Spiritual warfare

While talking with a couple who visited my church today -- they're both musicians I've worked with in the past -- we got to talking about the anti-Obama campaign waged right now across this country. She actually brought up something I had considered but not said publicly, and I think she's right.

This is not simply a political or ideological fight and, at bottom, not really about President Barack Obama. When you get right down to it, this is spiritual warfare due to a situation where people fear what they consider upcoming cataclysmic change that is completely out of their control because, basically, they have lost their trust in God. And when that happens, well ... people get irrational. When I see all these "tea parties" complaining about overreaching government, hear about Obama being denounced as a Communist or read about pastors praying for his death, I detect more than political posturing; I will even go out on a limb and say that this campaign is the work of the Enemy. If that sounds harsh or presumptuous, did you notice that they never give any alternatives to what they say is "bad government" or considered that the policies they actually subscribe to just didn't work? At this point they're just making accusations -- and keep in mind that the term "Satan" means "accuser."

I'm a student of the civil-rights movement, and similar phony charges were made against Martin Luther King Jr. In fact, much of the opposition to him was based on his use of the Federal government to overturn state and local laws that codified the racial discrimination he was trying to destroy. And in the same way, people became nutty, saying that he was making a mint through his civil-rights work, in league with Moscow or visiting white prostitutes, none of which were true, in order to de-legitimize him. (I wonder what Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck would say if they were on the air back then.)

And therein is the reason I believe this to be spiritual warfare: Before we can deal with sin it has to be exposed and recognized as such, and that's precisely what King did with his nonviolent demonstrations -- he correctly surmised that the racist power structure would act up and thus make a fool of itself. And since God is not the author of lies, hatred or conspiracy, only one other entity can come up with that.

In one section of the book Wild at Heart, John Eldredge mentions that his wife Stasi had been under spiritual oppression, specifically with daily dizzy spells. So, after a time of prayer, they commanded that oppressive spirit to leave her -- but it initially got worse before it finally did, permanently. Eldredge says that such a spirit will not usually leave willingly but, when discovered, put up a fight.

Of course you remember that Bill Clinton in the 1990s was accused of all kinds of things, to a point where there was a new "scandal" every few months. However, the machine that was making all those accusations was exposed right around the time of the impeachment -- it turned out that when Hillary made that complaint about the "vast right-wing conspiracy" she actually had the goods -- and the gossip stopped. Today Obama's enemies have no such cover; they just went right after him without pretense. And that to me is a sign that they're going down. Hard. And very soon, never to rise again.

And that is why, even though things may look crazy today, I'm actually rejoicing in seeing the LORD about to work; after this is over -- or even perhaps beforehand -- we may very well see a spiritual awakening in this country. The Sunday after last year's general election my senior pastor had all us African-Americans stand and the rest of the congregation lay hands on us, saying that "a spiritual stronghold has been broken."

You think for a second that the devil would take that lying down?

None of this is to say, of course, that Obama's actual policies are beyond scrutiny; I certainly don't agree with his stance on, say, legal abortion. And I will not say that the opposition to Obama is based primarily on his race, though it is a factor. But that's the point -- after the rancor ends we can certainly address those differences with clarity and honesty and not with this wild, mostly non-factual charges. I'm looking forward to that day.

Truth and reconciliation

Lately I've been rereading several sections of "A Testament of Hope," a collection of writings and speeches of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who as most of you know has been a major influence on my Christian life. And in the process, I was reminded of an important truth: There can be no reconciliation without truth.

During his day, King was often accused of divisiveness and creating problems that didn't exist -- comments like "Our Negroes were happy until those outsiders came in and started causing trouble!" Unfortunately for them, King's critics were so shut off from reality that they didn't realize that the unjust system that they were defending with their lives actually caused resentment towards them.

Any serious Christian should understand this. After all, before you can reconcile with God through Jesus Christ you have to recognize that you have made shipwreck of your life -- which can be can be hard to admit when you see things as going well. Consider your first reaction when you're confronted with your sin -- you probably defended yourself because, frankly, the idea that you were wrong is unpalatable.

