Offense

Matthew 13:53-58 relates the story of Jesus coming back to his home town, presumably after a lengthy time away. He started off by teaching in the synagogue, which was probably par for the course for itinerant prophets. Jesus is different though, and the townspeople recognize this, as had others (see Matthew 7:29).

Their reaction is different than Jesus' audience outside his home town. The passage implies that they grumble to themselves, "where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers? Isn't this (just) the carpenter's son? Isn't his mother's name Mary, and aren't his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren't all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?" (13:54-56)

The next verse is critical: "And they took offense at him." (13:57)

They think Jesus is getting above his station, that he's putting on airs, pretending to be something that he's not. Tradespeople were at the lowest end of the power and influence scale in first-century Jewish society; by right, Jesus should have taken up his father's trade. His choice not to do that probably brought shame to his family. They won't listen to what he's saying because they can't get past who they think he is.

Consequently, Jesus "did not perform many miracles there because of their lack of faith." (13:58) It's not that Jesus' power was diminished, as though it were linked to the amount of faith available. He simply understood that any miracle would have been misinterpreted and distorted. If they would not believe based on the strength of his teaching, what good would a miracle do? Even if they followed him, they would have done so for the wrong reasons.

I do the same thing with Jesus all the time. I get stuck on my own perverse understanding of who the Savior is, and I stop listening. I won't leave my agenda and take Jesus for his (which is what "repent, and believe the good news" means), and as a result there isn't much he can do for me. My heart is hard, my eyes are closed and I am hard of hearing, as Jesus would put it (quoting the prophet Isaiah). Anything he did for me would simply be misinterpreted. I would follow him for all the wrong reasons.

We follow the broken, bleeding One, the Son of Man who abdicated the throne and became humble, just like us. If we make Jesus into another power source, something we engage so that we can be victorious over sin, then we miss the point, I think. We close our eyes to the powerlessness and humility that God intends for us to see and to model. Jesus simply reinforces our already-raging egos, which feed fantasies of accomplishment, achievement and perfection.

We are supposed to see the carpenter's son whose brothers and sisters live next door to us, the son of Mary, a man like us in every way. We should take full account of Jesus' humanity and not reject it in favor of divine power. We must turn to face the naked, suffering Jewish man executed on a cross by the Roman government.

We must accept him as he presents himself to us and not remake him in our own image.

"Blessed is the one who does not take offense at me." (Matthew 11:6)

Am I my Brother's Keeper?

Among the Christians that I know, much the debate around the concept of universal healthcare, or an expansion of the social welfare state in general, revolves around one question: why should I pay for someone else's healthcare? Let's look at this a couple of ways.

The title of this post is Cain's response to God when God asks Cain where his brother is (as if God didn't know). Cain knows perfectly well that he killed his brother, but says to God, in effect, "how should I know? Am I my brother's keeper?" Everything God does next shows us that the answer to that question is a resounding YES. God later enshrines this concept in the Law, which explicitly provides for the people on the lowest rung of the power and influence ladder. We are responsible for each other. We are responsible to God for the kind of society we create. Jesus takes issue with those who have a lot, telling them that if they're relying on it to "save" them, then they should also try getting a camel through the eye of a needle. This is Jesus at his sarcastic best. If you hate the idea of "your" resources being used to fund other people's medical expenses, then Jesus might be talking to you.

From a social-political perspective, there is nothing new about these debates. We were having them in the 1930s when FDR was sculpting what would become the Social Security Act of 1935. Oddly enough, most Americans were fine with the idea of social welfare, but that's because the middle-class was on a par with the working- and lower-classes. The Great Depression was also the Great Equalizer. That said, there was plenty of push-back, mostly from corporate America, the American Medical Association, and conservative churches, all of whom considered the ideal of American individualism, the rugged pioneer surviving on his wits with his family in tow, to be sacrosanct. There were all kinds of financial interests mixed in there too, of course. In the end, FDR managed to get the Act through Congress minus universal healthcare, which the AMA was successful in killing.

So what happened between now and then? The 1950s happened. After the War, the U.S. entered a period of stability and prosperity (which was an inch deep at best...read Elaine Howard May's "Homeward Bound" if you want to know more). It was also a time of stifling conformity. Prosperity became the norm; anything else became a form of deviance. Old values began to emerge: if you were poor, it was because you were lazy. Or black or Hispanic. Because everybody knew that they were shiftless. Racial tensions that remained dormant during during the War awoke with a fury. The almost exclusively-white suburbs looked to the edge of the cities, to the ghettos teeming with brown-skinned people who had moved there earlier in the century, and they began to get angry.

Nevermind that there have ALWAYS been more poor white people than poor black people. Nevermind that there have ALWAYS been more un- or underinsured white people than black people. Still the image persists: the recipient of state health care, ADC or other welfare programs is a black women living in the projects with her four illegitimate kids by three fathers, none of whom are around anymore. Why should we pay for that, huh? They should get jobs and take care of themselves, just like we do, right?

