Abram heard actual words: “The Lord said to Abram ‘Leave your country, your people, and your father’s household, and go to the land I will show you.” Did he hear the words through his ears? the vibrations of speech striking his tympanic membrane?  Or did the words by-pass the ear drum and go straight into the mystery of his consciousness which can’t be pinned down (yet) by any means?  Does it matter?  He knew as we know when we hear words.

He had no Bible, no text, no Torah.  He heard a voice.  Does God want less for us who have the Bible, the text, the Torah, the accumulated history of millennia of believers finding their father in Abraham?

The only question is: are words meant to be heard? Abraham heard words.  Are we meant to hear words?  That is, are we meant to  experience words conveyed in-with-through a voice–the words of a personal being?  One can read the Bible literally and it remains letters on a page or a screen:  letters to which we assign our own voice or the voice of someone other than the One who inspired–breathed–the words in the first place.

We can spout opinions regarded to be orthodox without having heard the words.  We can do this even when we believe the Bible to be the literal word of God.

So what?  That’s inadequate.

Provin’ Ourselves Right-Thinking, the Easy Way

In our current American evangelical community ethos, we prove our tribal loyalty, we demonstrate our presumed faithfulness to God by asserting our committment to the literal words of the Bible, as though that is enough.  I understand why we do this.  It is because we’ve been in a century long debate with those who seem to be influenced by literary trends that only deconstruct the text and in so doing question whether the text of Scripture or any text for that matter can bear any meaning other than the meaning brought to it by the listener.  As though there is no such thing as person-to-person communication.

We want to be earnest, real-deal believers in Jesus.  I do.  So we are not satisfied with a deconstructed text or a deconstructed Jesus.  We long for the risen and reconstituted Jesus, the once dead but now living Lord.

But we take short-cuts.  One of the short cuts is the adoption of the opinion that if we use this word “literal” in reference to the Bible, we’re saying what it is God wants.   The instinct to want to say what God wants is commendable.  The short-cut is not.

Believing the text to be the literal word of God isn’t enough. Or what we often mean by that is not enough.   We can read the text literally with no voice attached.  This is what the written word allows us to do: reduce a spoken word into a symbolic code.  In the process, the voice is not conveyed. The voice has to be imagined, inferred,  or better yet heard by a work of the Spirit riding on the symbolic code of the letters.  Can we be open to the text but not the Spirit?  I think so.

Please Don’t Mention This to Your Psychiatrist

Ah, but there’s the rub!  How frightening!  How imposing!  How intimidating! How out of my control!  Gosh that’s brazen, bold, almost sounds crazy, that letters on a page or a screen could be ridden by the Spirit like the wind, and the breathe of God could be conveyed within us and we could experience–feel, think, whatever it is that happens within us with a person speaks and we hear–God.

Let’s take it a step further: the Bible itself bears witness to our faith in Jesus as Abrahamic.  Abraham is the father of all who believe.   His connection with God is a paradigm, a pattern for ours.  And Abraham heard words from God, even without a text, before any text had been gathered.  If we believe the Bible to be inspired, as I do, then we believe that the God who inspired that Bible has the capacity to communicate with fallen, broken, paganesque, godless people such as Abram, such as ourselves, with an immediacy that is frightening.  God may certainly do this in any way he chooses.

So What?

How would this affect us practically? It would mean that in addition to reading the Bible we would aslo meditate on Scripture.  Our meditation on Scripture is a different mode of engagement than our mere reading of Scripture.  Different things will come to light, different aspects of our being will be engaged. We will undergo God in a way that we don’t–or don’t always or readily–when we simply read Scripture.

Both are important.  But of the two, meditating on Scripture, is I think, more important.  Why? Because it is available to all people, not just to people who can read and who have access to a readable text.  Those who simply hear the words of Scripture from another human being may meditate on those words–what most believers through most of church history did when they were unable to read or had not access to a text.

Speak Lord, Your Servants are Listening!

And it means that we are to anticipate, expect, yearn for, an experience of perceiving the voice of God in a way that fits us in the way that Abram’s perception of God’s voice fit him.  Just as well: we can’t get into his head to know how it felt to him to hear, so we can only trust, anticipate, expect, that something analogous will happen to us–that as the seed of the Seed of Abraham this too is possible for us.   This thing which is frustratingly not under our control, but within the possibility of who we are.