One of the first worship songs I learned on the Georgia Tech campus 30 years ago was "Come, Let Us Reason Together," based on Isaiah 1:18. However, consider what he wrote before that:

¹⁰ Hear the word of the LORD,
you rulers of Sodom;
listen to the law of our God,
you people of Gomorrah!
¹¹ "The multitude of your sacrifices —
what are they to me?" says the LORD.
"I have more than enough of burnt offerings,
of rams and the fat of fattened animals;
I have no pleasure
in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.
¹² When you come to appear before me,
who has asked this of you,
this trampling of my courts?
¹³ Stop bringing meaningless offerings!
Your incense is detestable to me.
New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—
I cannot bear your evil assemblies.
¹⁴ Your New Moon festivals and your appointed feasts
my soul hates.
They have become a burden to me;
I am weary of bearing them.
¹⁵ When you spread out your hands in prayer,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even if you offer many prayers,
I will not listen.
Your hands are full of blood;
¹⁶ wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds
out of my sight!
Stop doing wrong,
¹⁷ learn to do right!
Seek justice,
encourage the oppressed.
Defend the cause of the fatherless,
plead the case of the widow.
Now, is God being "divisive?" No, He's telling it like it is -- at the risk of offending his audience. And sometimes confrontation is necessary in the process.

Some years ago I made the following analogy to a friend of Armenian heritage. Now, the Armenian people have historically had issues with the Turks, and let's say that the Turks came to the Armenians and said, "We wish to reconcile with you, but we don't want to admit to anything we did wrong, nor will we change our attitudes about you." Ridiculous, right? Yet that's just what some people are proposing because admitting that they were at fault causes them discomfort.

One of the demonstrators protesting the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Ark. in 1957 admitted a few years ago on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" to the black students who were trying to enter the school, "We were ignorant." A woman demonstrator said tearfully that she later taught her own children to act differently. Wonderful moments, to be sure -- but which could never happened without confrontation.

The revolution will not be televised

We worship an awesome God in the blue states ...
-- President Barack Obama

Lately I've been rereading the book "The Jesus I Never Knew" by Philip Yancey and noticed something I hadn't before. It's almost a truism that Scripture suggest that God is closest to the poor, but he noted that the poor had an easier time with the Christian faith than the wealthy.

Reason? The poor, in his view, already lead a life of dependency on others -- which would translate into a relationship with God -- more so than wealthier folks.

And that is why, I believe, that any sort of spiritual revival in America will take place not in the halls of Congress or in well-scrubbed churches that focus on "doctrine" or "cultural issues." It likely will happen in ideologically "left-wing" urban centers, among the forgotten, the ignored, the scapegoats -- in short, the kind of people to whom Jesus ministered in His earthly life. And most of those people will not understand the concepts of predestination or be concerned with the fight against gay marriage -- they have more immediate issues. Like survival.

And it is that single-minded focus on God that will give the poor spiritual strength once He gets a hold of them. Not only that, but eventually prophets will emerge from that community that will challenge the status quo -- including the Christian "establishment."

There's precedent for that. Many of the biblical prophets were just that -- ordinary men who nevertheless heard the voice of God and delivered His message of inconvenience to people who didn't want to hear it. (After all, no one wants to hear from "those people" because they remind folks that they share some responsibility for their state of deprivation.)

More recently, the civil-rights movement was sparked by prayer and revival meetings in conservative black churches in the South; God gave its adherents the strength to withstand beatings by police, bombings of churches and incarceration of pastors for a much greater redemptive purpose. However, it's important to note that the movement took place almost exclusively in cities, where the distinction between the "ins" and "out" were, and still are, most pronounced.

Today, even many of us Christians look down on the urban poor and blame them for their state, not realizing that much of that had to do with political decisions out of their control. I wonder just how many of us might change their minds if we spent time with them, especially with fellow believers. You know, we might learn not only compassion but also to become their advocates -- which would please God.

