Stephen J. Matlock's Blog, page 50

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The Difficulties of Christianity

“Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.” – Gilbert K. Chesterton

We fail at Christianity when we think it covers only attending group meetings to listen to speeches, memorization of information about the speeches, and obedience to rules that keeps us only going to group meetings and listening to speeches. If that is what Christianity is, then it is not difficult at all, for it requires nothing of you but your body sitting passively.

Christianity is about what you do with your life, and how you affect others with the love you display and the acts of mercy you do.

If your Christianity is not affecting those around you, and is not satisfying to you, perhaps the issue is not with Christianity but with your weak grasp of what it is all about. It is far more difficult to be a Christian, because it is more than just saying. It is doing.

It is the Kingdom of God among us. Not just talking about it.

The Poor You Will Always Have With You

Fraud, abuse, and waste DOES occur. It’s because we are a government of people, and people…cheat. The key isn’t to say because some fraud occurs the entire program is a waste. The thing is to look at the overall goals of the program, which is to provide nutrition for those who need it. Ate we doing that? Great. Are some abusing it? Probably. But at very low levels, and not at the ginormous costs of fraud in other programs which do not lead to the same sense of moral outrage. Seeing some poor people getting more than they deserve, for some reason, makes us far angrier than seeing ordinary middle class people or even rich people fleece taxpayers.

It is wrong to abuse the system. But it is very wrong of us to focus on the poor. In some cases this is the only thing they have that keeps them from tipping over into catastrophe.

The poor are always with us, Jesus says. They’re not going to go away because we despise them. We have a moral obligation as humans and believers to help the poor, not to blame them and despise them.

What good is our faith if it is only for Sunday mornings, and only something to be listened to and not obeyed?

Book Metrics for Kindle Version of “Stars in the Texas Sky”

I ran a free Kindle give-away for the book Stars in the Texas Sky from August 9-11, and here are the results

Number of free downloads

US: 100

JP: 3

DE: 1

UK: 1

I advertised using Twitter and Goodreads. In Twitter I advertised using translated versions of the tweet in all Kindle-supported languages: EN, FR, ES, IT, PT, DE, JP, and CN.

I also advertised on Goodreads and with a post here.

These Things I Believe

Every so often people question my Christian faith. Here’s what I believe:

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy Christian church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.

This creed was the first common creed of the Christian church, circa A.D. 390. This was what Christians believed “made you a Christian” in distinction from pagans and other religious believers and beliefs.

Nothing in here about guns, welfare, illegal immigrants, voting restrictions, abortion, gay marriage, the secondary status of black Americans, sexualized violence, corporate tax breaks–yet for some reason because I don’t hold to an extremely peculiar set of political beliefs I have people telling me online and to my face that I am not a Christian believer.

I actually don’t care what people say. I haven’t been subject to others’ definition for my faith for 40 years. But it is peculiar how people think that because I don’t support their political views, somehow I will be excluded from among the elect and the saved.

My political beliefs and my religious beliefs square completely with the Reformed position: a reformed body always reforming. The Constitution states it thusly–”a more perfect Union.”

The United States of America is a good country, but it is by no means perfect. Those of us who have achieved the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity (to quote the Preamble to the Constitution) cannot and must not sit by while those of our fellow citizens are denied franchise and position and dignity. We especially must not stand by while people use the God of the Bible to whip people, judge people, and destroy people in the Name of the Lord. Christian believers should be speaking up in protest to see our Lord being used as a political football.

If all we do is to provide for our families and ensure that they are safe, well-fed, educated, and secure, we have done well. But when we have done all this, we cannot then sit back and wait for others who are lacking to catch up. As citizens of the United States, and not simply individuals of fortune, we have a common purpose to “promote the general Welfare”–not just provide what is called “welfare” in our common language of politics, but to ensure that those around us can achieve what we have gained. We are a nation of citizens united with each other.

What I believe about my faith I stated above. What I believe about my country can be summarized as below:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

About Trayvon and George

To my friends and family on Facebook who keep posting stuff to me on how George Zimmerman was innocent, Trayvon Martin was a thug, and that you also cannot understand why black people are so upset over the loss of life of some kid in Florida.

You’re not listening. You’re not listening to the people across the nation who have had this experience, multiple times, in their lives and the lives of their families and friends. You’re not listening to the mothers and fathers who do not know, day to day, whether their kids leaving for school in the morning will make it back home without harm. You’re not listening to the people who keep telling you stories about how they are stopped and frisked and halted and harassed and jailed and convicted at rates far beyond their population ratio in these United States—even though actual crime rates for their population is below that of the majority whites. You’re not listening to well-known TV and movie stars, members of the armed services, retired and active, professional athletes, entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, ministers, mothers, healers, who are under suspicion every single day of their lives when they enter “our world.” You do not know what it is like to not have someone meet your eyes on a bus, to not have someone want to sit next to you on a bus, to be ignored in restaurants and when calling for service. You’re not listening to their continual tales of “it’s not right when this happens,” and you’re not seeing their disappointment and even anger when their stories are ignored, again, because it’s not interesting to you or doesn’t matter to you.