Until we are moving into the reality of this, I think much of our banter about the Bible and it’s meaning may be just that, banter.

Oh what folly!

As though there is a seamless garment called the Christian worldview and a seamless garment called the secular worldview. And a seamless garment called the Muslim worldview. And on and on, ad nausuem.  If you are a Christian, well then, by golly you have a Christian worldview, especially if you have learned what the seven marks of the Christian worldview are.   Once you do a little homework, you see the world through the eyes of Christ!  And if you have a secular worldview, you see the eyes through the eyes of a consistent, pure, unalloyed secularity.   Boo.  Hiss.

Why can’t we just admit it? We don’t know what we’re talking about.  Most of us avoided anthropology like the plague because that’s where you learn about human origins, and that means the “e” word. We’ve picked up our anthropology third hand, like an STD. You could learn more about anthropology from one Wikepeia article than from a whole course on the Christian worldview.

the downside of glib worldview talk

But because we think we know what we’re talking about when we talk about worldview, we blind ourselves to one of the great marvels of the universe and the object of God’s incomprehensible love: people.  Messy, inconsistent, internally inconsistent, self-contradictory, surprisingly wonderful and maddeningly foolish people.  Who have, if anything, a patchwork worldview that defies description.

We distrust people if we sniff out something that might not be part of the mythical Christian worldview.  For example, environmentalists are people who have a secular worldview, or so we’ve been taught. They are concerned about exploding population, so they are generally inclined to say, “Mission Acomplished!” when they hear the command to  multiply and fill the earth.  Many of them support “abortion rights.”

Now are hackles are up, because we see the tell-tale signs of a secular worldview.  When the environmentalists tell us that human activity accounts for the recent increase in average global temperatures, we’re not buying it, because we don’t want to swallow that evil secular worldview whole and entire.  All these things are connected, you know. So we turn a deaf ear to people, real live human beings who bear the image of God people because of this poppy-cock worldview talk.

we baptize our patchwork worldview as the christian one

By assuming that there is a single Christian worldview we naturally assume that if we are really earnest Christians then we must have one.  Our American, Republican, White, Suburban sensibilities get baptized and come out smelling like a rose.  But it’s not the rose of Sharon, I’m afraid.   It’s “eau de somethin’ else.”  I’m not saying it’s bad.  I’m just saying it ain’t a Christian worldview, because there’s no such thing.  There are only people who let Christ into their messed up inner worlds and he sits somewhere inside of that disaster area and says, “Where do I begin?”  while we go around thinking that we have the worldview of Christ–the worldview of an itinerant preaching rabbi during Second Temple Judaism.

And it’s a shame because we could learn a thing or two from cultural anthropol0gy, which is the study of human culture, about their diversity and complexity and marvels and dangers.

We could learn a thing or two about the lenses that shape our perceptions.  This might, if we let it, humble us about our perceptions.  We might understand that brains are not like a roll of Kodak film—God speaks or acts or influences and it shows up on the film just the way it happened as though  we capture his word like your camera captures a sunset.

Instead we hear a thing or two about worldviews from someone who has heard a thing or two about worldviews from someone else and then we use our knowledge to keep a safe distance from people who are different than we are. So as not to be hoodwinked by their worldview.

Don’t drink the kool-aid!

How does that actually work: love the sinner, hate the sin? Easy.  You love the person but you hate their sin.  Exactly.  You hate THEIR sin, which is easy.  I hate your sin.  You hate my sin.  But we love each other even as we hate each others’ sins.  Please, where can I can get into that community?  Sounds like a wonderful place to be.  Once they’ve hated each others sins away, that is.  Behold the community of love that hates your sins away!

How’s that working out for you?  Love the sinner, hate the sin.  How’s that working out in your marriage, say?  Honey I love you, but I hate your sin.  I love you too sweetheart, but I hate your sin even more.  Good night.

As a pastor, you get a good chance to practice “love the sinner, hate the sin.”  I find that there are only certain sins though, that I actually hate.  I don’t hate greed.  I don’t hate gluttony.  I don’t really hate fornication.  (Don’t tell me I’m supposed to. I already know that.)  The fact is, I sympathize with these sins.  I can totally understand how someone might slip in their direction.

I’m very suspicious of the fact that so many heterosexuals are so adept at hating the sin of those who crave sexual union with their own gender.  It seems as though we ought to distrust convenient, easy-to-come-by hate.

