Can the Psalms make us Hate?

I love Jesus. Most of the time I like Jesus. I am learning to love the church again. I am allowing myself to ask questions I never asked before. I don't ask because I want to degrade Jesus, but because I think He is strong enough for my questions. These are thoughts as I continue my faith journey from deconstruction to reconstruction and beyond…Spoiler Alert: There are no answers in this blog, only questions.

For thousands of years Christians have found solace in the Psalms. These songs/poems have helped Christians to endure suffering and look to Almighty God for help. So I don't negate their historical benefits or beauty.

But I am confused about something because I have been reading a portion of a Psalm nearly every day for a year or more, and at the same time I have noticed that my Christian community has two curious faults:

• We often think that everything is black or white.
• We often look at those whose ideas contradict our community's as evil and deserving of our hate.

When I read the New Testament and the words of Jesus I find him loving lost, confused people and reinterpreting ancient ideas so that prostitutes can live and sin no more. I find him loving his enemies.

But when I read the Psalms, I do begin to hear that everything is good or evil. I hear about hating enemies and the wicked. The Psalms sound more like the thinking in the American Church than the words of Jesus do.

And that is where I am stuck. If all scripture is God Breathed so we can't just cut out the mean Psalms from the Bible. But what can we understand recognizing the time the Psalms were written? What can we understand recognizing these are songs/poems and not expositional? Is there just a lot of hyperbole? I don't really know. At this point I just have a problem, and I am looking for a solution.

Has anyone else ever had these observations? Who has ever taught on this issue? Could we as a church be more hateful toward those outside Christianity for the reading of the Psalms incorrectly? How do we resolve the apparent contradictions between Jesus love for enemies and the Psalms hatred for enemies?

Addendum:

Since writing this I have been reading authors such as Peter Enns, Scot McKnight, John Walton, and Rachel Held Evans. Their perspective on the Bible answers this question significantly if not completely. The Psalms are ancient literature written thousands of years ago. The authors were on their journey of faith trying to find God within their context. They considered Yahweh a warrior God and a tribal God. Their concept of God and life was nothing like ours. Going to war and fighting and pillaging was as normal as getting a coffee from Dunkin is for us. Over time God has revealed himself more (primarily through Jesus). Thus we know better in our modern understanding of God to ignore those aspects of the Psalms that are in conflict with the teachings of Jesus. Therefore, we should not be allowing the psalms to influence us toward binary thinking or hating our enemies.

How I use the Scientific Method Every Day

I love Jesus. Most of the time I like Jesus. I am learning to love the church again. These are thoughts as I continue my faith journey from deconstruction to reconstruction and beyond…

I am a geek and I love the scientific method. There.

A lot of people believe that the scientific method is just for scientists. But Oh that is so not true. In fact I think that if we applied the scientific method to our personal belief systems and public discourse we would all be in a much better place.

The two aspects of the scientific method I want to address are research integrity and peer review.

Research integrity means that we never take short cuts to disprove our hypothesis. We give it all we have and research every aspect, every equation, every function. A great deal of effort is made to prevent us from making emotional decisions. Rather we let the facts and figures guide the decisions. The point is that we put a LOT of effort into discerning truth and intentionally avoid emotional decisions. We work incessantly to disprove our hypothesis until the only conclusion is that our hypothesis is right before we present our findings.

And then after working SO hard we open up our research to peer review.

If we worked so hard to find the answer, why do we even need to ask others if we are correct? We ask others because humans are fallible. We regularly do our very best research and come up with the wrong truth.

So we do our very best research and then humbly present our findings to our community to see what they think about our discoveries. That is the dichotomy we live with. If we did our very best research we should not have to humbly present our findings, right? And if we must humbly present our findings, why work so hard at the research? If we don't do our very best research we can never uncover truths that have been hiding from us, and if we don't humbly present our findings we risk persisting with a wrong interpretation that our community could have saved us from.

Let's apply these ideas to the culture wars and the current political environment. Many of us don't do good research. We incorrectly equate hearing the same idea told to us 50 different ways with research. That is not research. In the scientific method we form a hypothesis and then test it by trying to DISPROVE it. If we think something FOX News or MSNBC says is true, research is reading information NOT on those sites to get more information that could disprove the hypothesis. If after doing our very best research, we can not disprove the hypothesis, we can know we have done our due diligence, but the job is not done until presenting our ideas to our peers for their review.

Peer review is not posting a diatribe on social media. It is presenting your ideas intelligently and succinctly with humility and openness to feedback. When the feedback comes, peer review is listening carefully to the feedback and seeing where you could have been off in some way whether small or great. It is also going out of your way to welcome conversation. Most people are so used to fighting, they forget how to discourse. You must help create a safe space for discussions.

The systems in our world tend to tell us and retell us the same things. They discern what our hunches are and they find people and systems that will tell us we are right and solidify our beliefs without presenting anything to the contrary. They work us up emotionally so that the beliefs become intrenched in our psyche.

