[Oe List ...] 1/16/20, Progressing Spirit: Mark Sandlin: Just War?; Spong revisited

Thu Jan 16 07:53:25 PST 2020

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}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv4190248458 .yiv4190248458mcnImageGroupBlockOuter{ padding-top:9px !important;padding-bottom:9px !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv4190248458 .yiv4190248458mcnTextContent, #yiv4190248458 .yiv4190248458mcnBoxedTextContentColumn{ padding-right:18px !important;padding-left:18px !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv4190248458 .yiv4190248458mcnImageCardLeftImageContent, #yiv4190248458 .yiv4190248458mcnImageCardRightImageContent{ padding-right:18px !important;padding-bottom:0 !important;padding-left:18px !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv4190248458 .yiv4190248458mcpreview-image-uploader{ display:none !important;width:100% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv4190248458 h1{ font-size:22px !important;line-height:125% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv4190248458 h2{ font-size:20px !important;line-height:125% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv4190248458 h3{ font-size:18px !important;line-height:125% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv4190248458 h4{ font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv4190248458 .yiv4190248458mcnBoxedTextContentContainer .yiv4190248458mcnTextContent, #yiv4190248458 .yiv4190248458mcnBoxedTextContentContainer .yiv4190248458mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv4190248458 #yiv4190248458templatePreheader{ display:block !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv4190248458 #yiv4190248458templatePreheader .yiv4190248458mcnTextContent, #yiv4190248458 #yiv4190248458templatePreheader .yiv4190248458mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv4190248458 #yiv4190248458templateHeader .yiv4190248458mcnTextContent, #yiv4190248458 #yiv4190248458templateHeader .yiv4190248458mcnTextContent p{ font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv4190248458 #yiv4190248458templateBody .yiv4190248458mcnTextContent, #yiv4190248458 #yiv4190248458templateBody .yiv4190248458mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv4190248458 #yiv4190248458templateFooter .yiv4190248458mcnTextContent, #yiv4190248458 #yiv4190248458templateFooter .yiv4190248458mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }  It is laughable to say that Jesus wasn’t political.   
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Just War?
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|  Essay by Rev. Mark Sandlin
January 16, 2020As I write this article, the world awaits Iran's response to the Trump administration's ill advised decision to kill Qassem Soleimani, the high-profile commander of Iran’s secretive Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Let it be said, Soleimani is one of the bad guys. If you believe in evil, this guy is one of the poster children.

Even though I see him as one of the harmful actors in the world today, I say that his killing was ill advised, in part, because former Presidents from both parties have consistently made the decision not to kill him because of the extreme response such an action is expected to draw from Iran.

Indeed, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the next day that “a severe revenge awaits those who have tainted their filthy hands with his blood.” You see, while most of the world saw him as a very dangerous man, he was a bit revered in Iran.

It'd be easy to let that fact somewhat villainize Iranians, but we must keep in mind that Americans have supported some pretty wicked leaders of our own – including the man who gave the final go-ahead on taking out Soleimani.

Before I go any further, I'd like to pause here and address what I imagine might be the elephant in the room for some folks: Why am I getting so political on a religious/spiritual newsletter? Well, basically because I'm a Christian minister who tries to follow the teachings of Jesus.

An article I wrote in 2015 explains my perspective:

.........“It is laughable to say that Jesus wasn’t political.

.........Jesus confronted the very political structures and people who were twisting 
.........and using religion to step on those thought of as “the least of these.”

.........He confronted the politically powerful Sadducees and Pharisees at every turn,
.........calling out their hypocrisy and distorted use of the Hebraic Law.

.........And, he then taught what the Law was really meant for: the expressing of Heaven
.........on earth; a place where grace, love and justice were practiced. Not just any justice, .........the justice of love, of equality, of God.

.........If you want to follow Jesus, it decidedly means being political.

.........If you want to follow Jesus, it decidedly means advocating for the “least of these.”

.........If you want to follow Jesus, it decidedly means being willing to confront abusive .........power structures and people, and being willing to flip a few tables in the process.

.........You simply can’t fully follow Jesus if you aren’t willing to be political and stick
.........out  your own neck, challenging the hypocritical power structures and leaders on 
.........behalf of the oppressed.”

You can read the rest of the article here.

That brings us back to the question of war. More precisely, it brings us to the question of the rich and powerful dragging the rest of us (“the least of these” in comparison) into war.

“Just War” is a question that has occupied the minds of a lot of great thinkers for a very long time. Just War Theory itself has many of its roots in theology. What's important to note is that even if a war meets all of the criteria for being a "just war", that doesn't make it a “good war.” In fact, the opposite is true.