The Sin I Hate With a Passion

Now take my  hatred of adultery.  I HATE men leaving their wives for younger women. It’s so slimy. James Dobson made it easy for Newt Gingrich to apologize on his radio show for leaving his cancer ridden wife for a young intern, at the time Gingrich was busy condemning Bill Clinton for his attentions to a young intern.   I wanted to cancel my subscription to Focus on the Family. And James Dobson has been faithful to his wife for longer than I’ve been alive.  Let’s just say it didn’t put me in a judge not, lest ye be judged mood.

I knew a guy who left his wife after she was diagnosed with MS.  I wanted to throttle him.  I’m sorry,  I forgot.  I loved him, but I hated his sin. I wanted to throttle his sin–choke it, kill it.  Only it was in him.  As Paul put it so concretely:  his sin was residing in his members.  One particular member, actually.  Give me the box cutters and I’ll take care of that sin for you, buster.

Hate is not pretty, is it?

I really do have a thing about men who leave their wives for younger women.  I judge this harshly, I really do.  Or do I judge them harshly?  How would I tell the difference?

On a lot other sins, I’m a softie.  I understand.  I’m sympathetic.  I don’t come down so hard. Ask people who worry about me.  They worry that I’m not tough enough on sin from the pulpit, or rather, the music stand.  Usually not their sins, of course.  Rarely do I get special requests to condemn these.

But I can say with confidence that I hate these guys doing this. (I’m back to the adulterers now.) What was that I just said? I hate these guys doing this.  Does that mean I hate thse guys or that I hate these guys while they are doing this or that I hate it that these guys are doing this?   See that’s the thing about hate.  It’s a tiger by the tail.  I try to sic him on the sin, but he’s hungry for the sinner.

Doesn’t it seem as though hate is not very interested in abstractions like sins separated from persons? Hate is looking for someONE to hate not someTHING.  Like that Jefferson Airplane tune, “You gotta find somebody to love.”  Or in this case, hate.

I haven’t had much luck being a redemptive voice with a lot of these men whose sin I hate.  Perhaps they were able to feel the fact that I hate their sin so they were not eager to open up to me.  Usually, these guys  just slink away from the church and don’t answer my phone calls. With a few notable exceptions.

Maybe I’m Just No Good At It

Perhaps it’s just that I’m not very good at this hating the sin business. Correction: I’m VERY good at this hating business.  It comes very naturally, once I give it a little room to breathe.

Hate.  Meditate on that word. Murmur it over and over.  Hate, hate, hate, hate.  Do you like what it does inside? Me too.  Delicious. I especially enjoy hating other people’s sins, which is the beauty of “love the sinner, hate the sin.”

But what’s good for the goose should be good for the gander.  So how does that work for you?  Try loving yourself and hating your sin.  Consider one of your besetting sins.  Now meditate on that sin saying, I hate my sin, I hate my sin.  This is how men trapped in pornography feel about their pornography. They hate it.  It doesn’t get them very far, though, because hatred isn’t much of a redemptive thing, and it’s difficult to aim it precisely, at the division between joint and marrow, at the mystical boundary between the sinner and his sin.

So this is the problem with “love the sinner, hate the sin.”   It sounds so crisp and clean, like a scalpel. But in reality, it’s a rusty butter knife.  May I take out your infected appendix with my rusty butter knife?  Granted, “love the sinner, hate the sin,” is a big improvement over “hate the sinner, hate the sin.”

Maybe it’s just me that is the problem. Maybe everyone else is good at this.  But I find my own hatred very difficult to wield.

I’m sure one could quote chapter and verse about hating sin.  Especially from the Psalms.  The Psalmists were good at praying things like, I hate their guts! Correction: I hate their sins!

I Love You, But I Hate Your Guts!

Actually, why couldn’t it be: I love you, but I hate your guts? We are not, after all, our guts–surely we are distinguishable from our guts. I certainly wish to be distinguishable from mine.

Still, I’m sure there are verses in the bible to back up hating sins, hating things, not people, etc.   I guess I’m not very good at it.  I’m not to be trusted with it, yet, perhaps. Maybe others are more trustworthy.  It wouldn’t be the first time someone else was ahead of me in the line!