Consider theology. It is a hallmark of the Protestant church that every person should be able to read the Bible for themselves. Taking that further, it is a hallmark of the evangelical church that each person can interpret the Bible independently and “know” they have interpreted it correctly because when God spoke to us. The church would be so much better if we diligently studied the Bible but then humbly allowed peers and mentors to speak into our lives to correct or confirm our interpretation. Note: there is no such thing as the plain reading of the text; there are only interpretations. 

But there is a way out. We must do our very best research and then humbly present our findings to our community to see what they think about our discoveries. When we work hard and dialog effectively, there will be nothing that can stop us from solving our community's challenges.

Everything I Hate about Las Vegas

Note: When I put my thoughts on paper, I do so to bring myself clarity and to engage others in discussion. I don't expect anyone to agree or disagree with everything I think. I'm not trying to tell you how you should think. I am telling you what I am thinking today and hoping we can dialogue.

Spoiler Alert. There is nothing fun here. It is just my rant about an oppressive system.

I recently returned from Las Vegas. We have a big trade show there each January. Walking around I just felt like I was in a yucky place. Why? What was my problem 

• I hate the name Gentleman’s club. It twists and distorts the reality of what man should bear that title.
• The city is built on gambling and the oppression and subjugation of women
• Gambling specifically is a problem. It’s fine for those with lots of money that can enjoy the sport. But it has ruined others financially. They publicly play lip service to "Safe Gambling" while utilizing every means possible to suck people into complete dependence to their wares.
• It is thoroughly hedonistic and materialistic
• It does not reflect any of my progressive or my Christian values
• It revels in its permission granted to sin. “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”
• I hate that a few miles north there is the beauty of creation at red rock canyon but few people see it because they are distracted by man made idols.
• It is situated in a place with chronic water shortages yet it uses incredible amounts of water every day.

How Trump Ruined My Faith

I love Jesus. Most of the time I like Jesus. I am learning to love the church again. I am allowing myself to ask questions I never asked before. I don't ask because I want to degrade Jesus, but because I think He is strong enough for my questions. These are thoughts as I continue my faith journey from deconstruction to reconstruction and beyond…

I was a Never Trump'r from the very beginning. I thought it was joke that he was running for president, and I knew a real candidate would eventually eclipse him in the primary. But I was wrong, and he wrecked my faith  

It wasn't really Trump's fault, he just made obvious issues that were there all along.

Trump's presidency revealed the following about the American Church which I did not know or blissfully ignored.

• The churches call that Character Matters was merely a momentary political strategy
• The church has been seduced by the desire for political power.
• The church did not trust in God

In Bill Clinton's presidency, he had major moral failures with Monica Lewinsky. The American Church called foul and screamed that "Character Matters." I was right there with it. How could the President of the USA be so devoid of morals? How could good policy be truly good when the man did not demonstrated morality and ethics? I wanted him to be impeached.

Fast forward to 2015-2016, I "knew" one of the more ethical candidates would rise to the top as the church's favorite.  So I could not believe the evangelical church was coalescing around Trump, who clearly had significant ethical issues. I was personally crushed by the evangelical church because of the hypocrisy of our actions. Unable to separate my faith in the church, its leaders, and faith in Jesus, my faith in all were crushed

Why would the church support a man like trump? According to John Fea in Believe Me, one reason the church supported Trump was to gain power. It did not matter the nature of the power. We just wanted power. We wanted a seat at the table and we were willing to make a deal with the devil to get it. The height of my disgust was the day Trump stood with a bible aloft in front of St Johns Church during the time of racial unrest. That was the time where it was obvious that Trump did not care about the church, but just wanted to use it for his own power.

Why are we so drunk with a need for power?  The desire for power is so fundamental in humans, especially men, that it can only be tamed by trust in God. Apparently, we don't trust much. Secondly, the evangelical church prefers forcing citizens to live righteously over convincing them to choose to live righteously.

Suddenly I saw that I was a part of hypocritical, power hungry, and untrusting organization that was repulsive to many of those on left that we should be reaching for Jesus. I have been so embarrassed by the church now for years. Eventually, I was able to divorce my relationship with the church from my relationship with Jesus, so that I could begin to rebuild the one with Jesus.  I think I am at a place now where I would be happy to invite someone to know Jesus, but I would be hesitant to know what church to invite them to.

And even now I am returning to a place of valuing the church. I see the faults, but I am beginning to see the value alongside the faults. I just hope that more people in the church can begin to recognize the dysfunction in our behavior the past years and find our way to behave better in the public square.

Looking back it is so weird that a politician could so wreck my faith. It has been a spiritual struggle the last few years. Nonetheless, I am glad to have walked this road, for my faith is more pure even if it might be weaker.

