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Chris Rice's "Cartoons" is a funny song about cartoons becoming saved and singing "Hallelujah". Of course, each cartoon sings a variation, except for two: "How 'bout Beavis and that other guy? Nah!"
But I was thinking the other day...
What if Beavis and Butthead got saved?
And why not?
Sure, it's amusing to mention these two MTV cartoons and leave them out of salvation - but only if you're not Beavis and Butthead. If you've lived a life similar to theirs and have just come into a church in the hope of turning your life around, that sort of rejection isn't funny at all.
The Jesus of Record - the one we find in the four canonical Gospels, a few apocryphal Gospels and referenced in the Epistles - reached out to people that others thought were beyond redemption. He spoke to, and forgave, those who the religious leaders shunned.
True, it's just a funny song about cartoons, but we ought to be careful about the messages we send about how great God's grace really is. If hunters, cavemen, bears, moose, squirrels, frogs, and smurfs can be saved, we have to believe that a couple of contemporary teens can be saved as well.
How bout
Beavis and that other guy?
Cool.
But I was thinking the other day...
What if Beavis and Butthead got saved?
And why not?
Sure, it's amusing to mention these two MTV cartoons and leave them out of salvation - but only if you're not Beavis and Butthead. If you've lived a life similar to theirs and have just come into a church in the hope of turning your life around, that sort of rejection isn't funny at all.
The Jesus of Record - the one we find in the four canonical Gospels, a few apocryphal Gospels and referenced in the Epistles - reached out to people that others thought were beyond redemption. He spoke to, and forgave, those who the religious leaders shunned.
True, it's just a funny song about cartoons, but we ought to be careful about the messages we send about how great God's grace really is. If hunters, cavemen, bears, moose, squirrels, frogs, and smurfs can be saved, we have to believe that a couple of contemporary teens can be saved as well.
How bout
Beavis and that other guy?
Cool.
Some very well-meaning hearing people believe that people, especially children, who can't hear should have surgery to help them hear - if such surgery is available. After all, Jesus healed the deaf too.
I know some Deaf people. The capital-D Deaf people I know aren't interested in cochlear implants; they don't want to be fixed because they don't feel broken.
So who is right? The hearing people I mentioned in the first paragraph are with Jesus: we should make the deaf to hear.
The Deaf people in the second paragraph have their own language and culture, and bring up their Deaf children to communicate through sign. They don't see the need to change who they are.
I was thinking about my Deaf friends this morning when reading the Discussing Homosexuality thread. True, there are arguments about whether people are born gay or not. But the parallels are interesting: people who are not [deaf, homosexual] want to fix the people who are [deaf, homosexual] so they won't be [deaf, homosexual] anymore - they will be healed and normal.
One might argue that deafness is not called a sin in the Bible - but indeed some see staying in deafness to be sinful ([url=http://pilgrimandastranger.blogspot.com/2006/10/you-shall-not-curse-deaf-or-put.html]read here[/url]). And while Jesus didn't heal the homosexuals (or indeed say anything about them that was recorded), He did make the deaf to hear.
Why is it that we (and I include myself here, because I often find myself thinking this way) "normal" people want to make decisions for others to make them more like us? Should we make the little people grow? Should we have stunted the growth of tall people? Should we make the picky eaters eat more things? Where does our intervention in the lives of others end?
Perhaps the example is in the story of Jesus and the paralytic. Jesus is in a house that is so crammed with people looking for healing that the door is blocked. One man's friends are so bent on getting him healed that they lower him through the roof. Jesus responds by saying "your sins are forgiven".
We can think of sin as a lot of things, but in a large way sin is the difference between being in relationship and being out of relationship. When we sin against God, we damage our end of that relationship. Likewise, when we sin against our fellow human beings, we damage or break our ties with them.
Jesus's first response to the paralytic was not "your body is fixed". His first response was "your sin is forgiven". Jesus restored the man to society. Of course, the local religious leaders didn't like the idea of this human going around forgiving sin, and Jesus responds by healing the man's paralysis.
But it wasn't the ability to walk that the paralytic man most needed; it was being restored to society. He needed to be a part of the human family again. Without that, the ability to walk would have only made him a walking outcast.
I know that sometimes I want so badly to fix the thing I see wrong with a person. I need to remember that what I most need to fix are the relationships between me and others. I could say "love the Deaf, hate the deafness". But if I really love my Deaf friends, I will embrace them as they are, and not with an asterisk to a footnote about one aspect of their lives. I might not want to lose my hearing, but it's not for me to say that hearing is the best way for them.
He who has ears, let him hear.
I know some Deaf people. The capital-D Deaf people I know aren't interested in cochlear implants; they don't want to be fixed because they don't feel broken.
So who is right? The hearing people I mentioned in the first paragraph are with Jesus: we should make the deaf to hear.