But that kind of life-transforming ministry usually doesn't make headlines. It doesn't raise a lot of money. It rarely gets attention from media or politicians. It only forms bonds among people and reaffirms the line from the classic chorus "They'll Know We are Christians by Our Love." Not by our doctrine or our stances on morality.

The blues

Earlier this week I spent some time clearing out the storage space in my apartment. Among the items I found there, and had hoped to find, was a notebook containing some songs I wrote in the 1980s. That decade represented easily my most creative period.

As well as -- and I don't think that's a coincidence -- my most difficult period.

Those of you who read my blog regularly or know me personally have an idea of what my particular issues were then, so I won't go into them in this entry. I bring this up because it was only then that I began to develop an understanding of "the blues." No, not necessarily the musical style which to this day informs every other style of music that originated in America -- the feeling of loss and desolation common to every person who has walked this earth which such music represents. Suffering, the Bible tells us, is part of life and we ought to accept it as such. In fact Bono, lead singer of the group U2, once said that the Psalms represent ancient Israel's version of "the blues."

That said, the blues -- while accurately expressing the brokenness of life -- always sees a light at the end of that dark, seemingly interminable tunnel; its ultimate message is "I'm down -- but not out." And it is that hope that keeps a person going in the midst of inner (and sometimes outer) turmoil.

Lately I've re-reading the book "Finding the Groove: Composing a Jazz-Shaped Faith." The Rev. Robert Galinas, the author and a "jazz theologian," noted in the chapter on "Singing the Blues" that a certain vocalist he was listening to, while conceding that her performance was pure and pristine, lacked a sense of sorrow. I get that -- only recently have I begun to realize that it was my own pain that gives me the ability to make a saxophone cry.

And it was that sense of pain which gave the lyrics I wrote then the redemptive power they contain even now.

I think that's what's wrong with much of the evangelical church -- it's out of touch with what a pastor-friend calls a "theology of suffering." When you look at these humongous, sterile mega-church buildings; hear a message about "prosperity" or self-esteem; or subscribe to right-wing power politics masquerading as "protecting the culture," don't you notice something missing?

The thing is, the Good News of Jesus Christ has zero meaning without the bad news -- of sin, yes, but also of lack, abandonment and disappointment. After all, who has suffered more than He? Didn't He also have his heart broken, experience betrayal?

But get this -- He rose above all that; thus we're also supposed to. But not by ourselves. That's one reason He gave us His mystical Body, the church, where we can bring our messed-up lives to be redeemed for His glory by ministering to each other. We can't do that properly if we're trying to put up a front, saying that nothing's really wrong.

That's why I'm grateful that God allowed -- no, inspired -- me to write that music 20-some years ago. Not only did I grow my relationship with Him in the process, but He also also used that, as well as the background circumstances, to foster the healing that only He can provide.

Abortion, eugenics and ideology

About a quarter-century ago, I noticed that the car of one of my then-church's sextons sported this bumper sticker: "American abortion -- Hitler would have loved it!"

Not long afterward while playing basketball in the church's Parish Hall, I told him, "Hitler wouldn't have given a damn" -- which I knew to be true. If you don't believe me, here's a quote from the man himself: "The idea that a woman's body belongs to her is absurd."

The issue came up for me during a discussion on "Obamacare" on another blog where one of the other posters accused "Democrats," especially those who support abortion rights -- I don't, by the way -- of supporting the extermination of certain racial groups due to innate "inferiority." When I first heard that years ago it sounded ridiculous -- and, upon examination, it turns out to be.

Rather, it represents yet another campaign from the political right to marginalize those who don't agree with all of its tenets, shifting the blame from its own policies to its opponents. More to the point, this is one situation about which it's just plain lying.

As I mentioned, elective abortion is often linked to the notorious German dictator who caused World War II, but the truth about what he believed, said and did doesn't square with the legend. Hitler had actually banned abortions by "Aryan" women while encouraging or forcing them on those of "darker" hue. One of the reasons Germany conquered other nations was so that "Aryans" could populate them, even going so far as to encourage them to marry women in, say, Scandinavia.

