Yesterday’s post on Glenn Beck netted 20 comments, 12 retweets, and a mention on UMReporter.  Maybe I should try partisan sniping more often to get more readers.  Naah, the ends don’t justify the means, don’t worry.

But the responses here and elsewhere have been enlightening as to just how many people are looking for a reason to avoid talking about justice and society’s ills due to a suspicion it’s code language for Democrats.  Is that the true audience of Beck’s remarks?  People who are looking for a reason to leave their church that encourages them to set society to rights?   Being a pastor, I know all it takes is a little backup to self-justify behavior. Sigh.

But to revisit the issue, today (March 11th 2010) Mr. Beck addressed the issue again:

Today, Beck returned to the subject, insisting that the notion of social justice is “a perversion of the Gospel,” and “not what Jesus would say.”  He went on to say that Americans should be skeptical of religious leaders who are “basing their religion on social justice,” and explained his fear that concern for social justice is a problem “infecting all” faith traditions.

Here’s his specific words:

“There are members [of Beck's church] who preach social justice all the time.  It is a perversion of the Gospel.  Nowhere does Jesus say, “hey if someone asks for your shirt, give your coat to the government”…That’s not what Jesus would say.  You want to help out, you help out.  It changes you.  That’s what the Gospel is all about you…you, you change it, not have the government dictate it.”

Again, Mr. Beck makes the same mistake: equating social justice as a code word for the Democratic platform.  From the blogtalk I’ve witnessed, it’s an equating of social justice with the social welfare programs so bitterly hated by that edge of politics. But as talked about 18 different ways on the internets, social justice is beyond Beck’s comprehension in scope and its reflection of the Gospel.

• Jim Wallis, Sojo.net
• Jim Winkler, UMC’s ‘social justice’ guy
• Philosophy over Coffee
• Rev. Abi
• Rev. Nathan Mattox
• Dr. Richard Beck
• Eugene Cho

I like all of these, but I like what Eugene Cho says the best:

But [Cho's church] Quest does speak (and attempts) of pursue mercy, justice, and humility not because they are code words for some sort of agenda but because they are central to the Triune God.  How can you read the Scriptures or examine the life and ministry of Christ and not sense that mercy, justice, and compassion – particularly to those who are marginalized – aren’t dear to the heart of God?

Please don’t leave your churches just because they have the words “social justice” on their website. If you want a good reason to leave your churches: Leave if the gospel of Christ isn’t being preached and lived out.  And thankfully, justice is an integral part to the gospel of Christ.

Boom.

Thoughts?

::update 3/14/2010:: followup posts here (Glenn Beck v. UMC, part deux) and here (Welcome UMC.org readers! Let’s talk about Justice!)



Again, I don’t talk partisan politics on this blog (there’s plenty of that on the internets for all of us), but sometimes things are just so egregious and misinformed that they bear discussion.

Last week, conservative talk show host Glenn Beck said the following about churches that preach “social justice.”

“I’m begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion and read all of the passages of the Bible as you want to read them and as your church wants to preach them . . . are going to come under the ropes in the next year. If it lasts that long it will be the next year. I beg you, look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!”

~ Glenn Beck 03/02/2010

So, church websites with “social justice” huh?  Glenn Beck declares that social justice is a code word for fascism and communism and everything. And people should leave churches that preach it.

If you believe him, then everyone in America better leave the UMC:

The United Methodist Church has a long history of concern for social justice. Its members have often taken forthright positions on controversial issues involving Christian principles. Early Methodists expressed their opposition to the slave trade, to smuggling, and to the cruel treatment of prisoners.

~ UMC Social Principles (original in 1908)

And you’d better dig up John Wesley and flay him (h/t Kevin Watson):

Directly opposite to this is the gospel of Christ. Solitary religion is not to be found there. ‘Holy solitaries’ is a phrase no more consistent with the gospel than holy adulterers. The gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social; no holiness but social holiness.

