Stephen J. Matlock's Blog, page 39

Questions for Christians Searching for Answers

From the Internets. Some questions to ask before insisting that your version of Christianity should be mandated as a rule of law for everyone, including non-Christians and Christians who don’t believe as you do.

1) Do you also demand the death penalty for those who curse their parents (Lev 20:9)?

2) Do you demand the death penalty for those who commit adultery (Lev 20:10)?

3) Do you demand the death penalty for those who don’t keep the Sabbath [which is Saturday, by the way] (Exodus 35:2)?

4) Do you support slavery (Lev 25:44)?

5) Do you advocate the stoning of “non-virgins” (Deut 22:20)?

6) Are you consistent in “following everything the Bible says” or are you interpreting and rationalizing the parts that make you uncomfortable to make it consistent with your world view?

7) Do you use the Bible as an excuse to condemn the things you don’t like?

8) What is the historical value of this issue? Was there a similar divide among Christians in the past when it came to abandoning practices, including but not limited to:

* The murder of Jews for being nonbelievers

* Burning women for being witches

* Prohibiting the mixing of races

* Prohibiting women from holding leadership positions

* Looking the other way when male leaders abuse their positions

— all in the name of “hating the sin”? Is this an issue that your faith will rationalize away as it has previous practices after considerable outside pressure?

9) Are you called to condemn others or love others?

10) Are you putting too great a focus on the parts of your faith that forbid things you don’t fully understand?

11) When you think about your faith do you consider it to be unchanging since the time the Bible was written? For example, have Christians over the centuries spoken of a “personal relationship” with God or is this a new invention? (For the answer do an NGram for the phrases “personal relationship with Jesus” and “personal Savior”.(

12) When you try to think critically about other belief systems in comparison to your own, do you read only Christian versions or do you also read perspectives of people who hold these beliefs? Is there a connection between these two things?

Being Jesus to the World We Live In

We always had the chance to be Christian. To be like Christ. To be loving and sacrificial, to care for widows and orphans, to feed the hungry, heal the sick, love the lost, to put others first, to speak, teach, and live peace.

That opportunity was always there.

Instead we chose to ratchet up our hatred and dislike and anger in order to show the world that *we didn’t like gay marriage*, no sir, and that was the most important thing to focus on. We chose to make sure that everyone knew how much we hated those sinners and that sin.

Think about that.

We always had the chance to live like Christ, like we knew him and loved him.

And we chose
to behave instead as if we never knew him.

So now what? What have we left ourselves? What do we say to our neighbors and family and friends, our communities, our nation, our brothers and sisters in Christ?

“Well, we’re still right. We still hate. We still demand. We still are angry. You people are all going to hell.”

Yeah, that will work, I imagine.

Some of us deeply regret our collective behavior as Christians. We’ll keep on trying to do the things Jesus is calling us to do.

And we’ll just have to let you figure out for yourself why your message fails and why your efforts don’t accomplish anything.

Black Lives Matter or All Lives Matter?

Someone asked recently “Why isn’t it ‘All Lives Matter’?”

Here’s my response:

When a house is burning down you send the fire department to that house, not to all houses. You don’t say “All Houses Matter.” You say “For God’s sake, help put the fire out and rescue any victims.”

Black Americans are incarcerated at astonishingly high rates. Black Americans are an astonishingly high percentage of all prisoners worldwide. Black American families are several deciles below all other Americans when it comes to access to education and jobs, are at least one decile below all other Americans for assets, are more often tailed, confronted, arrested, jailed, tried, and convicted for the same kinds and rates of crimes committed by white Americans. Young black males and females are seen by teachers and police as older, stronger, and more threatening than other young Americans — witness Tamir Rice, for example, as 12-year-old boy who became an 18-year-old in the eyes of the police officer who shot him. In our language “black” is evil, wrong, ignorant, dumb, and primitive — the “dark” continent was dark not because of black Africans, but because it was seen as ignorant, backward, and waiting for the rescue of white Europeans. The word most people use to denigrate black Americans, the “N-word,” is synonymous not just with black Americans, but also with lower-class and despised. Look it up in the dictionary — it records actual usage.

The reason it is “Black Lives Matter” is because for much of white America, black lives are invisible and Black pain is dismissed.

It might not be possible for white Americans to understand the lives of black Americans.

It is entirely possible for white Americans, when confronted by the puzzling cry of “Black Lives Matter,” to ask “what do they mean by that when they say that?”

Maybe we could listen to them, our fellow Americans, instead of dismissing them.

How Marriage Equality Affects You

Here’s the real scoop: A quick guide to how the Supreme Court decision on marriage affects you. (h/t/ Kai Bolger)

If You Are a Heterosexual and Do NOT Want to Enter into a Homosexual Marriage:

You will NOT be required to marry a gay person. This is a common misunderstanding. This decision actually does not affect you in any way.