However, the people who hold analogous views today are are on the right, not the left. I got a glimpse of that in the 1980s when Pat Robertson, of course no liberal, said on the "700 Club" that evangelical Christians should increase their birthrate. It's also a concern of white racist groups such as neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and (I believe) the Council of Conservative Citizens.

One long-time anti-abortion target is, of course, Planned Parenthood, whose founder, the late Margaret Sanger, has been painted as a vicious racist and Nazi sympathizer who supported forced abortions.

Sanger, however, actually wrote during WWII: "All the news from Germany is sad [and] horrible and to me more dangerous than any other war going on [anywhere] because it has so many good people who applaud the atrocities [and] claim its right. The sudden antagonism in Germany against the Jews [and] the vitriolic hatred of them is spreading underground here [and] is far more dangerous than the aggressive policy of the Japanese in Manchuria.."

She also wrote, "The campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value but is practically identical with the final aims of eugenics.... We are convinced that racial regeneration, like individual regeneration, must come 'from within.' That is, it must be autonomous, self-directive and not imposed from without."

Doesn't sound like she believed in the concept of a "master race," let alone using political means to produce it.

And here's a shocker: In the 1920 book "Woman and the New Race," which came out at a time when abortion had already been illegal for a generation, Sanger wrote, "While there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization." (Keep in mind also that she died in 1966, a little over six years before Roe v. Wade.)

All this forces me to question the motives of people who accuse PP and similar organizations of placing abortion clinics in black neighborhoods for the purpose of racial "genocide." Here in Pittsburgh, PP's office is actually Downtown -- my bus to work goes within a block -- where few people actually live, most of those white. Also, three abortion clinics are located in East Liberty, an impoverished city neighborhood also largely black; however, two of them have been there since at least the early 1980s, when it was "in transition" (and probably long before that).

But as I was saying, the folks who have tended to promote "eugenics" as culture or policy have come from the right. It wasn't "liberals" who fought to preserve slavery. It wasn't "liberals" who implemented Jim Crow laws. It wasn't "liberals" who exploited migrant Asians on the West Coast in the 19th century. It wasn't "liberals" who strategically placed bombs to intimidate (or even kill) civil-rights figures or called Martin Luther King Jr. a Communist. It wasn't "liberals" who displayed signs saying "Hang [Nelson] Mandela" upon his release from a South African prison.

And if you need any more proof, consider that one of PP's largest benefactors is billionaire right-wing financier Richard Mellon Scaife, publisher of the Tribune-Review and best known for funding the "vast right-wing conspiracy" against President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

This kind of mischaracterization may be a reason why the anti-abortion movement hasn't gone anywhere since 1973. If we believe we have "truth" on our side, we'd better get our facts straight.

The cult of Sarah Palin

Ordinarily, the resignation of a governor facing ethics charges would be greeted with yawns and finger-wagging as if to say, "See, he became too big for his britches."

But when Sarah Palin, the former Republican Party vice-presidential candidate, announced last week that she would step down from her post as governor of Alaska effective July 26, it only added to her legend. That is, to her supporters.

And I think that says a lot about them.

Of course, those of us who follow politics are wondering what her next move is -- a run for president? Senator? Political commentary from a conservative perspective? (Only with the last would the former TV reporter have any serious bona fides.)

Anyway, to some people Palin's resignation is just about one woman who wanted the power of the office but not the baggage that came with it. Many have even said, "It's all about her."

But this Palin-worship isn't really about her; rather, it speaks to the delusion under which the political right has always operated (but which is becoming more obvious by the day to us non-conservatives). Palin represents little more than a microcosm of much of the conservative movement in general -- impetuous, arrogant, whiny, paranoid, clueless, classless, juvenile. Folks have actually rallied around a figure that resembles them -- but in a negative sense.

In a way, that shouldn't surprise.

