hung up on God’s omnipotence. The story of Creation is, for me, like when the drag queens walk into RuPaul’s Drag Race and are presented with a chaotic pile of raw materials from which to create something fabulous. God doesn’t just effortlessly imagine the universe into existence; it took work to fashion life, within the bounds of the formless dark mindless undifferentiated pile that was there “in the beginning.” Creation is the sort of thing that even God Almighty has to rest after accomplishing.
So my personal short answer to your huge philosophical question is, “No one did that; the mindless chaotic universe was like that when God got started.” Plenty of churches may ask you to believe otherwise, but I wouldn’t. If an absolutely omnipotent God chose to require suffering in the first place, then I’m on board with the standard critique that there’s not much to worship in Christ suffering. He made the bed, now he’s got to lay in it. But the whole notion of such omnipotence is a relatively late development in the mythology, stemming mostly from the stories told by Greco-Roman philosophers rather than Judeo-Christian scripture. Most of the Biblical authors (John being the biggest exception) portrayed God as having to work for it (work it girl!) and that’s the portrayal that contextualizes my own beliefs.
Thanks to author for the truly great parables. The Jesus I know said to do one thing above all else:
John 13:34; A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. (ESV)
He did not predicate it with ” except” if they are gay , or Muslim or brown etc.
Why do we have to imagine *Jesus* as a bullied gay kid?
Aren’t the bullied gay kids, themselves, enough?
As an atheist, I shouldn’t need to tell christians what their book says: ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
@89: I must say that’s a very good answer, JackDitch. Actually, yesterday after i wrote that question i went and looked back at your & Kate’s previous conversation, and i saw that you were talking about a not-necessarily-omnipotent Christian god, which is an idea i’ve honestly never heard any Christians bring up before. But i do recall that in the old testament God is much more like a person than the all-powerful abstraction he appears to be in the new testament.
You said “But the whole notion of such omnipotence is a relatively late development in the mythology, stemming mostly from the stories told by Greco-Roman philosophers rather than Judeo-Christian scripture.” Not to be a pest, but would you elaborate? I’m not sure what you’re talking about there.
I don’t know if this will help, Lourdes. But, there are more than school of thought about “God” or “The More”.
1) Theosupernaturalism: omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent being(s).
2) Theonaturalism: being(s) sets the ‘world’ in motion then backs away.
3) Theopantheism: being(s) are the universe, they are the same things.
4) Atheism: without being(s).
Some scholars see two paradigms within Christianity. I’ll briefly summarize them, but you should be aware that there areas of overlap between the two. The two paradigms share in common the affirm the reality of God, but they may view God in ways (1-3 above), Jesus is the central character revealing the importance of a relationship with God, the Bible is the central text, and see a need for transformation within the world and themselves. Now for those paradigms.
Paradigm A
-The Bible is a divine product which has divine authority.
-The Bible is both literal and factual
-The Bible functions as a revelation of both morals and doctrines.
-The central character of Jesus fulfilled all the predictions of his coming.
-A community emphasis on an afterlife and what must be believed or done to be saved.
Paradigm B
-The Bible is many books written by different individuals as a respond to God and to explain how life works.
-The Bible is interpreted as being somewhat historical and metaphorical.
-The Bible holds a metaphorical and sacramental function.
-The Bible contains “prophecy historicized” in the NT, instead of fulfilling prophecy the OT scriptures were applied after the fact to tell about the life of Jesus with scripture already familiar to those forming the early church. As this period of history is of the oral tradition not a written one.
-Community emphasis is focused on transformation in present day life through a relationship with God. There may or may not be a belief in an afterlife.
Everything can be even further complicated by what some scholars refer to as “the distinction between the gospel of Jesus and the Jesus of the gospels”. Basically, this is difference between who Jesus said he was and who the canonized gospels say he is. One such example would be that no evidence can be found that Jesus himself said he was conceived without male sperm and that the Greek word ‘parthenos’ more precisely refers to a young woman who has not yet borne her first child.