If You Are Currently in a Heterosexual Marriage:

This decision does not affect you in any way.

If You Are a Heterosexual Who Is Not Currently Married:

This decision does not affect you in any way.

If You Are a Heterosexual Who Hopes to Eventually Marry:

This decision does not affect you in any way.

If You Are a Member of a Church That Performs Wedding Ceremonies but That Does Not Believe in Gay Marriage:

This decision does not affect you in any way.

If You Are a Religious Official Who Performs Wedding Ceremonies but Who Thinks Gay Marriage Is Wrong:

This decision does not affect you in any way.

If You Are an Individual Who Believes Gay Marriage or Homosexuality in General Is Wrong for Religious Reasons, and Wish to Continue Expressing Those Beliefs:

This decision does not affect you in any way.

If You Are an Individual Who Believes Gay Marriage or Homosexuality in General Is Wrong for Non-Religious Reasons, and Wish to Continue Expressing Those Beliefs:

This decision does not affect you in any way.

If You Are a Heterosexual Who Fears This Decision Adversely Affects Your Marriage or the Concept of Marriage in General:

This decision does not affect you in any way.

If You Are a Heterosexual Who Fears This Decision Negatively Affects You in Some Way:

This decision does not affect you in any way.

If You Are a Heterosexual Who Suffers Anger or Anxiety at the Thought of Gay Couples Getting Married as an Abstract Concept, and Believes the Only Cure Is to Legally Prevent Gay Marriage:

This decision will cause you some degree of anger or anxiety. Otherwise, this decision does not affect you in any way.

Hope this helps!

Symbols and Signposts

Recently a friend forwarded a link to me and asked me to comment on it. I’ll post the link here, so you can read the context. I hope you’ll return here when you’re done.

Flag of the Heart (The Real Problem)

Now, please understand I have great respect and admiration for the general Anabaptist position. I’m in flux between Reformed and Anabaptist theology, and I find things I like and things I don’t like on both sides (if these are indeed sides).

But I do want to make it very, very clear that I completely disagree with this post, because it is doing something white people do quite easily – it is changing the subject from one thing of interest to black Americans to something white men want to talk about.

Yes, there are reasons to question our commitment to a political symbol when we are citizens of the kingdom. I’ll let you explore the complete theology of Anabaptists on your own and won’t argue it here.

And yes, it’s not the best issue for us to focus on. Poverty, war, crime, hate – these are far more real to people than a flag that simply flies overhead.

However – the real issues are that we white people are nearly entirely ignorant of our place in American culture, power, politics, society, business — you name it.

The Confederate Battle Flag (CBF) is a symbol, and a powerful one, and not the only thing or even the main thing.

And getting rid of it is a fairly easy thing to do, an act that would send an EXTREMELY powerful message to our brothers and sisters that we are listening to their voices and empathize with their pain.

The CBF is a flag of white Americans that says to black Americans “If we get our way, we’ll put you back in chains,” because that flag represents a nation that was founded on and had its identity in slavery first and foremost.

The Confederate States of America (CSA) would kept African Americans as perpetual, eternal slaves. That was the primary focus.

States rights for the CSA was the right for a state to not only implement slavery in defiance of natural law and civil rights, but also to pursue that slave into other states to return him to his state-defined captivity — that was the essence of the Fugitive Slave Act that South Carolina politicians pursued, demanded, and passed. The signer of the Constitution Charles Pinckney, later Governor of South Carolina, demanded a Fugitive Slave Clause in the Constitution in order to protect slavers’ rights to pursue slaves anywhere within the United States.

States’ rights for the CSA was the right for the state to avoid federal laws that were inconvenient to state interests, voiding any sense of civil rights or the federal guarantee of those rights.

That flag represents a nation that wanted to profit from the stolen labor of black chattel slaves.

So yeah, it’s not the only thing, or the most important thing — but taking it down acknowledges the actual factual history and meaning of that flag.

It is a stain upon this nation that we were founded with the noble words of “all men are created equal” and then we inserted clauses into the Constitution guaranteeing the rights of slave-owners to keep as slaves those of African descent — the Constitution forbade changes about slavery until 1808, for example. (And the CSA Constitution forbade any changes to its constitution about slavery. An eternal slave union it was.)

So we don’t have to pretend that slavery never happened, and we don’t have to pretend that we never fought a civil war over this actual thing, slavery, and that nearly a million Americans on both sides died, civilian and military, because several states wanted to keep humans as slaves.

Nothing honorable, and nothing to honor in any of that actual history. We actually had people who wanted to keep other humans as property – and we actually have people today to whom that is not reprehensible.

