Culture

Equally Human

The other day I got to thinking that this series of opinion pieces probably appears rather unrelated and disorganized. What is the single thought that ties them together?

We are Equally Human.

We may segregate ourselves in any number of ways. We may allow our minds to become persuaded that this person is our superior, or that person is inferior. We may become obsessed with the viewpoint of one individual to the point that we think those who don’t get it must be inferior. Then it becomes Us vs Them.

Those seeking greater power and influence frequently divide Us from Them. The Us are the ones who get it, whatever IT may be. The Them are the ones who are too uninformed or stupid to get it. This is nothing more than a marketing ploy to build a loyal following/repeat business/power. And this is true in the world of politics, religion, entertainment, consumer products or wherever else greater influence is sought.

The danger arises when we think that any difference in preference makes one a superior or inferior human. It does not. There are individuals that I do not care to be around, but they are no less human. There are individuals whose talents I admire, but it would be dangerous to think that talent or ability creates a superior human.

No matter how we divide and separate, we are equally human. No one, no matter our degree of admiration, is more human. No one, no matter how much we pity ore revile, is less human. Jesus showed us this truth in numerous ways.

Go back and read 1 Samuel: Chapter 8.

When Samuel grew old, he appointed his sons as judges for Israel. The name of his firstborn was Joel and the name of his second was Abijah, and they served at Beersheba.

But his sons did not walk in his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice.

So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.”

But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD.

And the LORD told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do.”

Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king.

He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants.

Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves.

When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day.”

But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.”

When Samuel heard all that the people said, he repeated it before the LORD.

The LORD answered, “Listen to them and give them a king.” Then Samuel said to the men of Israel, “Everyone go back to his town.”

When we place one human above us, we cannot help but put other humans beneath us. Justice is perverted and our capacity for compassion is diminished.

…So much more to say. This could be a long series.

Emotional Moochers

Before I go any further in this discussion about how we relate to one another, a word about emotional moochers.

As I’ve said in the past, we need to quit looking at others as inferior or superior, and realize that all of us are simply human. It is my contention that compassion is distorted with subjective judgment when we view others as inferior or superior. But that is a discussion for another day.

Right now I need to say a word about emotional moochers.

We usually think of moochers as people who take advantage of our kindness to take and take and take. Maybe the person is a relative with a drug or alcohol addiction. The person persuades you that ONLY YOU can help. The next thing you know, your jewelry box and wallet are empty. As this goes on you realize you’re not helping the person, but enabling a life-threatening addiction.

And yet there is another type of moocher, the emotional moocher.

The relationship with the emotional moocher begins much the same way. A sad story; only you can help. Then, in a very brief time, the tone changes. The person lashes out. You don’t understand… If you really understood you would… You realize this is not good and you try to back away. But the emotional moocher plays on your sympathies again.

If you don’t walk away, you soon find yourself in a vicious cycle of emotional abuse.

Let us be very clear about this: As long as the moocher has someone to feed off emotionally, that person is unlikely to change. We can and should pray for the person, but we should also take care not to place ourselves in the position of emotional punching bag.

Tragically many people, especially women, think they can change the emotional moocher if only they love them enough. But you don’t change an addict by constantly feeding the addiction. Sometimes it is pride that says only I can help, when it may very well be that I, by feeding the emotional moocher, am the one person who cannot help. I, thinking that only I can help, am only making the situation much worse. Maybe the single best way we help is by walking away.

I remember an interesting discussion about airplanes and oxygen masks. If the flight attendant tells everyone to put on their oxygen mask, do you put yours on first, or assist the helpless person sitting next to you? Compassion may tell us to help the weaker person first. But in doing that, we may run out of oxygen before we can help either one of us.

Sometimes we help others best by caring for ourselves first.

This concept was brought home to me a couple of Sundays ago. We were visiting a church where several members of the congregation have HIV.

As we went up to take communion a gentleman holding an ornate bottle offered hand sanitizer. I assumed this was concern about the flu, and immediately realized this was about protecting the people in the congregation with compromised ammine systems. By protecting my own hands, I could best protect those I came into contact with.

By protecting our own minds form emotional batterers, we are in a better position to help others.

Love Is An Orientation by Andrew Marin: A Review

I have wanted to review this book for months but find it nearly impossible to organize my thoughts into a coherent review. Don’t get me wrong. I love this book and wholeheartedly applaud Andrew Marin’s bridge-building work between Christian and gay communities.

I first became aware of the book from a review at Internetmonk.com.  After reading Love Is An Orientation I immediately bought five additional copies to give away. So, you see, while I struggle to write a review it has nothing to do with the content.

My problem, I find it difficult to write about this topic without my own emotions churning out of control.

I can’t discuss this book without my thoughts turning to a young family friend who practically lived at out house his senior year of high school. I didn’t know what was going on in his family, and didn’t pry. His only comment was that our house was quiet.

Years later this young man and his roommates were moving to a new apartment. I was helping them get the old place cleaned out. While the others took a load of furniture to the new apartment, he and I stayed behind to clean out the refrigerator. In the stillness of that empty apartment he told me everything. At 16 his parents found out that he was gay. They thought they could beat him into going straight.

He told me the whole story and the pain in my heart was unbearable. The next day, back home, I spent the entire day crying. How could parents do this to their own! Why?

Before that day, I would have said this really wasn’t my issue. After that day, after I cried until my eyes ached, I really didn’t have a choice. This cruelty must stop. We are also culpable by our silence. Do you know what compassion is, the compassion that Christ taught? It begins by looking at people as HUMAN! None of us are merely our sexuality.

