The lack of “soul care” and grace of God

As I write I’m repeating a Sunday School class on the book “Soul Care,” written by Rob Reimer, a professor of pastoral theology at Alliance Theological Seminary and founder of Renewal Ministries International. The class is being taught by the respective pastors of men’s and women’s ministries at my church.

I bring this up because, as part of the discussion, both have been frank about their struggles with families, their dysfunctions, their own woundedness, especially in childhood. That they had such issues no longer surprises me, although had I heard it decades ago it certainly would have.

I’m not going to go through the contents of the book; that would take way too long. But suffice it to say that I believe that part of the reason that the American evangelical church is ineffective in “reaching the lost” is due to its lack of authenticity — that is to say, its members often aren’t altogether honest, whether with themselves or others, about who they are and what they have to deal with.

Part of that, I would suspect, has do with the emphasis, most notably in the 1980s and ‘90s thanks to media “ministries,” about maintaining an image of a strong family, especially one with a strong father figure. The trouble, of course, was that the image never dealt with the reality of everyone in a family being weak in his or her own way.

To give examples, supposedly a majority of Christian men, even pastors, have problems with pornography. In “complementarian” households — in practice, where men have much more of the power — men are most likely to abuse their wives and children. The divorce rate among evangelicals is even higher than the rest of the world. It’s long accepted that sex outside of covenant marriage is rampant among evangelicals, with not even such pro-chastity programs as “True Love Waits” and the “Silver Ring Thing” having much effect among teens.

I suspect that we’re focusing more on the symptoms because we don’t want to appear weak in a culture that doesn’t agree with what we consider our values. But maybe maintaining “values” is the heart of the problem — in a way, doing so represents a subtle form of idolatry because, if you have “values,” what do you really need Jesus for? (This is why trying to refocus upon getting such values back in the public square can never work.)

One of my favorite books is Philip Yancey’s “What’s So Amazing About Grace?”, and in it he suggested that effective church fellowship should be run like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting — everyone needs what he called “grace on tap.” And when you look at things in that way, you often get rid of the judgmentalism that’s rampant in many church settings.

The pastor of men’s ministry at my church has mentioned that the purpose of the Soul Care class was to deepen “intimacy with God,” and that should lead to a better understanding of His grace. And then that grace can transform lives in a way that edicts and programs simply can’t.

Why the ‘rules’ don’t always apply — one man’s opinion

A few weeks ago I was privileged to counsel a young woman on a Christian singles page on Facebook concerning her love life — she was falling for a fellow member of her church’s worship team whom she always thought of as a brother but simultaneously noted that he was acting strangely and “pulling away” from her. So I asked her a few questions — and discerned that he too was becoming smitten with her. I was frank in telling her that she needed to tell this guy how she was feeling about him.

Of course, she didn’t quite get it at first because she had fallen into the trap of thinking that she should wait for him to make the first move, and frankly, she was scared to death — something to the effect of “what if he rejects me?” She even noted that he was happy being single, was even planning on moving to another country, likely for mission work, and had turned down two other women whose eye he’d caught. Nevertheless, I persisted, telling her that “He may want to take you with him.”

It thus gratified me when she later told me that I had been right all along on all counts. She hasn’t yet mentioned any marriage plans but did hint that for several reasons he was actually afraid in his own right to tell her how he felt about her.

So why do I bring this up? Well, I’m on a couple of other Christian singles pages, and conventional wisdom, at least from women, goes that a Christian man should have the confidence to approach a woman in whom he’s interested and ask her on a date. As a man, I can tell you that it will never work that way.

Why not? Because men who do that are either excellent actors — and, trust me, most of us aren’t — or truly not emotionally invested in having a relationship with a particular woman. In the latter case, asking a woman on a date turns out to be no big deal and he can take or leave her and find another.

I was recently convicted of having done this. Over the past 10 years or so I’ve had a number of short-term relationships that have always fallen apart for one reason or another; though I did and do enjoy dating for its own sake at times, in those cases it was too easy. While I was certainly open to the idea that I had found “the one,” after they collapsed I found that I wasn’t all that heartbroken. Perhaps the amount of time we didn't spend together didn’t lend itself to a more intimate relationship; I can only speculate.