Taking down the flag is something we should have done in April of 1865. It is a monstrous shame that we cannot admit the South lost and the South was based on slavery, and it is a monstrous shame to see monuments, roads, buildings, and schools that honor that slave society.

Take it down. It offends not just African Americans – it offends any American who believes in America, land of the free.

Author Appearance – Renton Washington

I’ll be in Renton WA for an author appearance at AFK Elixers and Eatery, 2pm-9pm on Saturday, June 27, 2015.

Along with myself, Connie Jasperson, AJ Downey, Sechin Tower, Lee French, Lindsay Schopfer, David Moore, and Jeffrey Cook are the featured authors this time around.

The event at AFK – “Away From Keyboard” – is themed as “A Voyage Around the World.” As part of the event, the authors will have stamps for your “passport” — you’ll get your passport when you show up, and then as you visit the authors at their spots, they’ll stamp your passport.

I’ll be there to sign my own book, “Stars in the Texas Sky,” which you can also buy on Amazon as a print book and an e-book.

Connie Jasperson has much more at her own website – please check her site!

Just Words / Just Words

Much of what is happening now in the world of the Internet and the media focuses on several issues:

The deaths of nine saints in Charleston, South Carolina
The demands to take down the Confederate Battle Flag (“CBF”) from the state capitol grounds in Columbia, South Carolina

Now, not much has actually happened yet as a result of these two issues. The killer of those nine people was caught and will stand trial. Politicians are hemming and hawing over whether they will come out and support removing the CBF and thereby risk offending their white supporters, or come out and resist removing the CBF and thereby risk offending everyone else in America—and many are taking the third option of avoiding saying anything.

(As a side note, many of the politicians on the right are giving all sorts of reasons why the CBF should come down, none which mention that it is a direct symbol of black American enslavement and white supremacy, and that it was erected over statehouses in the 60s as a direct finger in the eye to “Northern” supporters of Civil Rights. True political courage in action, I suppose.)

Right now it’s mostly talk. There are some marches, but beyond that—not much is happening.

We’re still at the stage of “just words.” We’re just using words on the Internet to discuss—or rather, battle—with each other. We’ll likely get louder and louder for a while until something breaks and action happens, but for now—it’s just words.

But it’s just words for another reason. It’s words that are directed towards justice and fairness—just words, righteous words, honest words. We are speaking these just words in order to make the argument that decency, liberty, honesty, love, compassion, and justice itself demand that the flag be removed and that the events in Charleston where nine saints of God were slain be honored and become a milestone and turning point in America’s long embrace of white supremacy and racism.

These just words are not necessarily doing anything. They are words, spoken into the air, sent along the ether, dancing upon an electronic screen.

But they are words that, letter by letter, phrase by phrase, thought by thought, line up line, a little here, a little there, will lead to moving the minds of people, moving the hearts of people.

And as people are moved by words to change their actions, these just words will become just actions.

Sure, there is opposition. There is loud and energetic opposition that knows what the argument is about but that insists it is about anything but racism and white supremacy. They will continue their words and protests, blindly convinced there is no racism in a flag that represents a race-based slave-owning nation.

We can’t help that. We can’t shut them down, and we can’t avoid their presence in the debate.

But we can continue using just words—and just words—to push back, and to continue to advocate a change in our nation and how it considers our black American family.

Just words. Just words.

The Love that Dares Not Be Declaimed

It is not inexplicable. Look up that word. It does not define what it happening.

This was recently posted about Republican leaders who can’t tell us the truth about racism in America. It is a mystery. It is inexplicable. It is unfathomable.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/conservatives-dont-know-why-charleston-happened

But it is completely explicable. It is completely understandable. You just have to be a white American to not understand it, and you have to not want to understand it, because–and you know this–there is no penalty for refusing to see and to understand.

We are unable as white people to confront our own racism. We cannot handle the idea that a body of people like us but merely differently colored is consistently treated as “other” and excluded from so much of the benefits of American society and participation in American life.

Yes, there is a 400 year history of this treatment by white Americans. Yes, the Constitution and founding of this nation made them unbreakable slaves. Yes, a long war was fought with the conclusion that these second-class residents could become citizens. Yes, one hundred years later (one hundred!) laws were passed to enforce the right to be citizens. Yes, we have a black president.

But racism still paralyzes us. We still cannot handle the presence of black Americans in white society. We can’t call what happened in Charleston “white racist terrorism” because we are afraid to talk about what happened with the facts of what actually happened.

Politicians like Bush and Haley and Huckabee and Paul and the rest are shameful cowards that they cannot tell the truth to white people.

