Selling the Vatican Won't Feed the Poor - But Keeping it Open Will

"Sell the Vatican - feed the world!" It's become the popular way to protest the church due to a misconception that the value of Vatican owned property is great enough to feed world's hungry. This short sighted solution (which is obviously a thinly-veiled insult) would actually hurt the needy rather than do any good. Here's why.

How much do you think the Vatican is worth? Some estimate its value at more than $900,000,000. Fair enough. Heck, let's even round it up to a cool billion.

In 2010, the Vatican gave five billion dollars in charitable aid. In just one year. (Some estimates bring this amount even higher.) That's what the Vatican does, each year, for the needy. If giving that amount annually does not "feed the world" then a one-time donation of one billion dollars will only be a drop in the bucket.

Pope Francis has recently upped the ante. He just decided that his employees don't need annual bonuses, anymore, and is giving that money to charity. (I assume you do the same thing when you get a bonus or you wouldn't be criticizing the church...right?)

The Vatican is donating billions of dollars every year to the poor. Removing the institution would be catastrophic for the many people who depend on that organization for their basic needs.

Besides, have you ever actually been to the Vatican? It's a museum. It's full of valuable things because they are stored there for people to see. I notice that no one's asking the Smithsonian to sell their stuff, even though they have over 500,000,000 dollars in collectible coins and a space shuttle that is worth billions. (Should we change our cry to "Sell the Smithsonian?") The Vatican museum draws visitors from all over the world who help feed the hungry when they buy tickets and leave donations.

If you care about fighting poverty then don't ask the Vatican to close down, because you should be thankful for them. A lot of people are.

Update: Moments after posting this, my pastor texted me to say that I had left out a few zeroes on one of my numbers. It has been fixed. Thanks, Grant!

Church is Sometimes Like a Rock Concert - And That's Fine

The comparison between rock concerts and church has been coming up a lot, lately, and I decided to throw in my two cents.

I've been to a lot of rock concerts. I've seen Bob Dylan, Beck, Santana, Skillet, B.B. King, and a lot more.  I've been to a lot of different church services, too. I've recited the liturgies in different languages, absorbed the complex teachings of the traditional hymns, and raised my hands with the sounds of modern worship.

These two things, church services and rock concerts, can seem very similar - and that's not a bad thing. In fact, that's how it should be.

The Rally

Recently, I sat through a sort of variety show where singers performed famous songs from the last fifty years. The crowd really got into it when someone did Michael Jackson's 'Man in the Mirror,' but it wasn't just to celebrate the artist. The people around me were really getting into this idea of making themselves into better people.

Two months ago, I saw Robert Plant (he used to be the lead singer of Led Zeppelin) in Dallas, and his encore song was the old Christian spiritual 'Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down.' (It was on a Willie Nelson album, too.) The crowd loved it. A lot of his fans are not exactly church goers, but the beautiful message of the song - fighting evil with the power of God - was not lost on the audience.

The same thing happens at church. Maybe it's through reciting a liturgy, or maybe it's during folk-rock versions of old hymns (like we do at my church), but, either way, we're rallying around the things we believe in and being given an emotional reminder of our convictions, as a group.

Meditation

Do you ever just sit still and think? Are you normally too busy, or distracted, to do that? Music can help. Imagine a few verses of 'Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,' ("Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it...here's my heart, Lord, take and seal it...") followed by a beautiful rendition of the melody on a violin. It's finally time to sit still and listen.

Music can encourage our minds to stop moving and settle down. The beauty of God's redemption can be discussed through lyrics, and we can reflect on that beauty while we sit still and take in the sounds. In this way, good music is sort of like the audio version of a stained-glass window in a cathedral.

St. Augustine (who, contrary to popular belief, really loved music) said that a good voice and a good song helped him to set his mind on higher things. Concerning music, he actually said, "I do not see what could be a more excellent, useful, and holy exercise for a Christian congregation." Augustine would rather hear music at church than do anything else while he was there.