You see, men really do have ego issues when it comes to dating. When a guy sees someone he really likes he often does get tongue-tied or otherwise act unusual; in the case I just described, the guy she liked started wearing cologne, which he had never done. (Think of the old Rickie Lee Jones song “Chuck E.’s in Love.”) Whether women realize it or not, a woman saying “no” to a man’s interest — and I wish someone had told me this when I was younger — is absolutely devastating, and after a few times of being shot down, which most every man’s experienced unless he finds the right one very early, he’s almost afraid to try again. An in a case of irony, he often shuts down his heart and becomes “cool” — and gains interest.

I hope you see where I’m going with this. The very expectation that a man will be strong and confident when he approaches a woman actually can mean a lack of authenticity on his part, the very thing that will turn her off down the road.

I had to laugh when I first saw the meme “I don’t need to flirt — I will seduce you with my awkwardness.” Because if a man turns awkward in dealing with a woman, it’s a sure sign that, to borrow the phrase from the movie, she has him at hello.

A lot of ... silence

Anyone notice the “religious right” lately? I haven’t.

Unquestionably the biggest and most fervent supporters of President Donald Trump, who has continued to “lead” this nation from one crisis to the next with no end in sight, it has had nothing at all to say about his absolute incompetence — pulling out of Syria and prematurely declaring victory over ISIS, shutting down the federal government over an ill-conceived and politically-motivated border wall along the border with Mexico and too many other things to mention here.

Why is that? Well, an article in USA Today last week gave a clue: It got what it wanted in a conservative Supreme Court justice that might — might — overturn Roe v. Wade, “religious freedom” (read: cultural dominance and privilege) laws, a move of the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. As though it cared about nothing else.

That’s just it — it cared about virtually nothing else. Not about kids being separated from their parents at the border. Not about rising income inequality, even though such is affecting its base. Not about the large number of African-Americans leaving their churches because of his overt racism.

What kind of “gospel” does it believe, anyway? Simply being saved personally from sin and to hell, literally, with the world that God created?

I know many people believe in a “top-down,” “strict father” mentality in that if the right laws and cultural values were instituted an increased commitment to faith and cultural stability would result. On the contrary — it actually creates the problem because they do nothing to turn hearts toward God Himself. Indeed, that’s His job and His alone “(No [one] comes to [Jesus] unless the Father draws him”).

That leads to only an empty religion devoid of the Holy Spirit. Basically we have a group of people who want to invoke God but don’t know His heart — and that’s dangerous. Indeed, I would say that He’s being merciful in pulling His Spirit out.

So maybe it’s a good thing that we haven’t heard from the religious right lately. It certainly isn’t speaking for God.

I oppose abortion but didn't vote 'pro-life'

Today is Election Day, with races for all 435 members of Congress; one-third of the U.S. Senate, many governorships, including here in Pennsylvania; and seats in state legislatures up for grabs. We’ll know later who won and lost.

This year, for all the elected offices, I voted a straight Democratic ticket. And, yes, I did so informed by biblical faith.

Huh?

Because, for me, when it comes to such matters, voting from biblical faith has nothing to do with actual positions on the issues — as well as I can discern, I look for character and the temperament and ability to do the job. Making the machinery of government work well should be the first job of any elected official regardless of religion, party or ideology; unless those are the priorities, nothing else really matters.

This might explain why I have never voted for a conservative Republican in my life and don’t anticipate doing so. Indeed, I routinely vote against anyone who represents the GOP right.

It’s not simply that I disagree politically with conservative Republicans, though I do; it’s just that I get the sense that such people feel entitled to my vote without telling me why. And it’s that refusal to engage with those who disagree with them that has fueled, if not caused, the division in this country.