It is important to remember that as movements grow they look for ways to reach the society at large, they look for traditions and beliefs within the society to attach a new meaning to, they incorporate. Christanity is no different.
There are also 18 other gospels in addition to the four found in the Bible.
Hopefully this rather long comment helps you to see how there is often different answers or responses to questions about theology amongst both denominations and individuals. Everything above
can be studied further. If you are interested here are some names of scholars to get you started: John Dominic Crossan; Marcus Borg;
Robert W. Funk, Jarmo Tarkki, Thomas Sheehan. I’m only a student and all of the above are from my lecture notes from lectures given by the individuals listed above (except Mr. Funk) and are thus paraphrased from those individuals. I want to give credit where it is due.
Lastly, typing this from my phone makes it practically impossible to edit. Hopefully, it all makes sense.
Cheers!
@95
With respect and genuine curiousity,
Where do you place the death and resurrection of Christ in your Christian theology?
I don’t speak as a DD, or anything more than an interested amateur, but my understanding of Christianity is as follows. God made man with free will. That free will enabled original sin, and all the good and bad choices that men have made since then. Within the Jewish tradition sacrifice and a priestly caste to intercede with God was the means of rectifying your bad choices, or sin. Christ came as the divine in a mans’ body expressly to die for our sins as the ultimate sacrifice once and for all. His resurrection and ascencsion into heaven place him as the intermediary between us and God in a direct and ongoing relationship with the divine for each of us who chooses it.
All the side conversations about suffering as a goal of Christianity are misunderstandings. Often Christians themselves foster them, honestly. God redeems suffering, but suffering is a natural result of free will, just as love or joy are. It all depends on the choices made and the ill or good results of them. Through Christ we have a means for the redemption of suffering. This doesn’t mean God causes it, and it certainly doesn’t mean God wants it, but that the Divine finds the way of making that suffering work for us rather than against us.
To put it more concretely, my wife has a fairly large scar on her chin. The way she puts it is that as a child she wanted to feed a stray dog which in its’ fear bit her fairly severely. Objectively, this scar mars her beauty. Objectively, her face would be more perfect without it. It is a sign of suffering. But in the eyes of the love I bear her that scar is part of her, and makes her beauty more luminous. The woman I know who loves kids and pets and seemingly everyone and everything is illuminated by the story of how the scar came to be.
And this is my understanding of God’s relationship with us. Without our scars we would not be the person we are, whom God loves. He didn’t make the decisions which causes the suffering but he is ready to love the whole person and redeem the suffering if we choose to accept it. He’s so ready that he took the whole burden of our bad choices on his shoulders and died to redeem them. The moral guilt of all men accross all time on one mans shoulders nailed to a cross was what he chose to accept for our redemption.
I humbly admit that I fall stunningly short of that example far too often, but that’s my understanding. Nor am I trying to proselytize. At the heart of it Christianity requires personal acceptance and choice. I would be genuinely curious how someone who doesn’t believe in the divinity of Christ but is Christian sees these issues.