John Wesley, “Preface to 1739 Hymns and Sacred Poems”

There is no holiness but social holiness.  Any call to leave a church because of “code words” is laughable, but any call to leave a church because of a commitment to social justice is antithetical to the Gospel and ought be exposed as such.

Today, the Anglican Bishop of Liverpool used his presidential address to seek unity within the fractured Anglican Communion…he did so by way of making an interesting comparison. The Bishop talked about the theory of Just War, a Christian ethic that sought a way of making sense of military service and human casualties of war.

The fact that conscripts and pacifists divided along one moral line does not detract from our admiration now nor deflect us from acknowledging now the moral courage of both. We may sympathise with the soldier yet we can salute the pacifist; we may identify fully with the pacifist yet admire the sacrifice of the soldier.  In other words, we can now stand on either side of the moral argument and still be in fellowship despite disagreeing on this the most fundamental ethical issue, the sixth of the Ten Commandments.

It’s an eye-opening example that I haven’t articulated before: in our churches we have people who are pacifist and war hawk, soldiers and hippies, who believe Jesus would condone and condemn violence. We are talking about human lives here!  And yet we (predominantly) keep in fellowship and disagree, with the issue so far from home and yet so close to our military families.  On an issue of life and death, we choose fellowship over schism, don’t we?  When it comes to disagreement over the Sixth Commandment (for crying out loud!), we keep together!!

And yet denominations are dividing, churches are fracturing, and caucus groups are raising tons of money over something that doesn’t kill people: sexual identity.  Incredible.

Over time, Christian denominations and churches have come to accept the full spectrum of Just War theories and pacifistic theories with incredible disagreement but also incredible commitment to covenant faithfulness.  And yet in just a few short decades, disagreement over sexual identity, which doesn’t kill people, has reduced it to rubble and decreased the Church’s social witness (much to the delight of interdenominational caucus groups that seek to blunt Christian social involvement).  In short, covenant faithfulness has been left at the door when sexual identity enters the conversation.

Why? Multiple reasons but I think it is because for biblical literalists there is a plethora of Christian and Hebrew scripture to support either side of the just war debate. Neither side can tell the other they are ignoring plain scriptural account, neither side can use their Bible as a weapon. But for sexual identity, there is no clear counterbalance to the eight clobber passages referencing same-gender relations (at least for biblical literalists).

However, such one-sided clarity didn’t stop entire denominations from affirming women’s pastoral leadership in the face of the Pauline epistles, and didn’t stop John Wesley and the entire abolitionist movement from opposing slavery in the face of its passive acceptance in the Bible. Those social movements found scriptural support slowly, creepingly, and ultimately renewed the church when reconciliation came to fruition.

Perhaps we are at the same junction that war, women in ministry, and abolitionism was at.  The Bishop seems to think so as he crescendos into a call for unity:

Just as the church over the last 2000 years has come to allow a variety of ethical conviction about the taking of life and the application of the sixth Commandment so I believe that in this period it is also moving towards allowing a variety of ethical conviction about people of the same gender loving each other fully. Just as Christian pacifists and Christian soldiers profoundly disagree with one another yet in their disagreement continue to drink from the same cup because they share in the one body so too I believe the day is coming when Christians who equally profoundly disagree about the consonancy of same gender love with the discipleship of Christ will in spite of their disagreement drink openly from the same cup of salvation.

The Bishop concludes with a renewed drive to fellowship with one another:

If on this subject of sexuality the traditionalists are ultimately right and those who advocate the acceptance of stable and faithful gay relationships are wrong what will their sin be? That in a world of such little love two people sought to express a love that no other relationship could offer them? And if those advocating the acceptance of gay relationship are right and the traditionalists are wrong what will their sin be? That in a church that has forever wrestled with interpreting and applying Scripture they missed the principle in the application of the literal text? Do these two thoughts not of themselves enlarge the arena in which to do our ethical exploration?