Which gets to the meat of the issue: I’ve been a Christian for 40 years but won’t vote “pro-life.” For what it’s worth, I was “pro-life” — that is, opposed to legal abortion — before I became a Christian in the first place, so the two have always been separate issues. As such, these days I always the term “pro-life” in a broader sense — access to education and health care, concerned about the environment, racism and all the other ways in which the sanctity of human life can be cheapened.

I do not see doctrinaire conservatives supporting a comprehensive pro-life stance. That’s why I vote against them.

See, the modern anti-abortion movement was intentionally divorced from these other issues back in the late 1970s for the sake of political power; thus, demanding a repeal of Roe v. Wade — which I don’t agree with, by the way — comes across as bullying. “But what about the babies?”, you might ask. That’s not really relevant in such a context; it’s why Joycelyn Elders, surgeon general under President Bill Clinton, complained about their “love affair with the fetus.”

It’s also why you had Operation Rescue cause havoc in a number of cities, including Pittsburgh, in the late 1980s and early 1990s but having no effect and in some extreme cases activists blowing up clinics and shooting doctors who performed abortions. Read: “We’re right, and we don’t care what anyone else says.”

And this is why their support of President Trump, by the standards I’ve listed above by far the worst president we’ve ever had, is problematic. The truth be told, his commitment to ending legal abortion is limited to trying to pack the Supreme Court with conservative justices — and that only for the sake of keeping his worshipers on his side.

That isn’t good enough. Because there’s also a country to run.

No 'coming together'

In the aftermath of last week’s shooting at a local synagogue, a Presbyterian pastor demonstrating against President Trump’s subsequent appearance was caught yelling, “You don’t belong here!” Needless to say, the outburst was regarded as proof positive of the hypocrisy, narrowmindedness and incivility of “liberals.” (Now, I personally agree that the president had no business being in Pittsburgh at that time, as the families requested that he stay away until the funerals had already taken place.)

Anyway, in light of that, some people I know who lean left have said, as they often do, that all sides need to come to the table to talk to each other and find common ground to restore a sense of civility.

Sounds good on the surface. But it’s also extremely naïve because the political right, at least over the past few decades, has never demonstrated any interest in working with anyone else. It takes two to tango, as the saying goes, and I’ve seen no indication that conservatives even want to work things out.

Recently I read a profile on Newt Gingrich, the former congressman from suburban Atlanta who later became Speaker of the House, in The Atlantic magazine. Much of the interview took place in a zoo, and he noted that in the wild animals fight each other rather than cooperate, calling that “natural.” In other words, he believed in the philosophy of “social Darwinism” — you know, “survival of the fittest.” He’s the architect of the divisiveness we see in American politics today, which started with his election in 1978.

And then you have the “religious right,” which started around that time and reacted against anyone, even fellow Christians, who came across as “liberal” and dominated Christian TV and radio. Later in the 1980s you had the rise of right-wing talk radio, most notably Rush Limbaugh.

Going farther, you saw the “vast right-wing conspiracy” against Bill Clinton and simultaneous vilification of his wife Hillary. And today you have the ogre that is Trump, who got elected by trash-talking everyone in sight, even in his own party. (Indeed, the reason folks voted for him is precisely because he’s considered “authentic.”)

Bottom line, I don’t think that liberals really appreciate just how little regard and respect many conservatives have for them. I for one took the gloves off when the right went after Bill Clinton — it dawned on me then just how far it was willing to go to defeat an enemy. And I haven’t put them back on since.

As I said before, the right is now complaining about “incivility” from the left, with Republican politicians being confronted by liberals even in restaurants on their own time. But when you continually insult those you don’t agree with — and, as I said, this has been happening for decades — you invite such. And given conservatives’ own incivility since the late 1970s, I’d say they’re getting a taste of their own medicine.

During the presidential campaign two years ago Hillary Clinton referred to many Trump supporters as “a basket of deplorables,” noting the overt racists, misogynists and anti-Semites who were backing him. More recently, she noted that the time for “civility” with the Republican Party has passed. She took a lot of heat for those comments.

Here’s the problem: She was right.