Of course, not everyone sees it this way. Some people go to concerts to drool over pop stars, and that sort of thing doesn't have anything in common with a good church service. It's easy to see why someone would criticize church music if it looked like an American Idol audition, but performing music with artistic integrity has always been a meaningful Christian tradition.

Remembering Regina, Who Often Touched My Leg

She was a kind soul who offered her friendship to everyone, providing her quiet companionship and unassuming humility without wanting much in return. No one was too poor, too boring, or too anything for her, because she thought every friendship was equally precious. And she even got a long with dogs. (Except that one time...)

I'm talking about a cat, of course. A cat that is no longer with us.

And it reminds of Sherlock Holmes. In The Naval Treaty, Holmes tells Watson that he believes in God, and that God must be a nice, benevolent sort of deity. Even though Holmes is sometimes shocked at the bloodshed and tragedy in the world, he still sees beauty in things like flowers and says that "only Goodness gives extras." It's not necessary for flowers to be pretty - it doesn't serve any purpose - but providing these little "extras" is, according to the world's greatest detective, how we know that there is a loving God behind the scenes of this mad world.

Regina always brightened my day. She wasn't the most clean or attractive cat I ever knew, but she was certainly the kindest. These little "extras," like poor, old Regina, remind me that I'm not alone, as long as I take the time to notice them.

(I hope you don't mind that I've departed from my usual academic drivel for this emotional side note. I'll be back, next week, with the dry, pedantic entries you've come to expect.)

Playing the Race Card and Overreacting

I recently came across an old Frontline documentary called A Class Divided, in which 3rd Grade teacher Jane Elliott decided to put the phrase "actions speak louder than words"... into action. The day after Martin Luther King Jr was shot and killed, one of Ms Elliott's students came to her saying "They shot a king last night Mrs Elliot. Why'd they shoot that king?" "I knew," Elliott explains, "that it was time to deal with this in a concrete way, not just talk about it, because we had talked about racism since the first day of school."

Jane Elliot went into her all-white, rural, Iowan classroom that day and divided her students according to eye color: "the blue eyes" and "the brown eyes." The first day, the light-eyed children get to be "on top" while dark-eyed students suffer various limitations on their freedoms and a running narrative about the "nature" of brown-eyed versus blue-eyed people---the next day, roles reverse. With remarkable insight and unmitigated moxie, Ms Elliott gave her students the incredible gift of living in an other's skin. Once again, we see empathy inextricably connected to creativity.

The film documents these children and a separate group of adults working through Ms Elliott's exercise. When discriminated against, both children and adults feel and act out, or withdraw, in hopelessness, isolation, anger, and aggression. They express feeling trapped, like the whole world is out to get them, like they can't win and they don't matter. They feel all this after one day of discrimination. One day.

People who have never experienced categorical discrimination often casually, and sometimes defensively, dismiss the reality of entire communities by suggesting they are "overreacting" or "playing the race/gender card." This kind of response is a clear indication that these folks have yet to learn how to listen. This is not to say that oppressed and weary individuals and communities are never overly sensitive, or that someone with an outside perspective can't gently point that out; but you'd better darn well know that person personally and have earned his or her trust by having a long history with that person of real listening.

Before dismissing the reality of millions of people by accusing them of overreacting or being "too sensitive," think about this eye-color experiment. Take that reality, that one day of discrimination, and compound that experience and the toll on the human spirit by an inheritance of discrimination that stretches over 200 years.

Essayist and Christian thinker Dorothy Sayers attempts a similar experiment in her short, pithy essay "The Human Not-Quite-Human." After rhetorically imposing upon men the gendered narrative/social commentary women experience in order to help men (and women) understand gender discrimination, Sayers puts it this way:

If, after a few centuries of this kind of treatment, the male was a little self-conscious, a little on the defensive, and a little bewildered about what was required of him, I should not blame him. If he traded a little upon his sex, I could forgive him. If he presented the world with a major social problem, I should scarcely be surprised. It would be more surprising if he retained any rag of sanity and self respect.