Jesus, of course,  calls us to hate. But oddly, he doesn’t call us to hate sin.  He calls us to hate our fathers and our mothers.  He didn’t hear the thing about loving our fathers and mothers but hating their sin. Obviously, I’m being provocative for a purpose. I’d like to provoke a re-examination of “love the sinner, hat the sin.” In case you hadn’t noticed, this is not a dissertation–more like one half of a dialectic.  A thinking out loud post.  One might say a venting out loud post.

Here’s what makes me suspicious of “love the sinner, hate the sin”:  the truth of Jesus doesn’t come to us in simple little sticky phrases that make dilemmas easy.  The truth of Jesus often plunges us into dilemmas. Like “judge not, lest ye be judged” to pick one of his sticky phrases. Sticky enough to get caught in our throat on the way down.

The truth of Jesus is often a truth from which we recoil when we hear it. As it opens up regions of the human heart never before laid bare.

So, “love the sinner, hate the sin?”  How about, “love the sinner, period.”  Dear Lord Jesus, show us the way. You’ve had plenty of practice.

Post Script for Readers: This post introduces a new blog category called Thinking Out Loud.  We all need space to think out loud, including pastors.  Biblical truth is not plain and simple, obvious to everyone truth. It is personal truth which means it needs a full on engagement of mind, heart, soul strength.  These aren’t issues that we can just bat around on a blog; we need to pray them through. Much of the stuff I post–at least the ongoing themes–are things I’m thinking through and praying through and the blog format is invaluable to me because it allows me to hear what others in the wider faith community (and beyond) think in response to my thoughts. We’re meant to affect each other, because truth is a communal, not an individual treasure.  No one of has it right.

a jesus follower, not a culture warrior

I’m a pastor, not a politician.  I’m a Jesus follower not a culture warrior.  And like many pastors my age (57), I came to faith during the Jesus movement of the late ’60’s early ’70’s.  Before the Religious Right had coalesced.  The Jesus movement back then was marked by a preoccupation with Jesus, the Jesus of the gospels, a.k.a. Jesus of Nazareth.  Not Republican Jesus. Not Karl Marx Jesus.  Not Adam Smith Jesus.  Jesus Jesus.

Like the frog in the pan of tepid water brought slowly to a boil, we baby boomer Jesus freaks, who naively hopped into the pan for a little swim, are saying “Wait a minute! What have we become!?”  A commenter on my recent post on Darwin said, “I am not an evangelical. This is more a political category than it is a religious or theological characterization. But I do attend a church that does characterize itself that way. I do so because I can’t find one I like that doesn’t.”

I happen to know this guy.  He’s my age.  Like me, he’s digging for the treasure buried in the field of religion.  He’s taken with Jesus.  And he wishes to follow Jesus.  And he’s landed in a church that  characterizes itself as evangelical, but he thinks it’s a political characterization. He thinks it’s a word that has nothing to do with the gospel.  I can hardly blame him.

This guy is me, minus 38 years of Christian identity and attempted practice.  If I were coming to faith at the same time he came to faith–in 2009 rather than 1971–I’d be posting the same comment.

what has evangelicalism become?

I’d be looking at the American evangelical landscape saying, “What has this become?”  In order to be a card carrying American evangelical it’s not enough to assert that abortion is a moral hazard. You must also object to government funding for contraception. Because that has to do with sex.  You would need to put a stop to funding for condoms, say in Africa. You wouldn’t want men with HIV using condoms.  That’s because you’re “pro-life.”

You need to look at the institution of marriage and say, “The greatest threat to this institution is the fact that maybe four percent of the population who are attracted to the same sex want to get married.” That’s the greatest threat to marriage? That’s what we need to organize to stop? That’s what we need to place at the end of the spear by which we bring down the monster trying to devour our way of life?   Not domestic violence.  Not no-fault divorce.  Not heterosexual married people–many of them church-goers–divorcing like it’s going out of style.

Oh.  And you need to cancel your subscription to National Geographic and Discover, and Scientific American. Because those publications promote a heresy.  They promote the dangerous idea that species are not immutable.  That over time, a species of creatures drifts toward the genetic composition of the individuals who breed the most.  Species adapt to new environmental challenges that way. They survive that way.  And one species may, in time, branch into two different species.  That’s the evil doctrine.  That’s the kryptonite to your super-powers as a Christian.  So when someone says the word, “evolution” you have to put out your pricklies like a porcupine until they take it back. Don’t cuss around us!