All war is evil. “Just War” just tries to determine the path to the least amount of evil. War is always a horrific option. Always.

I actually wrote one of my final papers for my M.Div. at Wake Forest School of Divinity on Just War Theory. My conclusion was, given the criteria, there has never been a major just war. World War II came close, but the U.S.'s early lack of effort to prevent the rise of Hitler negated its ability to call it a Just War.

For all of the brilliant minds that have focused on the question of “justifying” war, determining when it is a necessary thing, I'm not sure we have made much progress. We still fight wars over people believing differently than we do, over nations seeking material gains, and so many other less than morally based rationale. In modern terms, we also have to add the money making potential of the War Machine to the less than morally based rationale for war.

For me, the equation for determining the “rightness” of a war (if, indeed, there is such a thing) is lacking a primary emphasis on compassion for the innocent.

I'm a bit of an amateur chef. Like a lot of folks who love cooking, I'm a big fan of Anthony Bourdain. His CNN show, “Parts Unknown” traveled to Iran. This was one of his thoughts on the people of Iran,  “Iran was mind-blowing. My crew has never been treated so well by total strangers everywhere. We had heard that the Persians are nice. But nicest? Didn't see that coming.”

The thing is, while I am not the world traveler that some are, I certainly have traveled to many parts of the world. Each time, I am humbled and made hopeful by the people I meet and the friendships I form. War tends to call some of these people “collateral damage.”

When compassion is trumped by consumption, when people are trumped by power, when humanity is trumped by hubris, when morality is trumped by money, when grace is trumped by greed, war begins to look like a good idea and people's lives begin to look like “collateral damage.”

Having just passed through the celebration of Jesus' birth story, I hope we can see more clearly that there's a reason why he was called the Prince of Peace. Sure, you can quote, “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword,” and even two or three other verses, but they don't hold a candle to the more than fifty-some verses where Jesus speaks about peace and peacemaking.

It's funny how things keep coming back to love and compassion, but it needs to be said, it is way far away from loving a person to killing them. Which makes it all the more ironic that a day after Soleimani was killed, the man who gave the final go ahead, was being celebrated by a gathering of Evangelicals in Florida as he claimed that, “we have God on our side.

No. You don't. God is not on the side of killing. God is not on the side of war. God is not on the side of “collateral damage.” God is on the side of love.

I guess there's a reason why we say, “God is love.” In the end, love wins.~ Rev. Mark Sandlin

Read online here

About the Author
Rev. Mark Sandlin is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) from the South. He currently serves at Presbyterian Church of the Covenant. He is a co-founder of The Christian Left. His blog, has been named as one of the “Top Ten Christian Blogs.” Mark received The Associated Church Press’ Award of Excellence in 2012. His work has been published on “The Huffington Post,” “Sojourners,” “Time,” “Church World Services,” and even the “Richard Dawkins Foundation.” He’s been featured on PBS’s “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly” and NPR’s “The Story with Dick Gordon.” Follow Mark on Facebook and Twitter @marksandlin.  |

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Question & Answer

Q: By A Reader

Why do we still pay attention to the Bible in 2020?

A: By Rev. Fran Pratt
Dear Reader,I consider the Bible to be the story of one particular segment of world culture's interaction with the Divine over time. The story begins with one insular clan relating to the Divine in all the ways complex and fallible humans do, getting some ideas right and misunderstanding others. It has traditions, assumptions and rituals surrounding its understanding of higher power; some of which is timeless, others hopelessly limited. The clan grows into a tribe, then into a nation, gradually fractalizing and spreading across places and cultures; all the while struggling to connect with and understand the Divine, and never quite realizing that the Divine is within them all along. There's a grand search for moral truth threading through the whole story - humans asking how best to be in the world? How best to live wisely? And we can see the Divine pointing the way and remaining compassionately present when It's guidance is rejected or scorned. 

Then a Person emerges from the community who is able to sum up the story and speak Divine Truth with humanity's own voice. In this Person the Divine is wholly present; the best is fully embodied. This Person is so compelling that his brief physical presence on the earth changes the course of history in innumerable ways. He embodies Divine Love and Light, and believes that ordinary folks can do the same. He’s the catalyst for a whole new branch of the world's Wisdom Tradition, and inspires many other Saints and Sages in history and in much of today's compassionate work. 

So, yes, I consider the Bible to be a very special and authoritative piece of world literature. The stories it contains, and the overarching story it tells, inspire and guide us still. We’re more enlightened because it exists. To me, this is good enough reason to read it. I don't need it to serve as scientific or historical Truth (although I do think it points to *some* of that), or a rulebook. To me, the story of the Christ's emergence from that particular Hebrew/Judaic wisdom tradition speaks to the character of the Divine. I'm grateful the Christ helped clear up so many of humanity's misunderstandings of the Divine. And the story of the people's movement from insular clan to the "community of heaven" speaks to the Divine's bent toward Oneness.

