Good News is Unconditional Too

 “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” –John 20:23

I have found that the vast majority of commentary that I’ve read on this text goes to great lengths to explain away the plain reading of the text. While none of the commentators would be so brazen as to say they have a complaint with the text itself, the undertone of each of them is indeed a complaint. The common thread of these commentaries sounded something like this; “we know that only God can forgive, therefore this text means that the disciples were charged with proclaiming the good news about how someone may be forgiven.”  Yet that is not what the text says at all. The text clearly says ‘if you forgive… they are forgiven… if you withhold… it is withheld.’

For reasons unknown to me we have a real problem with the idea that someone can forgive sin on behalf of God. The vast agreement of commentary surrounding this passage proves our discomfort with that idea. We claim to also have a problem with the other side of the equation as well. We ask, “who are we to withhold forgiveness from anyone?” However, in practice we can see that we don’t have a problem with the second side of the equation at all.

How many times have we heard a preacher boldly claim that ‘there is none righteous no not one’ or that ‘all have fallen short of the glory of God?’ We hear these things, and we collectively say ‘amen’ as we should. God has indeed said that we have all fallen short, and when the preacher declares that to us we should hear it as God speaking because it is true. We have no problem with the preacher condemning us from the word of God. This is not some fundamentalist only thing, progressives too have their own way of doing this. ‘We have failed to bring justice’ ‘we have failed to be open-minded’ ‘we have failed to serve the marginalized’ and so on.  Again this is all to say the same thing, ‘we have all fallen short’. We are used to this sort of preaching, and we readily accept it.

The problem that we have is when a Christian says the words ‘you are forgiven’. We get all bent out of shape and say ‘only God forgives! No one can forgive sin in heaven other than God!’ We are fine with the preacher saying all are condemned, but as soon as someone says ‘ALL are justified freely by his grace’ we respond saying ‘whoa back up, there is no way that ALL are justified. You can’t just tell someone they are justified until they have examined themselves to see if they are in the faith.’ 

Can you see our blatant inconsistency here?

When I look at you and tell you that in baptism you were buried with Christ and risen with Christ, or say the words ‘baptism saves you’, or say ‘you are forgiven’ people will line up to insert various caveats as to why or why not that may be true for you. Yet all I have said are the words of scripture themselves, it is someone else who is adding or taking away from it.

Why is it that we have not embraced the idea that we can pronounce actual and effectual heavenly forgiveness with our human mouths from God’s word, yet we are comfortable with speaking actual condemnation from the scriptures?  Why is it that we wrongly insert ‘if’ somewhere in the message of forgiveness but rightly leave out ‘if’ in the message of condemnation from the law?

These are questions worth consideration.

Semantics and Homosexuality

Homosexuality is the most pressing social issue of our time.  Whether or not it should be is open for debate, but as far as public attention goes, the debates surrounding homosexuality and society get the most play.

The conversation around this issue has been so charged that the task of getting to the bottom of what both sides are attempting to communicate is a daunting one. The underlying struggle of the whole debate actually comes down definition of terms. Both sides of this issue will say different things using the same terminology and then debate right past each other. Language itself is critical in the whole debate, and in the end whoever gets to define the terms wins the debate and determines the public perception. When someone says “it’s just semantics” and writes off ‘semantics’ as a mere secondary thing to the debate they have already lost, regardless of what side they are on.  Semantics are at the heart of every debate, and it is semantics that will form the collective conscience of the society. This is true for any public discourse, not just debate around homosexuality. In the gun control debate for instance, the old line “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is merely semantics nothing more, but it is the heartbeat of the debate. If that statement is collectively agreed upon by society, those who argue against guns have a huge uphill battle to fight in the public eye. Semantics are the heartbeat of every debate, and again I reiterate, that whoever successfully defines the terms of a public discourse will always be the primary drivers of policy.

In the abortion debate it is probably more obvious than anywhere else.  We might ask the question: “After conception what is growing in the mother’s womb?” Seems to be a fair enough question, but even that question itself assumes an anti-abortion position by calling the impregnated woman a “mother”.  Before the debate even begins as to whether it is a fetus, child, embryonic tissue, or whatever you may choose to call it, the woman carrying it has already been called ‘mother’ in the question, which of course presumes that what she has been impregnated with is a child. My adamant position against abortion is beside my main point, which is that semantics matter.

Now regardless of your position on gay marriage, or the morality of homosexuality as a ‘state of being’ or ‘homosex’ as an action, you are not equipped to even navigate your way honestly through either side’s position without first giving notice to the semantics involved.

Homosexual

Let’s take the most obvious term, ‘homosexual’. Believe it or not, this is not a term that’s definition is universally agreed upon, not even close.  Some would say a ‘homosexual’ is a person who engages in sex acts with a person or persons of the same gender. If that is the definition then there is no such thing as a celibate homosexual because the term is defined by the act itself.  Others would say it is a person naturally disposed toward engaging in same sex acts with a person of the same gender.  Notice that this is a drastically different definition. In the first definition the term is based on an action, in the second definition it is based on a disposition toward an action. Another definition might be that it is simply some intrinsic characteristic of person that affects far more than mere sexuality and that the term ‘homosexual’ really has nothing to do with the physical acts of ‘sex’ at all.  Again, this definition which is also popular (maybe the most popular) is drastically different than the first two. In this third definition you could, in theory, have a homosexual who is content in a happy and functional ‘heterosexual’ marriage.  The point is that it is impossible to have a discussion around this issue if you have no idea what definition of ‘homosexual’ your discussion partner is operating with. Truth be told I am sure there are countless other definitions people are operating from that I haven’t even considered.