Too often we look for one identifiable trait to label each person we encounter: The fat girl. The computer geek. The drunk. The great singer. The girl with a criminal record. The woman with the funny accent. That guy obsessed with politics. The boy with the really cool car. The annoying Christian. The man in the wheelchair. The gay guy. Once labeled it becomes so easy to file away in mental boxes marked Good and Bad or Desirable and Undesirable. Now, no longer diverse individuals with successes and failures, a past a future, emotions, aspirations, impulses and fragilities, we needn’t consider how much we may have in common. Once condemned or elevated by our labels, we may trample underfoot or place high up on pedestals. The labels make them, thems – maybe worse than us or better than us, but no way could they be us. And this, my friends, leaves no room for compassion.

Just as I suspected, I veered pretty far from the book I intended to review. But since some of you have also read Andrew Marin’s book, perhaps you will have more to say.

This is a close as I can get to a review:

If you are a parent and your son or daughter have just come out to you, or if you are a pastor and a member of your congregation wants to talk about same-sex attractions. If you are a teacher, friend, sibling, co-worker, neighbor, I beg you to read this book before you walk away and slam the door on this treasured individual.

Music Review: Stockholm Syndrome/ Derek Webb

Music Review: Stockholm Syndrome/ Derek Webb

When I walked away from Christian culture 30+ years ago, I walked away from a fundamentalist church fighting to stay segregated. I walked away from charismatic youth rallies, vapid emotionalism and warnings of The Rapture. Walking away was oh so easy.

For many years I lived indifferent to Christian culture. It didn’t concern agnostics. Then Christ showed me the path to faith three years ago, and I could no longer ignore what was going on in the Christian community.

I couldn’t ignore the similarities in language used to disparage gay people, so similar to the racial intolerance I heard as a child. Neither could I help but notice how the vapid emotionalism of those youth rallies from the 1970s now influences what passes for worship at too many present-day churches. Or the elevation of politics by Christians on the right and on the left. But most of all I saw Christians enslaved by fear. Fear is not faith. Fear is the opposite of faith. How did we get to this point where churches put up tall fences to keep out everything that is different? Let the homeless man come in while the food pantry is open, but chase him away if he lingers on the grounds. This, my friends, is not faith.

Derek Webb’s new CD Stockholm Syndrome addresses so many of the issues that have troubled me. I don’t feel qualified to address the musical style, but to my ears the digital techno music fits the themes perfectly. The brilliant lyrics and experimental music do overwhelm the first time through. It is as though this incredible artist unleashed with a barrage of thoughts on present-day Christianity and culture. From where I stand, he hit the bull’s eye every time.

The CD received much attention on Christian blogs last summer with the news that his label would not release Stockholm Syndrome unless the song What Matters More was removed. The song is Derek’s response to the way many Christians treat the gay community. The song included the following:

If I can tell what’s in your heart by what comes out of your mouth,
Then it sure looks to me like being straight is all it’s about.
Yeah, it looks like being hated for all the wrong things,
And chasing the wind while the pendulum swings.

Cause we can talk and debate till we’re blue in the face,
About the language and tradition that He’s coming to save.
Meanwhile we sit just like we don’t give a shit,
About 50,000 people who are dying today.

The label objected to the word shit. While the song is not on the CD, you can purchase the uncut MP3 version from Derek’s website.

The Spirit vs The Kick Drum is one of my favorites. The simple repetition of lyrics so perfectly reflect my frustration with many churches. The main themes:

‘I don’t want the Spirit I want the kick drum.’

‘I don’t want the Son I want a jury of peers.’

’I don’t want the Father I want a vending machine.’

Stockholm Syndrome, taken from a lyric in Black Eye, refers to the syndrome when prisoners or kidnapped victims identify with their captors.

Stockholm Syndrome comes to where they’re keepin you.
You never know what time it is.

Much of the time I still feel like an outsider looking in at Christian culture. And it is easy to see Stockholm Syndrome in the fear/love that controls the lives of so many Christians. They fear death, they fear life. They fear doing the wrong thing, saying the wrong thing, thinking the wrong thing.

Time is no friend to the ones who wait for daylight to come.
Time looks the same at the ones who hate and the ones that do nothing.

At first I thought that Black Eye was closely connected to Freddie, Please. This song obviously refers to Fred Phelps. Fred Phelps may put a face to hatred of gay people, and Black Eye‘ may correctly describe his brainwashed followers, but this would make both songs too narrowly focused. Tragically, there are many church leaders, and Christian parents of gay young people who are inflicting far greater harm. The emotional and physical abuse must stop.

Several songs on the CD deal with issues of politics and culture. The State challenges the church’s marriage to politics.

Right and wrong were written on my heart,
And not just in the laws that condemn me.
But now with Caesar satisfied,
I can even do the things that should offend me.

Becoming A Slave is another bull’s eye take on culture.

Talk from every head,
Product in every word,
Its under our feet,
You know its over our heads.
And everyone’s telling the truth,
In languages that nobody speaks,
If you listen close you hear what you believe.

What You Give Up to Get It is an amazing song. Consider the lyrics:

Like an indian casino and a tank of unleaded,
It was never quite worth what you give up to get it.

And the sarcasm in Paradise is a Parking Lot would have won my heart alone.

I complain more than anybody about the vast wasteland that is contemporary Christian music. But there is the occasional oasis. With Stockholm Syndrome Derek Webb shows us what is possible when a talented individual sings with honestly and boldness.