We have a prison population of blacks in America which is larger, by percentage, than that of South Africa during the worst period of apartheid. We have a situation where horrendously large numbers of African Americans are incarcerated, at huge expense, in invisible prisons. We have an unseen black middle class trying to say to us “We are normal people, just like you”—and we have the ugly assumption that blacks are all criminals and thugs and welfare queens, lazy and ungrateful robbers of “our” hard-earned prosperity.

They have been trying to tell you, for decades, what it’s like to be an American only by proxy, and only when it’s convenient. We will tax them and control them and jail them, but we will not let them alone to live as they would, without our approval or judgment. Simply to live as they will.

Recently our government—the government of us and them, but of “We the People”—declared that voting restrictions in areas historically known for suppression black voters are no longer needed, because–well, because. And almost immediately conservative legislatures rushed to roll back their own laws protecting voters’ rights, to enforce voting restrictions which will result in voter disenfranchisement. Of your fellow American citizens. And they tell you this, but you don’t listen.

Now we have a horrendous trial in Florida of a man who killed a 16-year-old kid. Admitted by his own words. And whether you think the trial was just or not, the outcome is that the community in America which identifies with Trayvon is trying to tell you just how crushing this is, to again be marginalized and dismissed, to hear again the gleeful voices that once again a man got away with murdering a black kid.

You know, it’s not that you are right about George Zimmerman, and you need to correct people to tell them that George Zimmerman is innocent and Trayvon should have done—something—to avoid the confrontation.

At this point, you know what would help? If you would just shut up. Stop telling us how glad you are Zimmerman got off. Stop telling us that Trayvon deserved to be killed. Stop telling us how white people have problems, too. Stop telling us how hard you have, how someone you know told you of someone who didn’t get into school because a black or Hispanic got Affirmative Action. Stop talking about how resentful you are that lazy black mothers on food stamps and welfare are taking YOUR MONEY, especially when you have NEVER said anything about corporate welfare or farm subsidies or oil depletion allowances—things which cost billions in tax revenue.

It’s especially galling when you say these awful things about people you don’t know, living lives you don’t understand, and then tell us how “Christian” you are, how wonderful your church is, how much you love your worship of the living God.

The people I know and interact with, who hear what you say, but never are heard by you, are tired and sad and angry.

Right now, if you want to show your good faith that these people are Americans, are citizens, are people, it would be good if you took this time to listen. Turn off your crazy radio and TV. Stop reading your paranoid websites. Stop listening to crazy men whipping up your fears about scary black and brown people.

I’m not really asking you to change. Really. I’m just asking you to listen. Show those people that you don’t understand and don’t value that you are making the effort to listen.

It would go so much farther with them—with us, really—if you could just do that.

Paula Deen and the Unfortunate Change in Acceptable Words

Yes, we swim in a sea of racism. Yes, we pick it up. Yes, we even continue it. But we are human adults with minds and (I believe) the ability to choose different behaviors when instructed and led based upon what are (to my mind) better values. When someone raised me as a kid to be “good,” it meant being kind and honest and giving and caring. I don’t know if I already was “good,” and that was just instructions on how to do it, or whether I really wasn’t “good,” and the practice I did to follow the external rules molded my character.

In either case, I turned out to be the kind of person who listens to new information, tries to understand how it affects me, and tries to change. It is very, very hard because the lines fall into familiar patterns, and it is very easy to revert to easy behavior.

But whether it is hard or not to change, whether it is hard or not to not be racist, whether it is hard or not to to confront personal racism–you still have to do it. You can’t go on until you do.

Pretending it isn’t bad, or pretending that you’re ignorant, or pretending that because you were _raised_ that way you can’t help it–is just stupid and selfish and dishonest. You might have been _raised_ that way, but _no one is forcing you to act that way_. Unless there is some mental disease of compulsive racism similar to Tourette’s or to OCD, you can choose to _act_ better or different. You really have no excuse.

Have I been racist in the past? I’m pretty sure, even though I don’t want to admit it. At the time it seemed innocent, and to me I was innocent. But upon reflection I raise my eyebrows and think “How could I be so ignorant?” Now I know better. I can’t expunge that past. It was me, doing it. I just don’t like doing it, not anymore, and I choose not to.