I believe that to have “diversity without enmity”, as the Dean put it at the Bishop’s Council, provides a safe and a spiritually and emotionally healthy place for Christians of differing convictions to discern the will of God for our lives. To know and to do God’s will is our calling. The place for that discernment is the Body of Christ where the different members, differentiated by the diversity of our graces, gifts and experiences, are called to be in harmony and love with one another.

I think this is fascinating because the Bishop is a believer in traditional Christian sexual relations and would be gladly welcomed into the most homophobic of church circles.  But this Bishop can see people holding differing views on killing people share the common cup, so why not sexual identity disagreements as well?  It’s a powerful witness.

Perhaps it is time to move towards an embrace of Just Sexuality, or the acknowledgement of a sexual ethic that seeks wholeness in relationships, justice in ways & means, with biblical foundations. With such an ethic the church can more clearly and forcefully witness to a culture that embraces life-sucking forms of sexuality at every second of media depiction.  Do we have such an ethic already? Sure. But just as the Just War theory took twists and turns over time (Aquinas in the 1200s changed it significantly), perhaps we also can develop a more nuanced ethic for the modern age.

Just War has been around for 1600 years. For 1600 years, Christians have disagreed over the taking of human lives…and yet they stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the pews singing together. And they will for the next 1600 years, I guarantee!  So for the next 1600 years, why can’t we continue to stand together with each other in disagreement over Just Sexuality and instead seek an ethic together that satisfies no one fully but places our trust in God, turning our energies outward to heal the world in its brokenness, and replaces self-serving calls for schism with renewed dedication to life together?

I think we can...at the molecular level of the church, starting with my pew, and your pew, and the pew behind and in front, until entire churches respect a diversity of belief and commit to keeping in fellowship with one another.  There will be casualties, there will be crises of faith, but there will also be a grace that calls us to diversity without enmity for the sake of the shared mission of the body of Christ.

Thoughts?

This is a followup to the Purpose Driven Genocide post a week or so ago.

In response to the Uganda issues, Rick Warren has posted a video where he outlines his opposition to the bill.  He has 5 points that he makes:

First, the potential law is unjust, extreme and un-Christian toward homosexuals, requiring the death penalty in some cases. If I am reading the proposed bill correctly, this law would also imprison anyone convicted of homosexual practice.

Second, the law would force pastors to report their pastoral conversations with homosexuals to authorities.

Third, it would have a chilling effect on your ministry to the hurting. As you know, in Africa, it is the churches that are bearing the primary burden of providing care for people infected with HIV/AIDS. If this bill passed, homosexuals who are HIV positive will be reluctant to seek or receive care, comfort and compassion from our churches out of fear of being reported. You and I know that the churches of Uganda are the truly caring communities where people receive hope and help, not condemnation.

Fourth, ALL life, no matter how humble or broken, whether unborn or dying, is precious to God. My wife, Kay, and I have devoted our lives and our ministry to saving the lives of people, including homosexuals, who are HIV positive. It would be inconsistent to save some lives and wish death on others. We’re not just pro-life. We are whole life.

Finally, the freedom to make moral choices and our right to free expression are gifts endowed by God. Uganda is a democratic country with remarkable and wise people, and in a democracy everyone has a right to speak up. For these reasons, I urge you, the pastors of Uganda, to speak out against the proposed law.

Good points.

My one beef is that, in his words, since he didn’t “rush to make a statement,” Warren said he was being characterized as supporting the bill.  In FACT, the Uganda bill was previewed 9 months ago, has been in the news for at least 4 months, and the full-text has been available for 2 months.  There’s a difference between “not rushing” and sitting on the sidelines waiting for it to blow over or seizing a media-savvy moment to speak up.  I speak with an air of judgment, I admit, but people who can speak have a responsibility to do so.