Take an hour out of your evening tonight to watch this video, or watch it over a couple of lunch breaks this week; you will come away with profound food for thought and an enriched perspective. I did.

Dating site mingling with Christians

Many have seen the ChristianMingle.com television commercials and taken pause at the boldness of their "Find God's Match for You" tagline.  While the tagline has issues, many other marketing techniques of the site far eclipse the tagline's boldness.

Online dating is a great resource, and I used it myself while single.  I have no problem with singles using ChristianMingle.com.  As the current largest Christian dating site, I would even encourage singles to utilize this option if they desire, since the chance of meeting someone goes up with the amount of users on the site.

But, ChristianMingle.com is not a Christian business or run by Christians.  It's owned by Spark Networks who first ran a Jewish dating site before branching out into other niche specific markets.  I've rarely seen a product marketed to conservative Christians by an organization that isn't Christian. The lack of knowledge in the specific intricacies of conservative Christian theology shows clearly in their marketing ploys.

I'm concerned that Spark Networks' marketing research resulted in advertising their product through these techniques to conservative Christians.  What does that say about the conservative Christians they try to reach?  Clearly they've done well with their marketing.  The site continues to grow, and they continue to invest.  You can see their quarterly earnings report on the investor relations portion of their website.

The front page of ChristianMingle.com links to their "Statement of Christian Faith", more about "The Lord Jesus Christ," and an "Advisory Board."   The site wants to draw the reader in and give a familiar feel similar to going to your church or favorite ministry website.

The advisory board is comprised of Christian leaders from organizations that many would recognize.  It states the advisory board exists, "to provide guidance and feedback..." for their business and website.  Which means they don't have to listen to anything from this board if they decide not to do so.  I bet these advisers have little, if any, influence on the dating site and the actual benefit for the business is listing the adviser's names and organizations on their site.

Does the target audience of the dating site buy into all of this?  I really wonder.  Maybe most don't.  Maybe they understand that if many other Christians use the site they can also tap into the large database and potentially find a mate.  But, I believe the market research shows these tactics increase users.

The kicker is their "Statement of Christian Faith," which is complete nonsense.  It's set up like a doctrinal statement but does a good job of saying very little while using big words in run-on sentences.  I'm weird, but really enjoy reading doctrinal statements, and this is not like anything I've seen.  All denominations of orthodox Christianity agree on certain beliefs such as the Trinity and Jesus being fully man and fully human. Their statement includes neither.

I bet, sadly,  many Christians read the "Statement of Christian Faith" and don't see these problems.  The statement simply lists a bunch of buzzwords conservative Christians like. They aren't un-Christian buzzwords and phrases, but as a whole, the statement isn't Christian.  If I were not Christian, had no qualms about messing with another faith's theology and was trying to market to conservative Christians, it's probably the same statement I'd write.

We need to take a hard look at why these tactics work.  Do conservative Christians like reading "Jesus" and "Bible" and want to get married so much that they ignore everything else?  It seems true for many who join ChristianMingle.com.

Don't Believe What You Read - The Pope is Not Offering Indulgences on Twitter

C'mon, people.

Earlier this week, the major news outlets said that the Pope was offering to get people out of Hell by following him on Twitter. It was the joke of the day. Protestants with an axe to grind were trying to use it as an example of the corruption of the Vatican, while others thought it provided a reason to avoid organized religion, all together. But I thought the story sounded absolutely ridiculous.

Those who follow Catholicism more closely were quick to point out the facts - Pope Francis offered no such thing. It makes for a good headline, but it's just not true. Naturally, people will probably think this really happened for years to come because so few people are willing to look past news headlines for the truth. Pope Francis has shown himself to be a down-to-earth, reasonable person, so we shouldn't be so quick to believe these sorts of stories about him.

From StPetersList.com

History and Sympathy: How Hitler Helped One Man Understand the Puritans

Last Monday, Edmund Morgan, one of the greatest American historians of all time, died at the age of 97 (you can read a very kind and thoughtful obituary here).  In an interview, Morgan once said: "I was still an atheist, as I am now, but that day in Breissbach I became a Calvinist atheist."