A political ‘non-political’ act

By now you’ve heard of the Saturday shooting that took the lives of 11 people at Tree of Life synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. (Full disclosure: I live just a short bus ride from there and attended a bar mitzvah of a former schoolmate there in the 1970s.)  Yesterday, President Trump came here to “pay his respects,” visiting the temple and also one of the hospitals where some of the victims who survived the shooting were convalescing.

Given that the president came across that day as somewhat of a mourner, many of his supporters were infuriated that anti-Trump demonstrators filled the streets of Forbes Avenue, the main thoroughfare, that same day. This wasn’t a political visit, they insist.

They’re wrong.

One, he was asked to delay his visit for a couple of weeks, to allow the families to grieve in peace; however, he refused the entreaty and came anyway — and in doing so, he became the issue. After all, there’s an election next Tuesday and he couldn’t pass up an opportunity to be seen in a rare positive light.

Two, upon learning of the shooting he made the insensitive comment that the shooter, identified as a Robert Bowers of the suburb of Baldwin Borough, could have been stopped had the synagogue had armed guards (given his arsenal and that two of the wounded were Pittsburgh police, that seems far-fetched).

And three, the reason Bowers took aim at worshipers that morning in the first place was due to the belief, fairly common in right-wing conspiracy circles, that the Jewish people were financially supporting the “caravan” coming from from Honduras that’s seeking political asylum in his country, falsely claiming that it’s an issue of “immigration.”

See, one of the issues that the demonstrators have with the president was his unwillingness to repudiate “white nationalism” — chilling, given that it’s the same ideology that spurred Adolf Hitler to take control of Germany. Given the context that 30 percent of Squirrel Hill is Jewish, that's pretty potent.

Once again, you have Trump supporters complaining about a lack of “civility” in American politics. But they should understand that Trump has never been civil in his own right — even at a rally that he held before coming here he blasted the media, a staple of his grievance. That’s why his visit here should never be seen as one of someone who cares.

Because, really, he doesn’t.

A cautionary tale

In 1984, the later Easter Sunday service at the socially-prominent Presbyterian congregation where I had been received as a new member just a month before got some, shall we say, unwelcome visitors — a lay activist group comprising unemployed steelworkers and a group of pastors who shepherded the churches they attended. They complained that upper management of the steel companies who were members of our congregation were disrupting their lives by closing plants and thus throwing them out of work. Over the next year or two the groups deposited dead fish in safe deposit boxes in branches of one of the local banks and threw balloons filled with skunk oil at members after a Christmas program later that year, among other things.

Most people probably would have dismissed these people as a bunch of hotheads wanting attention or money. But leaders of the congregation did something different: They listened.

I’m not privy to any specific things that my congregation did, but I do know that some back channels were opened with folks in the valley areas where the closed plants were located. Because the church responded properly to what many would have considered a violation of its sacred space, the demonstrations eventually ceased due to losing popular support. In the 14 years I attended that church, it proved to be its finest hour.

I bring that up in reference to such Republican figures as Sarah Huckabee Sanders, press secretary to President Trump; and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell being accosted by demonstrators. Many conservatives have complained that they’re being targeted simply because they, in the words of some, “think differently,” and that the demonstrators are simply hooligans engaging in temper tantrums and being paid by George Soros to troll them.

It’s not that at all, because if that were the case and they were truly interested in moving the process forward they would talk to their political opponents. The thing is, Trump’s base is not, and in fact never has been, interested in talking with anyone who disagrees, even dismissing its opponents out of hand and displaying its arrogance in the process. And it’s that arrogance, not the positions, to which they react.

Many, many people have talked about restoring a sense of “civility” to American civic and political life, but when one side regards the other as a disease to be eradicated that would be tough, if not impossible, to pull off. I can tell you that, because I personally know some of its adherents, the political left these days won’t be mollified (read: “know its place”) and that, if attitudes don’t soften on the other side, such demonstrations and disruptions will not only continue but get even worse.

There’s a biblical principle here: “You reap what you sow.”