As posted previously, Warren has changed his mind on many issues and I’m glad he saw the people through the politics in this situation and has come out forcefully against it.  Thanks for your prayers too.

It’s no secret that this blog is not a fan of Rick Warren’s theology and his advocacy of assassination, his advocacy against gay rights, and his advocacy of passive Christian exclusivity.

But even in our bias we didn’t think he could combine all three into passively accepting state-sanctioned death to gays.  Wow. 

Genocide is defined as the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of a people group.  In Uganda, the government is deliberating a bill that would criminalize homosexuality, call for the death penalty of gay persons with AIDS, restrict free speech, and harsh punishment for straight people who do not turn in gay acquaintances.  There really is no other term to describe this bill other than genocide…the state-sanctioned kind.  If such a law was passed in America, that’s what we would call it.  For complete coverage, scroll to the links on Box Turtle Bulletin and watch the video on Matt Algren’s page.

Why is this being posted here?  Because Rick Warren is personally involved in this process.  He contributed to the rise to power of Pastor Martin Ssempa (pictured to the left), one of the main proponents of this bill.

Ssempa is known for his boisterous crusading. Ssempa’s stunts have included burning condoms in the name of Jesus and arranging the publication of names of homosexuals in cooperative local newspapers while lobbying for criminal penalties to imprison them.

Rick Warren is actively involved in Uganda and made Martin Ssempa the super-pastor he is today (he was a frequent guest in his pulpit and is pictured to the right with Rick Warren’s spouse Kay)…and now refuses to critique his involvement or his former accomplice. While Warren states that he has separated from Ssempa as of 2007, he won’t comment or involve his organization or himself on this issue of genocide.

Why?  Warren states that he doesn’t want to get involved in the political process of other nations.  In his own words:

“The fundamental dignity of every person, our right to be free, and the freedom to make moral choices are gifts endowed by God, our creator. However, it is not my personal calling as a pastor in America to comment or interfere in the political process of other nations.”

That’s a bit hard to swallow when Warren advocated that the Iranian President be assassinated a year ago and has clearly shaped the political process in his work on AIDS advocacy in Uganda itself.

So when will Warren “enter” the political world to stop a state-sponsored genocide of sexual minorities?  Here’s the tipping point:

“Our role, and the role of the PEACE Plan, whether in Uganda or any other country, is always pastoral and never political. We vigorously oppose anything that hinders the goals of the PEACE Plan: Promoting reconciliation, Equipping ethical leaders, Assisting the poor, Caring for the sick, and Educating the next generation.”

Again, just using his own words….if the bill becomes law, the A and C parts of the PEACE Plan would become ineffective.  A human rights commission states:

“HIV prevention activities in Uganda, which rely on an ability to talk frankly about sexuality and provide condoms and other safer-sex materials, will be seriously compromised. Women, sex workers, people living with AIDS, and other marginalized groups may also find their activities tracked and criminalized through this bill”

Rick Warren has no excuses left.  He made the political power behind the bill, he has said he would oppose any measure that hurts his Plan, and clearly has no problems getting involved in the political process.  Rick Warren, by his silence and disregard, is contributing to the genocide of a people group.  Andrew Sullivan summarizes it better than me:

Just as [Warren] publicly inveighed in favor of stripping gay couples of civil equality in California, and then pretended he didn’t, now he distances himself from Ssempe, while refusing to condemn this law reminiscent of early attempts to wipe out minorities in Serbia, Nazi Germany, and Rwanda. This is classic avoidance in an atmosphere of extreme danger. It is the same as the Catholic church’s disgraceful neutrality in Rwanda and Nazi Germany, as they saw a chance to enable others to wipe out a minority they wished could be wiped off the face of the earth…

[Warren] has taken sides, whenever possible, to stigmatize, demonize and now physically threaten the lives of gay people in his own country and abroad. And his silence on this issue means the deaths of others. Warren needs to come out and condemn this law as evil, which it is. And to stop hiding his own enmeshment with the most virulent forms of fundamentalist hatred under the veil of media-savvy benevolence.