Well, Seattleblues, I imagine you are talking about “the distinction between the gospel of Jesus and the Jesus of the gospel” and as of yet there has been no evidence that he asked his followers to believe that he was conceived without male sperm. Perhaps, they are less caught up with facts bring verifiable via video (had the technology been available and more interested in understanding why it is expressed that way. I imagine some of stems from that there really isn’t any evidence that Jesus called himself the messiah either, or even the second person of the trinity. Most of his references to himself is that he saw himself as homeless. I imagine that they have many questions. Crucifixion alone generates many questions. According to “War 2.75” and “Antiquities 17.295” thousands of people were crucified around Jerusalem in the first century, only one skeleton has been found in an ossuary. Those familiar with crucifixion understand that it was one of three supreme Roman penalties, fire and the beasts being the other two. What made the three supreme was their inhumane cruelty, their public humilation and dishonor, and that they were designed to leave nothing left to bury in the end. Bodily destruction was the goal, the method of fire and being thrown to the animals is obvious enough, but few people understand the role of the birds and dogs. The cross was designed to be 6 feet tall and the bodies were left on them to be consumed by the birds and dogs, and when picked cleans the bones were tossed in a shallow grave so the could be dug up by the animals. Roman crucifixion was state terrorism, its job was to deter resistance and revolt, especially for the lower classes. So, I imagine they Jesus’ death as a political execution. The best guess that historical evidence offers is that Jesus was a pacifist and his focus on the poor, and that he held a vision that the kingdom of God is always here and the great barrier blocking the entrance to the kingdom is wealth. That he advocated for an unbrokered relationship with God, that evidence suggests that priests and the temple may have been redundant in his vision. In short, I think that the answer will differ from person to person, some people see Jesus as divine and some see him as a visionary whose uncompromising integrity propelled him to Jerusalem and the cross, like the hemlock of Socrates, is the symbol of devoted commitment. Jesus’ confrontation of the socio-political domination system of his time, his execution vindicates him by showing that the path of transformation involves ‘dying’ by taking up the cross, bringing forth the kingdom of God in our everyday lives. The gospel of Jesus is rooted in his passion for the kingdom of God, or what life would look like if God was king- a world of distributive justice in which all had their daily bread and forgiveness of their debts. Maybe, there is their nourishment and warmth, through personal transformation and uncompromising commitment of working towards equality and justice they reveal the living Jesus.
Just my $0.02, typed from the tiny screen of my phone, but your best bet may be asking them.
Cheers!
@94 Lourdes:
a not-necessarily-omnipotent Christian god, which is an idea i’ve honestly never heard any Christians bring up before
I’ll backpedal just a little bit to clarify that I do tend to think of God as “omnipotent” in the sense that God has all the power there is to have. Just because I conceive of God as having to work for it doesn’t much diminish the almighty power of God’s work. Most Christians I know use the word “almighty” far more often than “omnipotent” and that perhaps makes the point more clearly–God has All the Might. God could kick all our asses, and it really wouldn’t matter if we thought it was good or not, we couldn’t kick God’s ass unless God let us.
That is not necessarily enough to qualify for certain definitions of omnipotent. But I don’t feel all that far out of the mainstream in thinking God’s omnipotence only goes that far. That seems to be far enough for most folks’ purposes when they praise God as being “Almighty.”
You said “But the whole notion of such omnipotence is a relatively late development in the mythology, stemming mostly from the stories told by Greco-Roman philosophers rather than Judeo-Christian scripture.” Not to be a pest, but would you elaborate?
I’ll caveat that I haven’t deeply studied history & scripture in over a decade, so this is just the general outline I remember from college. Portraying God as more like a person than an all-powerful abstraction isn’t just an old testament thing. The gospel of Mark (the earliest gospel to be written) has Jesus working for his miracles in several places. John (the last gospel to be written) is perhaps the most abstract (“In the beginning was the Word…”) But none of the Biblical authors really give us a philosophical discourse on the nature omnipotence; they’re telling stories about their experience of God, not metaphysical proofs.
The philosophical abstracts trickle into the tradition over the next millennium as Christianity works its way into the culture of Rome and as theologians like Augustine and Aquinas rediscover the works of Aristotle and Plato. The philosophically inclined get hung up on the philosophical paradoxes of omnipotence to this day. But in the meantime, there’s no shortage of practicing Christians who don’t think at all about the philosophical abstracts, who conceive of and worship Christ as being Almighty in that old-fashioned Biblical sense of merely being able to kick all our asses if he wanted to. And that’s Almighty enough for me.
Like I said, that’s just my general takeaway from what I studied long ago. That’s the direction to look if you want to find out more. I might have it totally mixed up, but that’s the understanding I’m running on.
@95 & 98: Wow, thanks you guys! 😀
God bless you Ms. Hopper. Will you be in touch with me? I’d love to help you get this out to our network and make sure you know about our work which is precisely on the intersections of sexual morality, justice, and healing.
Rev. Debra Haffner
Co-founder and Executive
Director
Religious Institute.
http://www.religiousinstitute.org