Y2K is real but climate change is fake?

To be a card carrying evangelicals you have to be skeptical about those scientists who are warning us about climate change. Those lemmings, those caught-up-in-mass hysteria environmental whacko scientists who say that the globe is warming because of our CO2 emissions! What a crock! We humans aren’t that powerful! Flooding in low lying areas? Tell the people to move to higher ground!  Droughts?  Not where I live! This is a plot by liberals to seize power, raise our taxes, increase government, that’s what it is.  Chicken little, that’s what it is!  (Y2K, on the other hand, that was a real threat. By the way, do want to buy some nine-year old bulgar wheat that I’ve got stored in my basement. I can cut you a deal.)

See there, I’m ranting.  And ranting is reactive.  But that’s what frogs do when they finally notice that the water in the pan is starting to boil.

settle down, mr. frog

So, I must calm down.  I must remind myself that the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God.  I must pray.  I must get in touch with the Spirit who brings peace.

And I must take heart.  I must take heart in my fellow evangelicals, especially these young ones.  The ones that practically brought me to tears when I saw their comments on my post. The ones who made me bust with tribal pride because of their humility.  As if they have taken to heart the words of the prophet Isaiah, whose suffering servant did not raise his voice in the streets and did not quench the smoldering wick.

This one is my favorite, a comment that came yesterday.  I snooped around and figured out who this guy might be. It’s a young evangelical who gave himself the tag line “another Mark” when he left his comment about my Darwin post: “I am sorry for being mean and not always giving science the chance to speak and tell the story the way science tells the story… As an evangelical I want to learn more about our mother earth and care for it scientifically and spiritually. It matters. It is part of the story. I am listening…”

I am listening too, Mark–to you.  I hope others are listening to you.  I hope that this is the end of the evangelical culture war and the beginning of the evangelical mission.  To be and to bring good news.

after the stupor, back to who we are

The evangelical movement is, at it’s truest, good.  It is people coming to grips with their need for God.  It is people who are capable of shedding a tear over their own sins.  Who feel that they are getting what they don’t deserve: mercy from a just God. It is the movement that gave birth to Alcoholics Anonymous.

Evangelicals are people who gather together with others to form churches that in turn care for other people.  You’re not a number there. You’re a name.  They tend the wounds of the heart-sick. They give their money to the cause like few others do.  They give up their time–sometimes their lives–to go on mission to faraway places.  Nicholas Kristof, from the New York Times, calls them, “the new internationalists.”   They fund an army of volunteers at work in the developing world that dwarfs the Peace Corps by multiple factors of ten.

Let’s get back to the business of becoming who we are.

Evangelical conscientious objectors to the culture war:  if we don’t speak up none of this is going to change. Don’t be afraid.

My friend, Carl Safina, an ocean conservationist and author of the acclaimed Song for the Blue Ocean told me that his two heroes are Charles Darwin and Jesus; Darwin for revealing the unity of all living things, and Jesus for teaching us to love our enemies. Would that my fellow believers understood as well the rule of Jesus, a rule which demands that we bother to understand each other.

a tender soul was he

Charles Darwin was a tender soul.  He eventually lost his rather conventional nineteenth century Anglican belief.  It wasn’t science that led to his loss of faith.  It was a broken heart.

Charles Darwin lost three of his eight children. It was the loss of his daughter Annie at the age of ten, a cruel and drawn out dying, that dealt his waning faith a crushing blow.  He missed the public unveiling of his new theory because he was tending to another dead child.

Darwin wasn’t eager to start a culture war.  About the time that his speculations about the origin of species appeared in his private journals, he began to suffer chronic, lifelong and undiagnosed maladies.  He hated conflict.

put yourself in his muck boots

Put yourself in his shoes. That is, after all, the meaning of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (the Jesus summary of the Bible, you will recall.) The religious authorities of his day held great power in England. Anglican clergymen practiced “natural theology” as a hobby–the only real biology of his time. The doctrine of a static and special creation of each species independent of the others under-girded the social order: everything forever in its proper place, gender, race and class, right up to her majesty, the Queen.  This doctrine supported the notion that slaves belonged in the fields and women in the parlor, serving tea.

Darwin’s nerdy findings were going up against the powers and the principalities of his time.