A bad.hack on this blog is one that closes a Christian system down and denies God’s grace.  As Sullivan writes above, anytime a Christian system chooses silence and disregard for human life over action and speaking up for minority groups, they are closing the door in the face of prophetic engagement with culture.  For decades Christians have become increasingly involved in politics…why stop now when human lives are on the line?

In conclusion, many atrocities can happen when the people look away when people need them. As my pastor friend Karen Oliveto remarks “to do/say nothing in the face of injustice is to already take a side.” Rick Warren knows this as he twittered on Tuesday “Globally last yr 146,000 Christians were put to death because of their faith. No one, except Christians, said anything.”  By posting that and condemning the rest of the world for passive acceptance, he acknowledges that the Christian response is to respond, to take a side, because silence is itself passive acceptance. And yet he refuses to do so himself.

It is my hope and prayer that Warren, who has changed his mind in the past on important issues, comes around and brings the full weight of his organization and social witness against this issue.  Even if you find homosexuality incompatible with being Christian and outside the human condition, I hope you join in that prayer for the sake of saving people’s lives.

Thoughts?

Here’s a recap of the Blog Action Day participation on Hacking Christianity:

Climate Change 2009

• Hacking Global Warming: exploring how our understanding of God as relational can lead to advances in understanding climate change.
• Hacking Global Cooling: exploring how our human condition of growing closer and yet more frigid towards each other compounds the problem of climate change
• Hacking Climate Change: exploring how aggregate individual responses and caring for individual ecosystems will yield positive understandings of God and our response to climate change.

Poverty 2008

• Hacking Poverty: exploring how poverty is about people with names, that we ought to react out of abundance rather than scarcity, and how we as the non-poor suffer from poverty as well.

Thanks for reading and hopefully we can make a difference.

Part III – Hacking Climate Change

As was said in part I, Climate Change is so huge that to detail exactly what it is, what is causing it, what role humans have in it, is just too tedious. So far, instead, we’ve talked about our understanding of God and the human condition upon which we can rest our struggles with climate change.

There are two assurances that we have even as we wrestle with difficult topics.  The first is assurance that our God is relational because we understand God as Trinity; that is, a relationship between 3 aspects of God:

In the beginning was relationship, says the Trinity [which] reminds us that God is not an isolated individual–indeed, nothing is.

McFague, A New Climate, pp165

We are not alone on this journey, and secondly, we do not have a disconnected God who winds the clock and lets us run:

First, God had made it; second, God loves it; and third, God keeps it.

Julian of Norwich

While the task seems immense, we know we are not alone.  Thus, the most important thing to hold onto is hope.  Not in a disattached sense of “Let God handle it” but rather a hope that frees us from the pressure of outcomes so that we can add our best efforts to the task at hand

I hope that climate change has come up at a time when we are equipped to deal with it with a new tool in our toolkit that has never before been possible: mass collaboration.

So here’s the hack: we focus on the aggregate of small responses, building up our own communities, in coordination with nation-state changes.  Let the politicians and businesspeople do the macro work, while anyone who reads this blog (which isn’t those people) do the micro-work necessary to effect change.

We take our example from Linux. No one single-handedly coded the free operating system; thousands of programmers didn’t code Linux.  They didn’t.  But thousands did fix the little problems and niche areas they felt confident in.  The aggregate of efforts became Linux, but no one or group coded it themselves.  All it was was thousands of independent programmers fixing small problems until the bugs list was manageable.  Same way with Wikipedia: no one wrote all the articles, thousands of people in aggregate maintain them.

And so it will with us.  The aggregate of thousands of human efforts cannot have anything less than a positive impact (a) on our local ecosystems (b) on groups of ecosystems, and (c) on the residents’ understanding of God as lover of humanity.  In promoting understanding of a close relational God that warms our cooled hearts, we are laying the groundwork for an explosion of human potential.  There’s tons of resources and communities…just read a sampling of the Blog Action Day posts and you’ll find tons of both!