Who are you thinking about when you think of someone without healthcare? Let me help. Hannah and I don't have any health insurance. We haven't for probably six years. It happened when Blue Cross/Blue Shield began to increase our rates 27% a year. We finally had to drop it when the monthly premium reached $1300 a month. It was more than our mortgage, and over twice as much as BOTH of our car payments combined. Our kids are covered by the State of Georgia, thank God. But if anything happens to Hannah or me, we're screwed.

There. Does that put a face on it? Are you your brother's keeper? Are you my keeper? Hannah's keeper? Would you sacrifice some of the luxuries in your health plan so that Hannah and I could see a doctor when we're sick? Because we do get sick you know. We need yearly preventative care just like you do, but we don't get it because we have to choose between feeding our family and getting medical care. I *have* a job. Two of them, actually.

It's easy to stand on principle when you're not the one suffering. It's easy to create caricatures and subtly racist straw men. The real face of the health insurance crisis looks just like Hannah and me, though.

Are you your brother's keeper? I hope so, for their sake and for yours.

I have a big mouth. And sausage fingers.

Hi. I'm Frank. I'm addicted to arguing about stuff on Facebook. I've been clean for about two weeks, and I have to admit that I don't miss it much.

I also must acknowledge that I have a tendency to go way too far in defense of a point. Aggressiveness and rudeness are never justified, even if it's a *really* good point. I also confess that I have a near-pathological aversion to trick questions or "I'm going to straighten you out" kind of language. As soon as I detect either one (and both are commonly aimed at pastors), I go after that poster with all the powers of intellect and persuasion at my command. It's not very nice, and I shouldn't do it. All that to say, there are some very good reasons for me to steer clear of forums like Facebook and confine those kinds of discussions to one-on-one encounters.

There's something bothering me though.

There's an implicit expectation on the part of many of the Christian people I know that we should never engage in any controversy of any kind, that no issue is worth standing one's ground over at the risk of being divisive. In his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King Jr. said "so often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound." I agree with him. In his day the issue was racism. Most denominations refused to take a stand for fear of alienating their more conservative members (who were frequently the biggest givers as well). They talked a big game about "unity," but it was really little more than rank cowardice. For the sake of unity, the church was complicit in a heinous, systematic sin.

That's the way I have come to view huge portions of the American evangelical church today. They're all about the love of God, so long as we limit it to people who are like us. We're all about the poor so long as it's about minimal sacrifice and good feelings and not about addressing political and economic institutions that oppress them (because that might cost us middle-class white folks a lot more).

This position is chuck-full of double standards. Fighting for health care for everyone? DIVISIVE! Fighting for a constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriage? That's fine. Arguing against the next war? INSENSITIVE AND UNLOVING! Agitating to make abortion illegal or picketing a clinic? Not only is it not wrong, it's our DUTY! Moreover, it seems that the disunity comes only from the liberal side, but the conservative side is protected by a blanket of piety and patriotism. It's funny how some Christians are all about the Gospel being a "sword" until they're on the pointy end. Then it's all petulance and whining about the meanness of it all.

I conducted an informal experiment last week. I listened to the most conservative Christian radio stations I could find for seven days in a row. I found that they were, between infrequent songs, little more than a medium by which conservative political values are propagated. They talked politics not once or twice, but EVERY SINGLE DAY, multiple times per day. It wasn't about abortion either. It wasn't about gay marriage (this week). It was about "Obamacare," which is in the Supreme Court for oral arguments this week. Every DJ was clear about his or her message, too. No ambiguity there. They wouldn't even use the title "President," instead derisively, disrespectfully referring to the president by his last name only as though he were a football coach. Christians have to pray for "Obamacare" to be repealed in the name of American Freedom! The worst part was when they'd pray that God would grant wisdom to the Justices so that his will would be done here on earth.

God's will? forty to fifty million people un- or under-insured to the extent that they can't see a doctor when they're sick is God's will? When is that ever God's will?

Beyond the hypocrisy and callousness of it lies the church's revolting capacity to be the "archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent--and often even vocal--sanction of things as they are" ("Letter from a Birmingham Jail" again). I'm not the first one to notice it. People like Washington Gladden, Robert Ely, Caroline Crane, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Bishop Francis McConnell, Charles Stelzle, Shailer Matthews, Walter Rauschenbusch and Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote extensively on it.

I will admit that Facebook is probably the wrong forum for these kinds of discussions, but I utterly reject the notion that the church should take no public stance on issues of injustice. Political injustices require a political remedy; economic injustices require an economic remedy, and the church can and should have a voice in all of it. Where one side pushes a gospel of bigotry, cruelty and exclusion, the other side must push back to bring balance to the message.

Enough damage has been done by a Church full of silent, compliant pastors. I'm not one of them. I hope you're not either. Harry Emerson Fosdick said

"A man who says that he believes in the ineffable value of human personalities and who professes to desire their transformation and yet who has no desire to give them better homes, better cities, better family relationships, better health, better economic resources, better recreations, better books and better schools, is either an ignoramus who does not see what these things mean in the growth of souls, or else an unconscious hypocrite who does not really care so much about the souls of men as he says he does." (Christianity and Progress, 48)