What leads an avowed atheist to study the Puritans and eventually become a "Calvinist atheist?"

Morgan developed a great admiration for the depth and elegance of Puritan thought in his early studies.  Still, he could never come to grips with some Puritan doctrines, like total depravity - the belief that all humans are depraved deep down and sinful throughout their being.  How could these people believe these things?

After these early studies, in the Summer of 1938, Morgan was touring through Europe with a friend.  On August 29, they had stopped in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, not far from the French border.  The morning paper had announced that Hitler had sent an ultimatum to Czechoslovakia demanding the return of the Sudetenland.  German SS soldiers were scrambling around everywhere, preventing people from crossing into France, and blocking foot traffic.

Suddenly, a big open-topped Mercedes car pulled up in front of them.  SS soldiers arranged and watched people nearby, and stood guard along the street, hands on their pistols.  Then, he passed by: Hitler in his own car, saluting the soldiers and people on the streets.  He was there personally to inspect Rhine fortifications in preparation for war.

Morgan recalls:

We sat quietly, not ten feet from him as he passed slowly by.  I could not help but thinking that if I had been armed I could have shot him...No one had searched me or any other patron of the beer garden...
The point of this story, for me, however, is that I knew I was looking evil in the face...The part those fresh-faced...young men in black [SS] were playing was no secret, either.  But they all looked so human and so everyday.  Even the Gestapo agent could have been a stodgy change-met tourist...Human beings are capable of great good, but I know that the capacity for fathomless evil is equally human, and it wears a smiling face."

It was then that "Puritan theology began to make sense" and "human depravity suddenly acquired a face."  It was then that an atheist and budding historian became a "Calvinist atheist" - someone who understood and sympathized with the beliefs of a people who came long before him.

Morgan sets an excellent example for all historians, and all Christians, in this story.  For him, the Puritans were in some ways unknowable, unsympathetic, and just wrong.  It was only when he experienced something personally - in this case, seeing Hitler in person - that he learned to sympathize with the beliefs of the Puritans, even if he still personally rejected the foundation of their entire system of belief: God.

As Christians, we will encounter people, past and present, who seem to us unknowable, unsympathetic, and just flat-out wrong.  If we want to love them well, and want to understand where they are coming from, we must be willing to enter into their worlds, experience their lives, and sympathize with their views.  We should, like Morgan, come out the other side with our biblical beliefs as strong as ever.  But if we do it right, those beliefs will be characterized not by arrogance or disgust, but by sympathy and love.

Further Reading
You can read the full text of Morgan's story here.
American Slavery, American Freedom - one of the best books in American history, period.

Benjamin Franklin - one of the best  biographies of Franklin, who shared a birthday with Morgan

Christians Hunted & Murdered in Egypt

Relatives of Christians killed near Luxor, where Muslim mobs invaded Christian homes and set them alight while besieging other Christians in their homes.

This sort of thing, sadly, happens rather regularly in certain parts of the world, though rarely do we in the West hear about it. This time, perhaps due to all the coverage already in Egypt regarding the ousting of it's former Muslim Brotherhood elected President, even The New York Times reported the violence that extremist Muslims perpetuate against their peaceable Christian neighbors.

According to Times reporter Sarah Mousa,

Since Mr. Morsi’s ouster on July 3, the activists say, a priest has been shot dead in the street, Islamists have painted black X’s on Christian shops to mark them for arson and angry mobs have attacked churches and besieged Christians in their homes. Four Christians were reported slaughtered with knives and machetes in one village last week.

You can read the whole report here.

That this kind of violent persecution happens everyday in various places around the world is something I would hope concerns everybody, not just other Christians. In the West, we view Christianity as the metanarrative---something to rage against and be incredulous toward. But these Christians in Egypt and elsewhere are the marginalized minority. We should be as concerned for them as we are for any marginalized and oppressed people groups.