Thanks for reading, and have a happy Blog Action Day!

Part II – Hacking Global Cooling

If last post was the good news, affirmations about God, then this post is the bad news, or our human condition.  It is an adaptation of an Earth Day sermon in 2009 I gave.  Read on for more:

Did you know that Earth Day was established in 1970 to oppose something very different than we hear about today?  In 1969 there was growing concern over global cooling, over fears that we were entering into another ice age. These were popular ideas but were ultimately misunderstandings of the scientific data at the time.

Today, we hear a lot about global warming, about the earth growing warmer and hotter as man-made gasses capture heat in the atmosphere and the polar ice caps melt and thus no longer reflect the sun’s warmth back into space.

But I want to talk about global cooling.About the way how we as humans have become cool to one another, detached, unaffected by anothers’ ills.  It seems that everywhere we go people are more and more detached, aren’t they?  Have you ever stood in front of something and hear them say hello, you turn, and they are talking to someone on their cell phone?  I don’t interact with the person on the train because of those white headphones coming out of a pocket. They are listening to music that I cannot hear. Well, sometimes I can hear it.

During Holy Week 2009 I preached the story of 82 year old Helen Jackson who was on the escalator on the train station in Boston and her scarf got stuck, pulling her to ground and slowly asphyxiating her. Dozens upon dozens of people just walked by, not getting involved. The faithful two or three who stopped only needed scissors or a pocketknife or simply brute strong hands to cut through the scarf. Instead, over the period of 15 minutes, Helen Jackson suffocated and died right in front of dozens of commutors at State Street Station in Boston.

I’m sorry to say the science in 1969 was correct, in a sense.  Today, there’s a global cooling when we disregard or ignore our fellow people.

How long will the land mourn, and the grass of every field wither?

Jeremiah 12:4

The earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and withers; the heavens languish together with the earth.

Isaiah 24:4

If God can be found in all, then why do we level rainforests without consideration? It has been emerging over the past 20 years that medicines and cures for ailments are found naturally in the deep mysteries and ecology of rain forests. We are destroying rainforests before we even know the value of what is there.  I am reminded of a clergy friend of mine was asked by a child at a conference in Japan “Why do you adults destroy things that you donít know how to bring back?” This child said that she was raised not to take things apart if she didnít know how to put them back together…then why do we?

Today, the real menace to society isn’t so much that we are destroying the environment, but rather that we are growing ever more colder to it and each other.

On this Blog Action Day we must push back against the ways in which we isolate ourselves from each other and our communal responsibilities.

My friend and ecologist Marla Marcum has said “all theology is ecological.” By ecological, she means the relationships and the web of ways how different ideas interact.  Ecology is about relationships, how the bees pollinate the flowers which take carbon from the atmosphere and put nutrients in the ground, all is caught up in the web of life. 

For our ecology in our theologies, what we believe about God is important (see part I of this series), and global cooling impacts what we believe about God.

• Our ancestors worshiped an earth-friendly God, one who was connected to everyone, because our ancestors were warmed by the earth, not Central Air, and lived and died alongside everyone.  Their God was a relational God.  
• But what kind of God do we end up with in our disconnected world? We end up with gods who only want us to be happy, who want us to have our ‘best life now,’ and who want us to be rich in money and poor in relationality.

What we believe about God impacts how we treat our fellow human beings.  And global cooling is neutralizing our human empathy for people who are dying as we speak due to lack of clean water and other effects of climate change. Those who live on low-lying island nations (millions of people and many of them living in poverty) are especially at risk, as ocean levels rise.  Without reliable weather cycles or normal growing seasons – too much rain or too much drought – crops fail and hunger increases, especially for the already desperately poor in many places of the world.