Choosing not act racist when you are raised that way means you will probably make mistakes and fail. But you have to _try_. You have to be _aware_. You have to see the people around you as human beings with the same kinds of deep feelings and the same hope for meaning as you have. You have to see them as wanting to be recognized as actually existing.

Sorry for the long long post. I feel bad for Paula Deen for blowing up her career, but she’s had 40+ years to become self-aware, and she apparently never has. And apparently there isn’t much grief on her part for all the people she’s treated as insignificant.

Christians, Gays, and Jesus

I wrote this in response to a great essay by a pastor I respect. He went through a hard time figuring out what he thought about gays and Christianity; as I thought about what he wrote (see here ) I responded with these words:

The only sin I read about in Scriptures that is unforgivable is one: the sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit of God, and I think it applies to the idea that the work of God cannot effect salvation. The only person in Scripture that I read about who could not be saved was one: a rich man who could not follow Jesus because his possessions possessed him.

Gay men and women are not the unloved and unwanted by God; we are doing them, our fellow brothers and sisters, a terrible injustice by marking them as unwanted.

All the talk about “loving the sinner and hating the sin” is so much balderdash. You cannot say you love someone when you know nothing about them except that you despise them.

I cannot find in Scripture any support for the idea that sinners are somehow only a target for church membership, but not for understanding or love or acceptance. I cannot find the support for the idea that there is a special class of sinners whom we not only cannot accept in our churches, but also must despise in our society by denying them their humanity and their human rights.

The gay men and women I know are not turned away from God because of God not loving them or wanting them. They are turned away by God’s people who tell them this, over and over again: “You are unloved. You are unwanted. You are unclean.”

At the very core of their existence gay men and women are gay. Not sexual deviants. Not lustful sinners. Just that they love someone of the same sex and not the opposite sex.

This is not something like “committing” a crime or an act, something where you can simply stop doing something. This is a core thing about them. Unchangeable. When we tell our brothers and sisters that they cannot be saved unless they stop being who they are–a condition we frankly do not place upon any other group in all humanity or history–we are speaking not God’s truth but our own fears and convictions. We have been trained to think of gay men and women as apart from humanity. They are not apart, and they are not on the margin. They are simply normal human beings.

It took the Christian church an awful long time to reach a consensus on the immorality of slavery, even though Scriptures do not support the idea that slavery is forbidden in law or custom. We had to grow up in our thinking about who was human. We are still struggling as a community to elevate women to their equal footing with men in the church–we still exclude them from certain functions because we think Biblical honesty requires us to copy first-century cultural practices into twenty-first-century life.

We are only started (unfortunately) with examining the place of Scripture as to its impact upon our choices, taking strictures about food and drink and sex applicable to the Bronze Age and making them apply to the Germanium Age.

I get it that we think an interpretation from certain people can become the only interpretation. But that doesn’t mean it’s right. There are good, solid Biblical scholars who think passages against homosexuals apply to certain practices of cultic behavior rather than normal behavior between adults. There are good teachers who speak about the evils of prostituted sex but who teach that compelled sex doesn’t deny the place of proper sex.

We might be wrong in how we think about and treat gay men and women. Rather than simply bang the drum of our rage louder and louder at the idea that gays and lesbians want to be seen, maybe we can think and talk and discuss what Scripture means to us, today.

There are far more scriptures about loving our neighbor and doing tangible good for them than there are scriptures instructing us to shame and exclude gays and lesbians.

At One Time

Today Monty talked about a difficult term, “Atonement,” and brought out several ideas about what this means. I think most of us don’t think too much about this idea, and when we do, it’s with the vague sense that we’re swimming in rivers too cold and too deep for our water wings.

I’m not going to try to re-explain what Monty said, as you can go listen to him online. It’s really quite excellent.

What I do want to raise is the question of “Now that we know what it means, what do we do about it?” Or, more accurately, what am I going to do about it?

I can explain all I want about what it means to have atonement for my sins. It is the removal of the stain. It is the restoration of fellowship. It is the recovery of sight. It is the redemption of the lost soul, the ransom of the lost.

But—in the end, while I can construct a theology of atonement, I am avoiding the very real question of how do I incorporate this into my own life, into my relationship with my God and my Savior.

That’s where the idea of “making the way clear” is helpful. The roadblocks are removed. The hesitations are smoothed over. The scary idea of rejection and disappointment are gone.

It is that we can choose, right now, to act on the faith that we are accepted. Completely. No matter what our actions have been—no matter what they are, right now.

Atonement is complete. Done. Over with. Coming to God is made clear; no side trips of explaining our actions or painting over our guilt with careful words are necessary.