Including Emma, his beloved wife. She wrote him an anguished letter. Would his scientific musings result in their spending eternity separated from each other?  Darwin read the letter many times throughout his life–this portion of the letter is stained with his tears.

the man’s seditious idea

And what was his seditious idea? That one can account for the variety of species by a natural mechanism. When considered through the lens of time, the line between species is not so firmly fixed: one population of creatures becomes more like the members who breed the most and pass on their survival edge to offspring.

He called his idea “natural selection,” as contrasted with the intentional selection of a breeder who in a few generations can shape a line of dogs or cats or pigeons as he pleases.  It was nature’s means of selection.  (Darwin was agnostic regarding nature’s  God.)

the “father of biblical inerrancy” liked Darwin’s idea

Darwin’s idea made perfect sense to B.B. Warfield, the father of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.  Warfield bred horses so he knew what intentional selection could do. Why wouldn’t God work through a natural means of selection his wonders to perform?  He is, after all, as Jonathan Edwards said, “a God of means.”

After reading The Origin of Species Warfield wrote, “I do not think that there is any general statement in the Bible or any part of the account of creation, either as given in Genesis 1 and 2 or elsewhere alluded to, that need be opposed to evolution.”  This, by the way, is the same B.B. Warfield who contributed articles to that set of pamphlets called “The Fundamentals“–yes, the same volumes that gave “Fundamentalism” its name. (When it comes to science these days, most evangelicals are more sectarian in outook than were the founders of the modern American fundamentalist movement.)

Darwin’s friend and colleague Asa Gray, a Harvard botanist and devout evangelical, saw no inherent conflict either between natural selection and a creating God.  In fact, Asa Gray did more to promote Darwin’s writings in the United States than any other scientist.  He was one of Darwin’s closest friends.  An evangelical.

But these evangelicals took the time to understand Darwin’s idea and consider the evidence for it.  They sought to understand the man before calling him dangerous or his ideas heretical.  They could understand if the man was too busy with his beetles and barnacles to integrate these new scientific insights with Christian faith.  That was a task for people more steeped in theology than he.

we’re hard on our scientists

We’re hard on our scientists, we doctrine and dogma-driven Christians–we who sometimes use religion as a form of control.  We who parrot the party line without stopping to think what we’re saying or why.  Galileo felt the wrath of our kind in his time.  Quick to condemn, slow to apologize for getting it wrong.

When we stand before the judgment seat of Christ–the friend of sinners, the man of sorrows acquainted with grief–how will we answer for the slander slathered on this good man’s name?

I for one, on behalf of my tribe, am sorry.

ADD YOUR VOICE TO THIS EVANGELICAL APOLOGY TO DARWIN

500 years after the catholic church forced Galileo to recant his findings that the earth revolved around the sun, Pope John Paul II, apologized on behalf of the church.  Evangelicals have no pope. It’s up to each of us to play the man, polycarp. Leave a brief comment to indicate that you are an evangelical (pastor, layperson, whatever) and you wish to add your amen. Invite any evangelicals you know to do likewise.  I won’t post any comments that say anything nasty about Darwin–not on his birthday. Of course you’re free to take me to task. It’s still America.

SECULAR SCIENTISTS: Evangelicals need to hear from you. Please post a comment letting us know how the American evangelical response to evolutionary science has affected you personally. Does it warm you heart to our message or give you the willies?  Give it to us straight, please.

Of course his real crime was caring for creation. As Tony Perkins, of the Family Research Council put it, “This is the risk of walking through the green door of environmentalism and global warming – you risk being blinded by the green light and losing your sense of direction.”    Perkins called it leaving “the reservation.” By “reservation” he meant American evangelicalism.  The “reservation” is not a bad metaphor for Perkins’ view of American evangelicalism, actually.  Pretty revealing stuff.  Not Cizik’s comments but the firestorm it led to among fellow evangelicals.

What does it tell us about a movement that ejects a leader who has these perspectives?  It tells us what the boundaries are.  Of the reservation.

To be an effective evangelical leader on the reservation you must not stray beyond the collective conventional wisdom of the evangelical community, at least not on these matters.  To be fair, it’s possible that a leader could hold some of these views, but not all.  It’s too early to tell yet which views in which combination constitute the boundaries of the American evangelical movement.   Actually it could be that one or another of these views places a leader outside the camp, but we know that this list roughly approximates the boundaries.