Electing God, you have gathered a people from every tribe and tongue and nation into your church that we may be salt and light in the world. Preserve and protect your church that it may then be free not to care for its own preservation but pour itself out for the world you love. In Jesus’ name, amen. (HC 54) Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 54

What Marvel can Teach the Church

I love Jesus. Most of the time I like Jesus. I am learning to love the church again. I am allowing myself to ask questions I never asked before. I don't ask because I want to degrade Jesus, but because I think He is strong enough for my questions. These are thoughts as I continue my faith journey from deconstruction to reconstruction and beyond…

When I was growing up I remember watching Superman and Batman on TV. They were great memories. Superman and Batman were always completely good and the bad guys were always, well wholly bad. It was so easy, and it fit so nicely with my childlike preference for black and white.

Somewhere, around the turn of the century, I observed a change in our superheros on the big screen. They were no longer wholly good. When the movie Civil War came out, I boycotted the movie for years. The idea that superheros could get in a fight was more than I could handle in my mind.

However, as I began to watch more of the Marvel movies, they began to change my perspective. Gradually, it began to make sense that superheros could have flaws. In fact some of the heroes struggled with some of the same challenges that I had. I began to relate to the superheroes in ways that I never could in the 70's superhero shows. To be honest, that connection sucked me into the Marvel Universe.

I began to realize that we are all flawed individuals. And it had a dramatic effect on my relationship with Jesus.

All my life I had a very black and white perspective on Christianity and more specifically the church, thinking that the American church was always 100% right and the World was always 0% right. This belief had led me to be prideful and even power hungry, and I am certain I was not alone.

I thought that assuming the church, the hope of the world, could be wrong or mistaken was paramount to denying Jesus but realizing we are flawed does not prevent us from reaching the world; it helps the world to connect with us and eventually trust us. When people trust the church, they can finally listen to the church, and, if we do it right, hear Jesus.

Clearly Jesus is always right, but when we assume our interpretation of what Jesus wants is 100% accurate, we set ourselves us for mistakes.

I opened my eyes to see more of the world. I realized that genuine Christ followers in my community thought differently than me and my church. Then I realized that those differences were magnified even more when I looked at the church around the world. The more I saw the more illogical it was for me to assume that me and my church were indeed the keepers of all Christian orthodoxy. I realized that I probably had at least some things wrong. If I could have some things wrong compared to other Christians, it followed that I could even have some things wrong compared to those outside the Church.

I used to think that if I studied rigorously I would always come to the 100% correct answer, and I could use that to beat others over the head as needed. Now I see that I should study rigorously to find the most faithful, most accurate answer to questions, but then I must humbly hold the answer loosely in my hands recognizing that I still may be wrong, continuing to listen to others.

The path I have taken with Marvel, I have now taken with the American Church. I now see that the church does make mistakes, and that sometimes the World gets things more right than we do.The American Church would be well off to assume a more humble relationship with the world and listen to it. Were we do this I believe the following could happen

• Our prideful attitude toward the world would morph into a humble, listening attitude
• We could deny our thirst for power and trade if for a thirst to love people into the kingdom of Jesus
• We would see real lasting work in our churches and our communities as more people began to trust the church and partner with it.

A Christian Perspective on Universal Healthcare

Most Christians I know are against the idea of universal healthcare. I believe that is due to a belief in scarcity and the desire to hold on to power.

I have heard so many fellow Christians offer the following commentaries about healthcare in other industrialized nations. "Well, that's what happens when you have universal healthcare; _________________"

• You can't get care fast enough
• The quality of the care is less
• Doctor's don't care any more.

We are convinced that there is and would be a scarcity of healthcare. What we really are saying is, "I am currently getting appropriate healthcare under this system, and I don't want the system to provide care to all citizens, because my care may suffer." This idea is wholly incompatible with Jesus' teachings

Philippians 2:3-5 says

Don't be selfish; don't try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of other as better than yourselves. Don't look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.

Jesus gave up his position of power in order to help us to be whole spiritually. In the same way we should be willing for us to lower our standard of healthcare in order to provide healthcare for others. Truth be told, many of us believe that those with less healthcare are less important to the society, and in a Darwinian natural selection perspective should not siphon away good care from those that are important to society. Furthermore, how can we as Christians start from a paradigm of scarcity anyways. Does not the bible teach us that God owns the cattle on a 1000 hills? Can we not trust God to meet our needs?

Therefore, not only is the selfish withholding of healthcare (and thereby power) sinful, but the scarcity concept itself betrays our lack of faith in God.

When we have good healthcare we have power over those with poor healthcare. And no one is immune to the insatiable desire to hold on to power. The desire for power is one of the strongest emotions we all feel. The reality is that we make emotional choices that help us to retain power, and the support those decisions with other logic reasons.

Would there be challenges to open up healthcare? Certainly, but shouldn't we be willing to do the hard work in order to love both the powerful and the powerless?

Currently, in the United States healthcare is a privilege. Every privilege gives that person more power. We the people that have the power should be willing to provide healthcare to all so that it is not a privilege, and Christians should divorce themselves from the typical conservative position and lead the way in this effort.