Conservatives have always sought some "magic bullet" that would turn people against their opponents and toward them -- that's been their strategy since Nixon -- because doing things that way is easier than actually defending their proposals and the personalities that espouse them. I can't tell you how many right-wing media outlets tried to slander both Bill and Hillary Clinton, insisting that they had "information" that, if publicized, would "finish them off for good." And when it doesn't happen -- well, the media are "hiding something." All because they refuse to admit that their own agenda today is offensive and impractical and has fallen flat, their candidates are to a man (or woman) fatally flawed and their appeals are now falling on deaf ears.

They got lucky with Reagan, who in their view came in riding on a white horse to save the day from evil liberals and a malevolent press corps; perhaps they believe that they can catch lightning in a bottle once again even though times have changed. It's a lot like a football team trying the same play that no longer works because the defense knows it's coming and how to counter it.

With apologies to Bobby Caldwell, what you won't do, do for hate ...

When Palin was announced as the running mate for John McCain, she was touted as a reformer -- that's since proven dubious -- and a "Washington outsider" (according to Jane Mayer, writing in the New Yorker, an outright lie).

During a recent Facebook discussion, a Palin supporter insisted that the Democratic Party "feared" her. If she wants to believe that ... well, she's entitled her her opinion.

But the demographics don't support her claims, especially long-term. Let us remember that 60 percent of the "youth vote" -- that is, under-30 -- voted Democratic (read: liberal) during the last general election, and people generally don't change their voting habits over a lifetime. A few months ago Sen. Arlen Specter, until then a Republican, switched to the Democratic Party. Reason? His power base in the Philadelphia suburbs, generally under the category of "Rockefeller Republicans," during the Clinton years began trending Democratic because they couldn't abide the right-wing extremism that began to typify the national Republican Party.

All of which leads to the main point: It's Palin, not her critics, who is out of touch with reality. What's more, the same must be said for her worshippers, who will b---- and moan about her treatment at the hands of those not of their party. But as the late Chicago journalist Finley Peter Dunne said, "Politics ain't beanbag." If she can't take the scrutiny, she has no business even running for office. And they thus don't have the right to complain.

I'm a complementarian

As a child in the 1970s, I was involved in a church that didn't ordain women to the pastorate or as deacons or elders, and the egalitarian in me considered that stance discriminatory and unnecessary.

Today, I attend a church that doesn't ordain woman as pastors or elders (there, deacons are not ordained positions), and now I understand why. If I haven't entirely recanted that stance, I now respect it.

Yes, I've become somewhat of a "complementarian" -- believing today that, when it comes to leadership in the church, it should be predominately (if not exclusively) male.

About a decade ago I did a lot of ballroom dancing with my then-girlfriend, and the first thing I learned in the process is that, in a couple, the man and woman have strictly-defined roles -- which, in this case, means that the man leads. It just works best that way.

I've come to realize that the same works in the rest of life, too. I didn't always believe that -- I mean, does gender really matter when it comes to relationships, especially in the church?

Yes, it does. Over the last two decades I've found that, when I'm in a situation that subscribes to a complementarian outlook, I'm treated with more respect as a man. But when it was more "egalitarian," with no division of labor according to gender, I often found myself ignored.

Why is that? Well, the feminist movement ended up making far more demands of men than of women -- in many cases the respect that women expected from men simply wasn't reciprocated, especially in evangelical circles. Although women claimed to want to be "equal partners" in marriage, they usually still shoot for partners with equal or higher status than they, which in practice means that the pool of available eligible men has shrunk because they have higher status. (Ironically, many of them complain, "Where are all the single men?")

During services at my church, only men are permitted to serve as ushers, collect tithes and offerings or disburse communion elements (the last of which I do regularly and enjoy). Reason: Men seek purpose, while women are more interested in fellowship. That is to say, men need something specific to do in a church, otherwise they would be less interested in remaining; women, on the other hand, are more satisfied just to "hang out."

But that also speaks to the need for us men to act as servants and not simply as "kings" enamored with authority -- just like our LORD. And that too is attractive to women, who whether they want to admit it or not crave somewhat whom they can trust to fulfill his responsibilities. Done right -- that is, with humility -- the "gender division" would be no big deal.