The Deaf people in the second paragraph have their own language and culture, and bring up their Deaf children to communicate through sign. They don't see the need to change who they are.
I was thinking about my Deaf friends this morning when reading the Discussing Homosexuality thread. True, there are arguments about whether people are born gay or not. But the parallels are interesting: people who are not [deaf, homosexual] want to fix the people who are [deaf, homosexual] so they won't be [deaf, homosexual] anymore - they will be healed and normal.
One might argue that deafness is not called a sin in the Bible - but indeed some see staying in deafness to be sinful ([url=http://pilgrimandastranger.blogspot.com/2006/10/you-shall-not-curse-deaf-or-put.html]read here[/url]). And while Jesus didn't heal the homosexuals (or indeed say anything about them that was recorded), He did make the deaf to hear.
Why is it that we (and I include myself here, because I often find myself thinking this way) "normal" people want to make decisions for others to make them more like us? Should we make the little people grow? Should we have stunted the growth of tall people? Should we make the picky eaters eat more things? Where does our intervention in the lives of others end?
Perhaps the example is in the story of Jesus and the paralytic. Jesus is in a house that is so crammed with people looking for healing that the door is blocked. One man's friends are so bent on getting him healed that they lower him through the roof. Jesus responds by saying "your sins are forgiven".
We can think of sin as a lot of things, but in a large way sin is the difference between being in relationship and being out of relationship. When we sin against God, we damage our end of that relationship. Likewise, when we sin against our fellow human beings, we damage or break our ties with them.
Jesus's first response to the paralytic was not "your body is fixed". His first response was "your sin is forgiven". Jesus restored the man to society. Of course, the local religious leaders didn't like the idea of this human going around forgiving sin, and Jesus responds by healing the man's paralysis.
But it wasn't the ability to walk that the paralytic man most needed; it was being restored to society. He needed to be a part of the human family again. Without that, the ability to walk would have only made him a walking outcast.
I know that sometimes I want so badly to fix the thing I see wrong with a person. I need to remember that what I most need to fix are the relationships between me and others. I could say "love the Deaf, hate the deafness". But if I really love my Deaf friends, I will embrace them as they are, and not with an asterisk to a footnote about one aspect of their lives. I might not want to lose my hearing, but it's not for me to say that hearing is the best way for them.
He who has ears, let him hear.
We know how it is - everyone ends up in Heaven or Hell for eternity. Heaven is beautiful, safe, everything good and right. Hell is eternal punishment - pain and burning and freezing and loneliness.
The trouble is, our visions of Heaven and Hell are substantially drawn from The Divine Comedy by Dante. Jesus actually offered life versus death. There is no eternal suffering in Jesus's ministry - the references to "unquenchable fire" are just that - a consuming fire that can't be stopped, not a fire in which things are burned but not consumed.
Jesus talks about those parts of humanity which are not desirable fruit being consumed in the fire. Whether those are individuals or aspects of individuals is less clear. However, I prefer to think of it as aspects.
In the parable of the wheat and the chaff, Jesus talks about the harvest and how the wheat will be threshed and the chaff is separated and burned. Chaff is the outside casing of wheat - the part that's not used.
So are we like wheat? Do we have good inside of us that would remain if the useless part is stripped away? I'd like to believe so. And I'd like to believe that what Jesus taught was how to maximize the grain - the seed of that which will live on after the useless chaff is gone.
Honestly, if the useless, undesirable parts of me are damned to the trashpile, or dungheap, or the unquenchable fire, that's fine with me. I'll be working on the seed to which Jesus promises eternal life.
If you prefer to believe in a God who punishes people with eternal suffering, that is your choice. I prefer to believe in a God who created us, loves us, and will help us to achieve the best.
The trouble is, our visions of Heaven and Hell are substantially drawn from The Divine Comedy by Dante. Jesus actually offered life versus death. There is no eternal suffering in Jesus's ministry - the references to "unquenchable fire" are just that - a consuming fire that can't be stopped, not a fire in which things are burned but not consumed.
Jesus talks about those parts of humanity which are not desirable fruit being consumed in the fire. Whether those are individuals or aspects of individuals is less clear. However, I prefer to think of it as aspects.
In the parable of the wheat and the chaff, Jesus talks about the harvest and how the wheat will be threshed and the chaff is separated and burned. Chaff is the outside casing of wheat - the part that's not used.
So are we like wheat? Do we have good inside of us that would remain if the useless part is stripped away? I'd like to believe so. And I'd like to believe that what Jesus taught was how to maximize the grain - the seed of that which will live on after the useless chaff is gone.
Honestly, if the useless, undesirable parts of me are damned to the trashpile, or dungheap, or the unquenchable fire, that's fine with me. I'll be working on the seed to which Jesus promises eternal life.