I have problems with how the scriptures have been misused to justify oppression and greed, and with how the Canon was solidified (reinforcing Patriarchy, erasing women's contributions to the faith), but that's humanity for you. I'm free to read whatever was left out, plus the wisdom literature of other world traditions, with gratitude and curiosity. Humanity is far from moral perfection, but the Biblical scriptures have contributed to our being collectively closer to it than we ever have been. I attribute much of that to the legacy of the Christ recorded in scripture. I think the Christ is a trustworthy representative of moral truth. He embodies Love, and Love is universal moral truth. 

~ Rev. Fran Pratt

Read and share online here

About the Author
Rev. Fran Pratt is a pastor, writer, musician, and mystic. Making meaningful and beautiful liturgy to be spoken, practiced, and sung, is at the heart of her creative drive. Fran authored a book of congregational litanies, and regularly creates and shares modern liturgy on her website and Patreon. Her prayers are prayed in churches of various sizes and traditions across the globe. She writes, speaks, and consults on melding ancient and new liturgical streams in faith and worship. Fran is Pastor of Worship and Liturgy at Peace of Christ Church in Round Rock, Texas.  |

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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

Origins of the Bible, Part X: The Rise of the
Prophetic Movement: Nathan - Prophecy's Father

Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
August 15, 2008The prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures are not religious versions of Drew Pearson or Jeane Dixon. They do not predict future events. Prophets are those who are in touch with values, truth, perhaps we could call it God, and who thus see the issues of life more deeply than other people see them. Perhaps they are the ones who, by standing on the shoulders of others, can perceive future trends and speak to them before others see them developing.

We have known artists to whom prescience has been attributed. A well-known Spanish painter, for example, painted a scene several years before the Spanish Civil War that portrayed his country torn apart in a violent struggle. The Bible might well have called him prophetic. He saw what there was to be seen, but not everyone was able to see it. The power of the prophets was also derived not from the established structures of the social order, but from the prophet’s vision. They were always outside the lives of either political or ecclesiastical authority. As such, they were what King Ahab called the prophet Elijah, “Troublers of Israel”. The established priesthood always resented the prophets for they were not ordained or trained. They were free spirits who somehow spoke with an authority that established figures wished they possessed. The ability to speak to authority in a way that demanded the authority’s attention was the signal mark of the prophetic spirit. None of this, however, answers the question of just why it was that the role of the prophet was able to rise in Israel to such heights that the religion of Israel was said to rest with equal weight on the law (the Torah) and the prophets. It all began, I believe, in a charismatic confrontation between Israel’s most powerful king and a man armed only with a sense of God’s righteousness. That story is told in the Second Book of Samuel and it remains powerful today.

King David lived in the biggest and tallest house in the city of Jerusalem, which meant that when he was out on his roof top he could look at the rooftops of all of Jerusalem’s citizens. One afternoon when he was doing just that, he spied a beautiful woman taking a bath in what she assumed was the privacy of her own roof top. The king was smitten with her charms and at once sent a messenger to her with an invitation to visit the palace to have a tryst with her king. The woman came. Perhaps in the power equations of that world she had no choice, perhaps she wanted to come, the text doesn’t tell us and so we will never know. The two of them, nonetheless, became lovers at least for this brief time. When the lovemaking was over, the woman, whose name was Bathsheba, returned to her home. I suspect this was neither the first nor the last such affair that King David had had and so he did not think much about it once the rendezvous had ended. So it was that that weeks passed and memories faded until they were newly called to mind by a message arriving at the palace directed to the king’s eyes alone. The message read: “King David, I need for you to know that I am expecting your child.” It was signed, Bathsheba.

When David read it, he responded in a typically male, evasive way. “You are a married woman”, he said. That is the first time that we learn from the biblical source that this tryst was an adulterous relationship that the king had had with a married woman. “Why do you assume that I am the father of this baby?” To which Bathsheba responded immediately, “I am indeed a married woman, but my husband Uriah is a soldier in the king’s army. He has been fighting the king’s wars under Joab, the king’s military leader and thus he has not been home for months. There is no doubt, O King, that you are this baby’s father.” Still unwilling to accept responsibility, the king decided on an alternative course of action. It was plan B. He would grant Uriah a furlough so that Uriah could then come home, enjoy the privilege of his wife’s bed and then, in this pre-DNA testing world, they could say this baby came early. It would not be the first time that tactic had been employed. So this permission for leave was conveyed by a royal messenger to the field and a very surprised Uriah found himself being granted an unprecedented furlough.