So, what do we think about that?  Are those the correct boundaries? Are we “the reservation?” I think not.  Evangelicalism has always been a diverse movement.  I would therefore suggest a simpler set of boundaries. How about this?  Jesus is our center. The Bible is our book. The gospel is our message.  Love is our aim.  OK. Let’s quibble on the wording, but somewhere in that ballpark.  We wish to be the Jesus loving, gospel loving, Bible loving, love loving people.  The good news people.

Like Billy Graham–I think he counts as an evangelical, given his focus on the gospel.  I think Billy could hold all the views expressed by Richard Cizik and still be regarded as a leader in the evangelical movement, no problem.  I even think he could admit to voting in either primary for any of the candidates, even though some of the candidates in each primary gave me the willies.

Charles Colson said that Cizik separated himself from “the mainstream of evangelical belief and conviction.” He did? What pillars of our faith did he undermine?  The resurrection perhaps?  The reliability of the gospels?  Is this what we’ve come to: before someone is credibly a “mainstream evangelical” we have to know their perspective on civil unions, the value of government assistance in providing contraception in order to reduce abortions, and the legitimacy of voting for a Democratic candidate in the Democratic primary?  I imagine there are so many evangelicals outside that mainstream as to threaten it’s mainstream status.  I thought our shared treasure was Jesus.  Wasn’t that Him on mainline?

Here’s the problem with the current boundaries of “the reservation” as evidenced by the unwillingness of the evangelical movement to accept Rich Cizik as a leader.  Who are we going to find to lead us?   We may find that only finger lickers apply for the openings. Leaders who lick their fingers and stick them up in the air to see which way the evangelical winds are blowing.  This is not the way to proceed for a movement that worships Jesus, I don’t think.

See, I’m heartsick about this. Richard Cizik is one of my FAVORITE leaders, and I’m a baby boomer, so I’m not too keen on leaders in general.  Which of course comes back to haunt me every time I lead because I so annoy myself.

Richard Cizik led the campaign to awaken evangelicals to the horrors of the slave trade.  He was instrumental in getting legislation passed to protect persecuted religious minorities, including Christians around the world.   If I’m not incorrect, I believe it was Richard Cizik who urged President Reagan to be more outspoken regarding the evils of the Soviet Union.  Richard Cizik opened up an historic dialog between leading environmental scientists and evangelical leaders.  He led an effort to awaken evangelicals to the biblical teaching on environmental stewardship.

Man, we need leaders like that!  Bold leaders.

Instead, we may get what apparently we now deserve. Cautious leaders.  Leaders who are especially careful to keep their jobs by not offending those whom they serve as leaders.  Leaders who don’t make any impolitic comments on radio interviews and sound like every other spokesperson for every other organization.  Who say nothing surprising, whose articulated perspectives are clearly within the box.  Who above all, do not provoke anyone within the movement, because, well, every movement has it’s sacred cows and when poked they kick back hard.

Some no doubt will be glad not to have to suffer through Cizik’s provokations.  Others, I think will miss him.  Leith Anderson, the president of the N.A.E. is a good man, a leader I also admire. He expressed his regret and reluctance over the necessity of Cizik’s resignation.  As the president of the N.A.E., he’s not in a position to decide what the boundaries are for a movement as diverse as American Evangelicalism, what comments made by what leaders lead to a firestorm of protest, what perspectives shared undermine a person’s ability to lead.  That’s on us. Those of us who fancy ourselves part of the broad movement of people who are head over heels about the gospel.  Do we like what we’ve decided?  I don’t.  It gives me reservations about the reservation, how about you?

That is word for word perfect.  And it’s the reason many, many, and might I add an increasing number of many people are keeping their distance from things like, oh, say, churches.  Because they know this to be true or at least true enough, which is, to say the least, too true.

I’ve been offering some mild criticism of Rush Limbaugh lately, or rather, I’ve been asserting my view that too many Jesus followers are ditto heads.  I’ve been offering the outlandish opinion that too many of my co-religionists–that would be evangelicals and pastors to boot–have been overly influenced by Rush Limbaugh, or shall I say, listening to Rush with an overly sympathetic ear.  It’s a hobby horse of mine.  I hope this is the last time in a while that I indulge myself by riding it.  I don’t even have the heart to ask you to bear with me as I can barely bear with myself when I get like this.  But I’ll work it out.