Photo source: International Business Times

Abortion Ad "Too Controversial"

There's been plenty of buzz about the proposed Pain-Capable abortion legislation currently running the gauntlets of the Texas legislature and the US Senate. I can't help but to wonder whether the pro-choice movement has lost its momentum (perhaps that's why many seem reduced almost entirely to one-liner rhetoric and name-calling). I say this because fewer and fewer folks are OK with abortion. Especially, it seems, among those under the age of 35. Abortion remains a hotly contested and complicated issue, and most of those same youngsters who find abortion morally questionable aren't comfortable making abortion illegal.

This data compels us to ask why. Why the decline? My guess? We can see what we're talking about now. Sonograms and ultrasounds are clearer and more available than ever before, and when expecting parents see the fingers and toes of the little life they've created, it's immensely powerful. Before the faintest hint of a baby bump, we can now see what is otherwise entirely unseen.

And expecting parents aren't the only ones with this new sight. What's the first thing you do these days with the first photo of your little one? Post it to all your sundry social media outlets of course, which exposes countless folks to the (literal) face of what, in this type of scenario, no one calls a fetus.

With these images, something that once was abstract becomes concrete. This is the motivation behind the following ad in support for the Pain-Capable Act and why several newspapers refused to run it, claiming the image is "too controversial."

According to World Magazine, these papers based their censor on alleged ambiguity as to whether the child is dead or alive, which is why one of the publications agreed to run the ad with an alternative image of the same remarkably developed gestation stage en utero (the other two still refused to print it).

It's odd, really. Those three papers should know better. They should know that the quickest way to make sure everyone sees what you're trying to hide is to ban it.

The Morality of Legislating Morality

There has been much discussion lately as to whether the United States, a secular republic, ought to “legislate morality”. Should we permit our legislatures and high courts to codify moral obligations and commands into laws that can only be defended through appeals to religious traditions?  In the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on DOMA and California’s Proposition 8, the debate has centered on whether the federal or state governments should be allowed to enforce the Judeo-Christian conception of marriage. By imposing one religious perspective upon all persons regardless of their religious affiliation, would the government breach the separation of church and state? The same objection is raised against laws aimed at limiting a woman’s right to abort her pregnancy. How can we pass laws that originate in religious convictions when not everyone participates in those religions?

Opponents of “legislating morality” assume that we as a nation can ground the authority of our basic rights and freedoms in something other than religion, and the Constitution and Declaration are frequently cited as providing this secular foundation. While they admit that the writers of the Declaration included some vague references to a deity, those who reject religion as an acceptable basis for laws claim that the Declaration is nonetheless a sufficient safeguard of our rights as American citizens.

This sounds reasonable until one asks, “Upon what authority does the Declaration rest?” What opponents of religion fail to realize is that the Declaration itself makes moral claims without which it would lack any authority at all. In asserting “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” the writers of the Declaration invoked explicitly religious rationale for the rights they defended. Remove the moral component and you negate the protections outlined in the Declaration.

A quick examination of other laws reveals that they too rely on moral claims. Even traffic laws that dictate the correct operation of vehicles rest upon a moral component, namely obligation. Bound up with every law, no matter how trivial or amoral it may appear, the notion of obligation introduces an unmistakably moral dimension. Laws imply an “ought,” and obligation is necessarily a moral consideration that cannot be rationalized in other, purely secular terms.

We as a society “impose” our morality upon people all the time through laws forbidding murder, rape and even traffic laws. Every law privileges one worldview at the expense of another, but we have grown so accustom to these rules that we’ve forgotten their moral, religious origin. When determining the suitability of any law, moral considerations are inescapable.

If proponents of abortion and gay rights wish to convince conservatives of the worthiness of their cause they must devise better arguments than their blanket objection to “legislating morality”. They themselves are appealing to morality in arguing for equality and choice. Perhaps they have better arguments, but they must abandon this one.

No, Bert and Ernie Did Not "Come Out of the Closet"

It's just the wishful thinking of a graphic artist.