What King David did not anticipate, however, was that Uriah had the make-up of the “original boy scout”. He was a soldier first, drunk with the camaraderie of warfare. “It would not be fair or appropriate for me to enjoy the comforts of my home and my wife while my buddies are bleeding and dying on the battlefield from which I have somehow been removed. Therefore, in solidarity with them”, he concluded, “I will not enter my home on this leave.” Very ostentatiously Uriah set up a pup tent on the walk beside his home and spent his entire leave there. On viewing this, David, feeling trapped, said: “What a turkey” and began to develop Plan C. Once again a sealed royal order was conveyed to Joab, the commanding officer, this time by the hand of Uriah himself. In this letter David commanded Joab to organize his army into a flying wedge and hurl it at the gates of his enemy’s capital city. Uriah was to be placed at the front tip of the flying wedge, where his death was all but inevitable. It was done. Uriah was struck down and killed. Joab then notified the king that his problem was now solved. King David sent for Bathsheba and she became a member, perhaps the dominant member, of his harem. Finally, King David felt that his problem was solved.

This outrageous kingly behavior, however, did not escape the notice of a highly respected holy man whose name was Nathan. He decided that he must confront the king about the king’s action. The reputation of Nathan was such that the king, unsuspecting of what was to come, granted him the audience that he requested. It must have been a strange confrontation. Here was King David in his royal chambers surrounded by all the wealth, power and opulence of royalty. Standing before him was Nathan, armed only with a sense of righteousness that is contained in what he believed was the moral law of God and the universe. When the two of them were alone Nathan said to the king that an episode of gross injustice in the king’s realm had occurred and that Nathan felt compelled to bring it to the king’s attention. The king encouraged Nathan to speak on. Nathan did so in terms of a parable.

A certain poor man, he told the king, had a single ewe lamb that was treated as a pet in his family. This lamb was fed from the family’s table, slept in the family’s home and shared in the family’s love. Another man who lived nearby, Nathan continued, was very wealthy and owned great flocks of sheep. One day this rich man had a distinguished visitor that he was required by the mores of his culture to honor by entertaining him at a banquet. Instead of taking a lamb from his own flocks, however, he went to the house of his poor neighbor, took his only ewe lamb, slaughtered, dressed and roasted it and set it before his guest. The rich man and his guest dined sumptuously while the poor man and his family were grief stricken. Nathan let the pathos hang as he finished his story. David, upon hearing this tale, was filled with anger and declared: “The man who has done this thing must surely die”.

Then in one of the Bible’s most dramatic moments, Nathan fixed his eyes on the king and said: “Thou art the man!” The king, thought to be all powerful, had been called to answer for his deeds. No one is above the law of God, he learned. That was a lesson rare in the ancient world, indeed it was a message unique to the people of Israel. David might have been divinely chosen to be king, as the biblical story suggests, but the King of Israel still lived under the authority of the law of God and must answer for his behavior. David, to his great credit, did not banish Nathan from his presence, but heard the voice of God through the words of Nathan and publicly repented. He sought to do acts of restitution. When the child of this adulterous liaison died shortly after his birth, David and the biblical writers interpreted this death as divine punishment. Perhaps in a further act of trying to make things right, David lifted Bathsheba out of his harem and into the public role as his queen. Their second child was born a while later. His name was Solomon and he was to be the successor to David’s throne and to solidify the royal line of David that was destined to last, at least the Southern Kingdom, for over 400 years until it was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586BC (BCE).

For Nathan’s act of courage to be included in the Jewish Scriptures meant that this episode had entered the annals of Jewish memory. By becoming part of the sacred text of the Jewish people, it was destined to be read in worship settings over the centuries and in time to become identified as a mark of Judaism. In retrospect, Nathan was called a prophet and because of that the prophet’s role in Jewish life was established. It was the duty of the prophets to speak for God in the citadels of power, to claim for God’s law a place of absolute influence and to assert that there is no one in the land who was not subject to the law of God. Monarchy was not absolute in Israel from that moment on.
Nathan originated the prophetic role in Israel. He established Israel as the one nation where no one’s power would be above the power of the law. This was the reality that made the Jewish nation different from all the other nations of the ancient world. Certainly it was this nation alone that was destined to produce the prophetic tradition that would become so strong that it was not “the law and the Temple” but “the law and the prophets”, that would characterize this people. We will look at a number of the prophetic voices as this series on the origins of the Bible continues.~  John Shelby Spong  |

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