A white man took his gun into a church with black worshippers to kill them because his teachings and his culture and his world view and his American birthright told him that black Americans were going to “take” America away from him, and the only solution was to kill them — these nine black Americans gathered simply to worship Christ.

Not because they were Christians – there were a dozen other white churches within blocks. Because they were simply black, and American, and in the way.

When we stay silent, when we turn our heads, when we pretend that because *we* are nice that we have no responsibility—we are participating, because we are not speaking up.

We simply must demand that our leaders lead us, tell us the truth, make hard choices, act like leaders.

Or we must have different leaders.

Those nine people who were shot by a white Christian American male are the witness.

Say their names. Say their deaths. Say their worth.

How Do I Fight White Racism Myself?

I have friends who ask me “But what can I do as a white person to fight racism?”

I will answer with a story and then a question.

First, the story.

I’m raised and discipled as a Christian, so my stories come from the life of Jesus.

Seems there was this time that a rich young ruler came to Jesus to ask him how he (the rich guy) could be saved.

Jesus asked him if he knew the laws and kept them, and of course the guy said “I’ve kept them from my youth.”

You know, a righteous guy, and a really good candidate for conversion, and a definite plus for the kingdom. God may own the cattle on a thousand hills, but this guy had access to ready cash without having to pull coin from the mouth of a fish.

But Jesus, always on the lookout to make his band of merry followers a smaller band, made a condition:

“You want to be saved, to be a child of the kingdom? Sell all you have and follow me.”

The rich young ruler turned away. Which is entirely logical and appropriate.

Seems the rich young ruler liked being rich, liked being a ruler, and maybe even liked being young–you know how old you can start to look when you can’t afford emollients and oils for your skin and hair.

Well, Jesus was sad, because he knew the reason why. The rich young ruler wanted his things and his safety and his place in society more than he wanted to follow Jesus.

So Jesus got to the heart of the matter, which is simply you can’t follow Jesus if you have more important things than Jesus.

End of the story.

Now to the question.

You want to do something to fight against the terrible violence that is a result of systemic white racism, white supremacy?

You want to become someone who hears the voice of the poor and the cries of the marginalized, someone who stands with the people who have fallen, someone who will bear the burdens of others when they are too weak to bear their burdens themselves?

In other words, you want to go where Jesus goes, where Jesus is?

Then here is the condition:

Turn of FOX News. Stop reading DRUDGE and Breitbart and Redstate and all the rest. Stop listening to Rush and Sean and Michael and Hugh and all the rest of the radio jocks that foment rage and white anger and, yes, systemic white racism and white supremacy.

Stop listening to the voices that tell you to be cruel and heartless and self-satisfied.

OK.

Now that you’ve read that, your response is probably “But that’s impossible. Those voices, those sources inform me! They are virtuous, patriotic, Christian. They are reliable sources for a god-fearing, Bible-believing, sanctified saint of God.”

OK.

Now you get it.

Now you see what Jesus saw in the rich young ruler.

The rich young ruler needed his riches and his authority (and his youth). They were non-negotiable. They were things that helped define him, shape him.

And for you — you are equally bound by your right-wing media which keeps you attached to a set of beliefs and actions.

You can’t stray from them because to do so would be “socialist” and “liberal” and “unChristian.”

I can understand.

I don’t blame you.

It’s hard to accept.

But you asked.

And I told you.

And now you will need to go find another answer, one easier to swallow & that requires less severe actions on your part.

I can accept it.

The band of merry followers will go on.

A Gospel for Christians in a Time of Charleston

You know, my brothers and sisters in Christ, I have heard you say for years, for decades really, that you are trying to find a way to get people to listen to the message of the Gospel. I have listened to your plans to distribute literature, to film movies, to set up websites, to buy a Gospel Blimp (a book you should read, by the way).

Constantly we ask ourselves, “How do we make the Gospel relevant? How do we get people to listen to the sweet story of Jesus and his love for us?”

I need to tell you something: right now, the world is listening to you to see if your Jesus has anything to say about these murders in Charleston of these nine saints of God.

Are you going to speak out about white racism and white supremacy in America playing their parts in driving these actions of death and abuse towards our black brothers and sisters, or are you going to remain silent because to oppose racism is to be “liberal” and “provocative”?

The early church was opposed because it turned the world upside down. The church today is a ineffectual presence, a building with a cross and known more for bullying gay people than for healing the spiritually wounded and sick.

Are you going to do anything dangerous for Jesus, or are you going to remain silent when your brothers and sisters are crying out for your support, your attention, even just your admission that great wrongs have been done in your name, in my name, and in Jesus’ name.

Now is the time to speak out. Now is the time to act.

The world waits for a Gospel that means something more than a Sunday School lesson.