If you prefer to believe in a God who punishes people with eternal suffering, that is your choice. I prefer to believe in a God who created us, loves us, and will help us to achieve the best.
When the day began to wear away, the twelve came and said to Him, "Send the multitude away, that they may go into the surrounding towns and country, and lodge and get provisions; for we are in a deserted place here." But He said to them, "You give them something to eat."This miracle is the only one reported in all of the gospels. It's too bad that, with all the hungry people in the world today, that we can't repeat it now.
And they said, "We have no more than five loaves and two fish, unless we go and buy food for all these people." For there were about five thousand men.
And He said to His disciples, "Make them sit down in groups of fifty." And they did so, and made them all sit down. Then He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the multitude. So they all ate and were filled, and twelve baskets of the leftover fragments were taken up by them. - Luke 9:12-17
Or can we?
At 8:30AM today, I'll be rehearsing with my church's praise band. At 10:30, we'll be part of the service at the Harvest Festival in Forrest Illinois.
Three churches will come together to celebrate the harvest to which we all contributed. Two urban churches - * Grace Lutheran Church & School of Forest Park, IL and Plainfield Congregational United Church of Christ - sponsored acres of land tilled by members of St. Paul's Lutheran Church of Forrest Illinois. The harvest of corn will be sold at market rate, and the money raised will be used in a growing project in Africa. The United States Agency for International Development will match the money raised. So from the modest contributions of two churches and the labor of a third, sustainable agriculture will be developed so that people can feed themselves.
This is the work of Foods Resource Bank. 15 Mainline Christian denominations participate in reproducing this miracle of feeding the multitude.
I'd go on, but I have a celebration to prepare for.
Jesus said to them:
"You give them something to eat."
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. - Galatians 3:28Think about this.
We are all one.
There are no distinctions.
Imagine if we, as Christians, stopped making distinctions between people.
Imagine we stopped distinguishing between people based on color of skin or national origin or citizenship.
Imagine we stopped distinguishing between classes.
Imagine we stopped distinguishing between genders.
Imagine we valued each member of the body of Christ equally - both in and out of church activities.
Imagine we supported each member fully, and didn't distinguish based on where one came from, what kind of work one did, or what gender role(s) one fit.
Imagine we took this idea further and applied it to all of humanity.
Just imagine.
I keep hearing about fundamentalists: Christian fundamentalists, Islamic fundamentalists and (occasionally) Jewish fundamentalists. And if there's one thing Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, questioning, queer, leather, supportive, and other (did I miss anyone?) people know about fundamentalists, it is this: They don't like us.
So what are the fundamentals of Christianity anyway?
We could look at the teachings of Jesus. Jesus told one man, who claimed to have followed the law perfectly, to sell his possessions and give the money to the poor. I don't often hear pastors harping on that one, but there's a strong illustration of using one's privilege to help others.
Jesus also forgave people - constantly, and without requirement of penance. There's a lesson by example, but how much forgiveness do we hear from pulpits?
Jesus healed people, and how many healing words do we hear from pulpits?
But if there is one strong lesson from Jesus, it is this: The two greatest commandments are to love God and love one another. Jesus says that all of the law and all of the prophets are based on these two.
Jesus did not invent those ideas - they were already part of Jewish belief.
We can argue about the Trinity, the meaning of Jesus's death, the question of Jesus's resurrection, and whether the bread and wine (or grape juice) have any real Jesus in them. We can stress out all we want about who's in and who's out, whether there is eternal torment, and what sins are too vile for us to forgive.
But all of that is fluff. The fundamentals, my brothers and sisters, are these:
So call me a true fundamentalist.
So what are the fundamentals of Christianity anyway?
We could look at the teachings of Jesus. Jesus told one man, who claimed to have followed the law perfectly, to sell his possessions and give the money to the poor. I don't often hear pastors harping on that one, but there's a strong illustration of using one's privilege to help others.
Jesus also forgave people - constantly, and without requirement of penance. There's a lesson by example, but how much forgiveness do we hear from pulpits?
Jesus healed people, and how many healing words do we hear from pulpits?
But if there is one strong lesson from Jesus, it is this: The two greatest commandments are to love God and love one another. Jesus says that all of the law and all of the prophets are based on these two.
Jesus did not invent those ideas - they were already part of Jewish belief.
We can argue about the Trinity, the meaning of Jesus's death, the question of Jesus's resurrection, and whether the bread and wine (or grape juice) have any real Jesus in them. We can stress out all we want about who's in and who's out, whether there is eternal torment, and what sins are too vile for us to forgive.
But all of that is fluff. The fundamentals, my brothers and sisters, are these:
- The first is this: 'Hear O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.
- 'The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."
So call me a true fundamentalist.