The New Yorker just published a magazine cover that depicted Bert and Ernie watching the Supreme Court (who had just declared DOMA to be unconstitutional) on TV while Ernie lays his head, affectionately on Bert's shoulder. These two guys live together, so they must be gay, right?

Of course, this has garnered all kinds of reactions, but it's most important to point out that Sesame Street denies this interpretation, saying that Bert and Ernie have no sexual orientation, whatsoever. Some LGBT enthusiasts have long desired to see these two as a gay couple, but it's nothing more than slash fiction. On the cover of the New Yorker.

Bert and Ernie teach kids about friendship - can't that be enough? Can't we even watch a puppet show without politicizing it?

5 patriotic hymns you probably won't sing this 4th of July Sunday

Tomorrow is July 4th, a day associated with fireworks, homemade ice cream, food on the grill, and, if you grew up Baptist, singing patriotic songs in a church service. In the church of my childhood, patriotism and Christian worship went hand in hand. At a young age, I memorized all the words to The Star Spangled Banner -- both first and second verses -- by reading the lyrics, which were printed in the back of a Gideon New Testament. I clearly remember a patriotic service wherein a man sang the song "I'm proud to be an American," and I'm pretty sure (although the combination of thick Texas accents and a fuzzy childhood memory could prove me wrong) that instead of singing, "I won't forget the men who died and gave that right to me," he actually sang, "I won't forget the man who died..." That's right: singular, capital-M-man -- as in Jesus -- whose death, according to this fervent patriot, was intended to secure our American Right to Freedom.

When I got older and we moved churches, the patriotic fervor cooled. Oh sure, in VBS we started the day by reciting the pledge of allegiance to the American flag, but we always also pledged allegiance to a Christian flag and to the Bible, and while patriotic tunes occasionally came into the services, the older I got the less frequently these songs appeared. It was as though I was witnessing the dying of a trend. By the time I was leading worship services of my own, I didn't think the topic of patriotic hymns would ever arise for me as a serious issue again -- they had simply fallen out of fashion. I figured that patriotism and Christian worship resided in different realms, and that my days of singing patriotic tunes in church services would be limited to those few weeks post-9/11, when "God Bless America" could be heard in every public gathering and, especially, blaring from every radio station through the powerful (Canadian) pipes of Celine Dion.

But the question of whether or not to include patriotic songs in worship services has resurfaced in my current church situation and I've found myself asking, "What role, if any, do patriotic songs play in a Christian worship service?" If you have the answer to that question, by all means, type it in the comments section, because I don't have a certain answer. But in my quest for the answers I found some interesting patriotic songs that have appeared in various church hymnals through the years. Just type in "patriotism" on hymnary.org, and you'll see many of these same results. So without further ado, I present

5 patriotic hymns you probably won't sing this Sunday:

1. "We will vote it dry" by J.B. Herbert:  This song, from 1914, appears under the hymn heading "Temperance/Patriotism." While it is found in the expected collections like Abstinence Songs and The Anti-Saloon League Songbook, it also appears in the 1916 hymnal, Praiseworthy for the Church and Sunday School. The first line reads "All the brewers tell us lager-beer's a food." I can't find any other lyrics on the world wide web, probably because the song hasn't had much staying power. This isn't the only Temperance song from Herbert; he also penned such classics as "Where there's drink, there's danger," and  "The Walls of Jericho Fell Down," which sounds like a normal hymn, until you get to the chorus: "Old Whiskey's walls have got to go/Just like the walls of Jericho/Those rummies won't know where they're at/ Their walls must tumble down, down flat." Frankly,  I'm glad this style of songwriting lost popularity in evangelical churches, otherwise we might have songs like "We will vote it fill-in-the-blank-with-your-favorite-political-platform.  (I like my job, so I don't dare fill in that blank on a public blog :))

2. "Oh Columbia, The Gem of the Ocean" by David Shaw: This patriotic tune was once widely anthologized in church hymnals from a variety of denominations, but it fell out of popularity around 1927. Maybe that's because the line between American pride and American idolatry gets a little fuzzy when it calls America "The shrine of each patriot's devotion," and says, "A world offers homage to thee." I should hope, in a Christian worship service that all devotion and homage are going to God. According to Wikipedia, this song once vied with the Star-Spangled banner for National Anthem status.