We are accepted, and loved, and brought to him. That’s what it means, and what I can do with that is to—believe it. Act on it. Come to the presence of God with everything, all the big things and little things, the overwhelming fears and the gnawing doubts.

All that is taken care of. And now—today—we can start again with an open communication with God.

God made the first move. Now it’s up to us to take the next.

Yevgenyi and the Red Balloons

A short story / flash fiction inspired by this photo: http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/web05/2011/11/4/13/enhanced-buzz-wide-10297-1320426466-18.jpg

“Hurry up, Yevgeniy! You’re going to make us all late!” Masha was laying out the fish and sliced onions for the afternoon meal, checking the rising dough for the piroshkis, smelling the warm mixture of chopped onions and beef and cabbage for the stuffing.

Yevgeniy Abramofsky stared at the mirror on the wall. His eyes were still red from the tears dried from Omi’s apron. Today was the Parade of the Commemoration of the Soldiers of the Motherland, and all St. Petersburg would be out, dressed in their finery and best shoes, cheering on the marching and the drumming and the music, smelling the fried breads and cookies and the slightly sour-sweet aroma of spilled kvass.

And Yevgeniy would not be there, not in the parade, not on the sidelines, not on the balcony. He had, against all commands and orders, gone into the Forbidden Room where there were Many Breakable Things, and he had opened the closet to check, just one more time, for the delightful props they would be carrying to celebrate Toys and Children, his family and joining their neighbors in solidarity, taking part with all St. Petersburg to honor the new Russia of peace and light and freedom.

And somehow, all of Mama’s careful stacking and neat ordered shelves had come undone, just when he was reaching out to take his very own balloon, and it had all come crashing down. Plates and cups and the metal box with Papa’s tobacco, little porcelain figurines from Paris, the bottle of expensive perfume that no one opened, the shelves themselves somehow coming loose as he attempted to simply pull the box closer and closer, the chair tumbling below him, and everything landing on top of him in one sticky, stinky, muddled mess.

Mama and Papa and Omi had rushed into the room at the sound, his aunts and uncles stood at the door, and there was no speaking. There was nothing to say. Yevgeniy had ruined the family who would now be missing from the grand celebration. In the square block of Russian citizens there would be a conspicuous absence of seven Abramofskys, sure to be noticed by neighbors and block captains and all the citizens lined up on the streets.

He stared at his face in the mirror, a criminal and a thief and a burglar, the words from Mama and Papa and Omi still ringing in his ears. There was nothing to be done now, of course. Six people could not go where seven were expected; seven could not go empty handed where seven red balloons were required. Six balloon were safe, but one—his balloon—was ruined by the spilled perfume, the rubber melting in the alcohol, the sweet smell of lilacs and roses and something that didn’t quite smell at all but simple was tasted at the back of your throat permeated the air still. His hands were pink and raw from the scrubbing Mama had performed to get the cloying aroma off, the faint traces of lanolin and coal tar mixing with the rosewater scent.

Tante Albertina came into the room, carrying a sweet pickle from the tray in the kitchen. “Here, eat this. You’ll feel better.” She sat on the bed next to him. “It’s not so bad, Yevgeniy. The cat is still alive, and the hair will grow back soon.” His Royal Highness Tarlemagne was still sulking somewhere in the apartment, licking the patches where his fur had been cut away to remove the spilled nail polish. There was still a faint outline on the wooden floor where Papa had scrubbed and scrubbed to remove the bright red lacquer. No scrubbing, of course, would remove the same color from the silk rug: it would remain a memory of Yevgenyi’s disobedience unto the seventy-of-sevens generations, his Papa had declared.

She hugged him, tousled his hair, and then leaned close. “I don’t know if you can go with us, Yevgenyi, without your balloon. Everyone will see us, the seven Abramofskys, with six red balloons, and think: something happened to Yevgenyi. But if there were only five balloons…”

And with that Tante Albertina reached into her pocket to pull out her own balloon. “See? My balloon might also be damaged.” She took the scissors from the sewing basket near the window. “Perhaps someone made a careless mistake while darning socks.” She snipped the balloon in two. “And now there are two people with no balloon, which of course is entirely normal and expected.”

“Now dry your tears and come out when you’re ready. We’ll make a sight, the Seven Abramofskys and Their Five Balloons. No one else will be so clever as us.”

Yevgenyi looked up to his aunt and smiled. It was all going to be good. And there would be piroshkis afterwards, and maybe the sweet angel cookies Mama made for special occasions.

Tante Albertina closed the door behind her. He got up from the bed, slicked down his hair, and went to the door.

Then he turned to the dresser next to Mama’s bed. She always kept her gold filigree watch there, and he’d never had the chance to look at it up close…