A recent commenter commented that he could see very little in Rush Limbaugh’s program that was unbiblical.  Besides name calling, that is.  I’ve learned that faulting Rush for name calling is silly.  Mea Culpa. It’s not that I fault Rush so much; he’s a radio guy trying to make a buck.  It’s that so many of my fellow evangelicals seem to enjoy it, the name calling.  There is certainly among my brothers (less so the sisters) an incredible grace extended toward Rush.

So I was asked what other perspective advanced by Rush might be considered unbiblical because after what I presume to be years of listening at least occasionally it wasn’t obvious to the correspondent.  I’ll get to that,  I want to stick for a moment with the name calling. It’s a bigger problem than we might think.  Especially since so many people on the outside of faith looking in are quite aware that Rush has quite a following among the Jesus followers.

Rush does use the verbal machete (and I am aware that it’s not a literal one.)  I’ve also heard that sticks and stones break our bones and words never hurt us.  (Except that this too is an unbiblical perspective if you read the letter of James who speaks of the damage the tongue does. But there I go again.)  And I know that many of my evangelical brothers (less so the sisters) are well aware that he doesn’t mean it meanly.  He’s just kidding. He doesn’t believe any of this stuff.  He’s probably a feminist in his private life.  He probably has many dear friends who are environmental whackos and they laugh about his schtick.

It’s just that Dave Barry is spot on.  I think the huge following that Rush has among evangelicals–here goes my oversensitive self again–may affect many evangelical churches.  It’s possible that we evangelicals may also laughingly use the machete (I speak in metaphors) more often as a result of our sympathetic listening to Rush. Just a thought.  Maybe I’m crazy.  It’s probably from me living in Ann Arbor all these years, and Detroit, city of, before that.

But I’ve gotten distracted.  At the risk of jumping to conclusions, let me suggest that Rush has an unbiblical veiw regarding the causes of poverty, specifically that doesn’t acknowledge oppression as a cause. Forgive me if I’m being unfair but I think Rush may think that poor people are poor by virtue of their own lack of virtue. They make too many bad choices. Did you hear they overeat?  Way too much sugar and not enough fresh fruits and vegetables. Which are abundantly available in the small party stores in Detroit where the poor of Detroit do their shopping, the supermarkets having abandoned the place.  I do think it’s possible to be poor because of bad choices.  The Bible seems to suggest this. Some of us should consider the ant and his work habits, for example. But I also think the Bible gives very powerful indication that the poor are often poor because they are oppressed.  Hence you see the couplet “poor and oppressed” quite often in the Book.

My daughter taught school for two years in Harlem.  It was the fifth most violent school in New York City.  On the whole the kids were poorly behaved. They didn’t listen in class as well as the kids here in Ann Arbor do.  I think, though, that this may be at least partly due to oppression. Many of the children were living in homeless shelters.  I would hazard the guess that they were living in homeless shelters through no fault of their own, these middle school kids.  But that’s an assumption.  So I’m going out on a limb here and calling that “oppression.”

But let’s give Rush the benefit of the doubt. Let’s not call this an example of an unbiblical perspective on his part.  Let’s just say he hasn’t yet achieved a proper biblical balance in his outlook toward the poor in America.  I wouldn’t want to go too far in suggesting that Rush Limbaugh might have some views that are unbiblical.

I apologize in advance to any of my brothers who listen to Rush and filter all this stuff out and are not themselves affected by any of it.  It’s just that you are better men than me.

Frankly is the word of false candor. You’re crying wolf with a word like that.  Real candor has it’s own shock value and won’t go unnoticed.  (While we’re at it, let’s ditch “honestly” too.)

But I’ve saved the worst for last, sort of.   National Public Radio, please take note.  Advise your guests never ever to say sort of.  They say it often.  You don’t hear a lot of sort of on the a.m. dial.  The merchants of certainty disdain sort of.  We live in the age of uncertainty and we’ve got these brains that don’t want to mess with it. But this excessive and quibbling use of sort of gives the humble dose of uncertainty a bad name.  (Uncertainty is like blood pressure medication.  By the time you know for sure that you need it, the damage may have been done.)  My point is we don’t like it.  It doesn’t win many converts.  Why should we listen to you if all you do is spout off regarding things you’re not certain about?  We can do that ourselves, without the fund raising.

I feel better now.