3. "Somebody Voted to Ruin my Boy" (Was that somebody you?) by Civilla D. Martin: This one also appears under the dual category of Patriotic and Temperance, but it stands out because its author, Civilla Martin, also penned the beloved hymn "His eye is on the sparrow."

4. Death Bells Tolling, Tolling, Tolling (To the Rescue) by Priscilla Owens: Okay, okay, I know I should stop posting temperance songs, but they're too good not to write about, especially one with a title as uplifting at that! Owens also wrote the popular hymn "Jesus Saves! (We have heard the joyful sound)," alongside many other hymns of a happier tone, and, to her credit, the "Death bells" in this hymn are replaced with "joy-bells ringing" as temperance workers appear with "voices cheering, life-boats steering..." What makes this song more than just a political plea? The line in the chorus that says, "Sign our pledge, now sign, And strength divine shall yet be thine." Basically, this song is "Love lifted Me," but it's about prohibition.

5. O Canada! This song actually appears in the 2008 edition of The Baptist Hymnal, so I have to wonder, when Baptists ask to sing Patriotic hymns, would they include this one? I mean, its second verse is actually more appropriate for a worship service than some of the more popular American hymns:

 Almighty Love, by Thy mysterious power,
In wisdom guide, with faith and freedom dower;
Be ours a nation evermore
that no oppression blights,
Where justice rules from shore to shore,
from lakes to northern lights.
May love alone for wrong atone;
Lord of the lands, make Canada Thine own!
Lord of the lands, make Canada Thine own!

Wow. "May love alone for wrong atone" is a prayer I could say for any nation on any day of the year. Maybe this July 4th weekend we should look above for our song inspiration. And by above, I mean North, to Canada.

Seriously, though, it is God we should seek in figuring out how large a role patriotism should play in a corporate worship service -- not tradition, not political affiliation, not what we think Christians should vote for (because that turned out so well in the case of those temperance songs), but God. After all, it is His glory, not a nation's glory, that we desire when we gather to worship Him.

Why is the Church Trying to Control People?

While everyone is arguing about homosexual marriage and DOMA, I can't stop wondering about role some Christians think they play in culture. Do we have the right to tell other people what to do? I sometimes feel like members of the church want the government to strong-arm their neighbors into accepting a Christian worldview. (Of course, this attitude isn't just found in the church.)

You are entitled to disagree with homosexual lifestyles if you want - it's a free country - but that doesn't mean you should force your gay neighbors to do what you say. I've never seen a Bible verse that charged Christians with being the behavior police for the un-churched.

In the book of John, chapter 6, many disciples leave Jesus when they find His teachings to be too difficult, and He lets them go. He doesn't chase them down or even try to stop them - He just lets them go. In the same way, I believe in respecting people's choices; it is not my job to force my way of life on people. It is my job, however, to maintain my own devotion to Jesus. (Furthermore, no one ever followed Jesus because someone else forced it on them. If that worked, then the Christian governments of our history would still be in place.)

Jesus' followers were not expecting him to be a vagrant; some of them wanted a ruler who would overthrow Rome, or lead their nation as a king on a throne. But Jesus left the corrupt Roman government in place while teaching his followers to love their Roman persecutors, and each other. (By the way, are we kind to our own government leaders in this way? I didn't vote for President Obama, but I'll never post disrespectful pictures of him.)

I understand that it would be nice if the government was a reflection of my personal belief system - and modern U.S. politics seems to be a struggle to see which group's personal convictions will rule us - but I don't think the church has been tasked with forcing everyone to behave as we do. Trying to control culture is impossible, but loving our neighbors and showing them the beauty of God through our own devotion is an attainable goal.