In Sallie McFague’s A New Climate for Theology, she notes that more people, including a high percentage of children, are dying from climate change than terrorist acts.  And the global cooling is part to blame for that:

The dying is slower and for the most part out of our sight.  As such, it allows for our denial and indifference; in other words, for sins of omission“ 

McFague, A New Climate for Theology, pp145

In our ecology, in our world, global cooling hurts us more than global warming because we have the cause and the cure for our contributions, but we no longer see or care about the effects.  How do we overcome sin of omission and apathy to bring the God of warming to our frigid hearts?

Part III is next.  Thoughts?

Part I – Hacking Global Warming

Climate Change is so huge that to detail exactly what it is, what is causing it, what role humans have in it, is just too tedious.  Though it seems impossible, talking about God (who is infinitely bigger) is actually easier than talking about Climate Change.  It is in talking about God that we participate in Global Warming…the good kind!

One of the key affirmations/assumptions of this blog post is that God is imminent in creation.  The world is in God, God is connected to the world.  As Sallie McFague in A New Climate for Theology states. “God and the world are not two separate realities that exist independently and must somehow find each other.  Rather, the world is ‘charged’ with God as if with electricity” (pg 162).

Some people confuse this with pantheism, meaning that the world is God, instead of panentheism, which states that the world is in God, living like a fish submerged in water.  This form of divine saturation is characterized helpfully by Peter Rollins who talks about God’s hyper-presence: God is all around us and we are unable to truly comprehend because of our finitude and God’s infinitude.

Then why don’t we notice God?  If you’ve ever blown a fuse or tripped a circuit breaker, you know that the circuit can handle electricity…just not too much of it.  In the same way, God’s presence short-circuits our minds and hearts to be unable to truly experience God. 

The sun blinds those who look at it directly by overwhelming the visual apparatus…God’s incoming overwhelms our intellectual and abstractual apparatus.

Peter Rollins, How (not) to Speak of God, pp25

Our circuits can handle a small amount of God’s presence, but at times we notice God even incrementally more in the form of epiphanies or spiritual experiences.  In short, God’s presence is all around us, warming us, sustaining us, and yet as 1 Timothy 6:16 states, God dwells in inaccessible light.

The effects of such a shift in perspective, of locating God not as “up there” “far away” or “inaccessible” is that we notice God everywhere.  God is present in every area of the world.  God is found in love and God is found in suffering; God is found in beauty and God is found in the shit; God is found upstream and downstream. 

This isn’t a new understanding as we hear these words of a Medieval mystic:

The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw–and knew I saw–all things in God and God in all things.

~Mechthild of Magdeburg (McFague, A New Climate, pp162)

Such a theological shift comes with warmth.  When cells are warmed up, they move faster.  When people are warm, we move easier.  When our bodies emerge from hypothermia or a coma, they warm and reactivate as warm blood moves to the extremities.  When we grow in our relationship with God, when we shift our perspective, warming happens because we know God is closer than ever before. 

This form of Global Warming is good as we start to notice what happens to our extremities and what role our actions play on the earth.  We start to slowly awaken to the effects of our actions downstream.  In short, we start to notice what our chilled hearts had not noticed before.  And the realization is dawning slowly: that we humans have an awesome responsibility.  We are growing in our relationship with God, even as iPods and brutal politics drive us apart (see part II).  We are growing in our relationship with God because we are slowly realizing that we are responsible for the global health of this relationship.

Blog Action Day is tomorrow, focusing on climate change. 

We’ve got three blog posts lined up for tomorrow:

1. Hacking Global Warming (conversation partners: Peter Rollins, Star Wars, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Kester Brewin, and Sallie McFague)
2. Hacking Global Cooling (section of a sermon I gave on Earth Day last year)
3. Hacking Climate Change (Julian of Norwich, Linus Torvald, Wikipedia, Sallie McFague, and you!)

Stop on by at 9am, 12pm, and 3pm for the posts!