Marriage

Marriage is another term that a lot of battle has been done around. There is the simple definition that many will work from that marriage is the coming together of a man and woman as a family unit.  With that definition it really does not matter what legislation is passed, there is no such thing as same sex marriage because of a conflict of terms. Of course there are other definitions of marriage that abound, namely that marriage is the union of two persons in a committed monogamous legally certified union. With this position the battle for gay marriage is one of legalization. Those holding this position would say that the only thing that stops gays from being married is a legal barrier, and that if that barrier is dropped then same sex marriage is validated. Other views deny the legal side altogether, and say that gay marriage has been going on for a long time and the only battle left to fight is getting the already existing and future gay marriages to have legal protection. Of course there are other views as well and society is divided. The case can be made both for and against polygamous marriage, but the question must be raised whether or not the wives of polygamy are actually ‘wives’. It depends on the semantics. I do not bring up polygamy to try to lump it into the debate around homosexual marriage, not at all, I only bring it up to say that there are debates surrounding the word 'marriage' that go back even further than our current one. There are many other facets beyond heterosexual, homosexual, and polygamous to the definition of the word marriage.

Sex

The very act of sex itself needs to have a clear definition as well. We all remember the whole “what is is?” debacle during the Clinton impeachment proceedings. At what point is something ‘sexual’? It is an important debate to have. Certain practices which are culturally normal in other parts of the world would be seen as sexual in here in Northwest Ohio, and I am sure that is a two way street.

Love

Love itself might be the hardest of words to define, but it plays into the debate as well. I love men. That is a true enough statement coming from my fingers to this screen. However in the context of this debate what could those three words mean? It’s hard to tell. It could mean that I love men exclusively, or love them sexually, or that there are some men like my son and my father that I love, or that I love humankind in general. The ambiguity of any statement regarding love is alarming.  As is the ambiguity of terms like ‘homosexuality’ ‘marriage’ or ‘sex’.

If you actually want to engage anyone in this debate, you owe it to them to at least define the terms you are working with, and you really should go an extra step and try to understand the terms they are working with.  Otherwise you just continually talk past each other, and whoever ends up on the wrong side of the war of semantics will just look like an unloving, or immoral fool in the end. In truth we are all both, but the odds are that you would see the people you debate with in a different light if you understood their terms.

Divine Authorship - A Writer's Look at Free Will

Over the past month I have taken it upon myself to write a novel.  In the process of developing a gripping plot and characters worth following I have learned a number of things about myself as well as the world around me.  It has been a rewarding process.  The primary thing I am learning is that I am a terrible writer, especially of fiction.  That little truth has stung and even depressed me a bit, but in the process of writing my skills have gone for absolutely terrible, to really bad.  I’ve figured that if I keep at it another ten years I might even ascend to mediocrity.  How’s that for a noble goal?

There is one unexpected thing I’ve learned regarding free will and divine sovereignty.  After attempting to control my characters and keep them rolling through the designed plot I have for them, I am realizing that I have less control over them than I want to.  It is a strange realization to say the least.  In truth my characters can do nothing without my fingers striking the keys.  They can say nothing that I have not thought in advance.  I know the words that will come out of their mouths before they even speak them.  I am absolutely sovereign over them.  I change the weather around them to make them react, I put people in their lives to make them grow, I place challenges in their path to make them fail, and then I determine their reaction to those challenges and failures.  In every sense of the word I am sovereign over them.  My sovereignty as an author was always something I assumed.  However what I did not expect was for my characters to have their own free will within the context of my divine authorship.

If you spend time perusing writing websites, or reading books about writing you will find continued advice to ‘let the characters speak for themselves.’  It seems to be a great paradox.  The idea of letting your characters speak, even though they cannot speak without your mind giving them words is a hogwash concept.  Hogwash until you try it.  As I write dialog my characters say things which I did not expect, I find that my characters react to situations in ways that I do not desire.  I have even found that if I do not reign in an evil character they will eventually become good, or that if I give a good character enough rope they will hang themselves with it.  I know that sounds like some sort of psychobabble, but sit down and develop some characters of your own and put them in a story together and you will find that what I am saying is true.

There is a real sense in which the moment I place my character on paper I relinquish a degree of sovereignty that I have over them, though I never relinquish my authorship of them.  I am still the source of their words, their world, their situations, their plot, and ultimately their demise or exaltation. They can do nothing without me, they cease to exist if I cease to write them.  Moreover anything they do will ultimately serve my purpose, which is to elevate and honor my protagonist.  Nonetheless my characters exist in my mind (and on a bunch of sheets of character profiles) and the traits, personalities, and backgrounds I give them drive their own free actions, sometimes against my will.  Ultimately their own actions will determine their role in the story.

If we are willing to look at God’s sovereignty in the light of divine authorship with Christ as the ultimate protagonist in His narrative we will see how this blending of free will and sovereignty actually works.  If you have never sat down to write fiction this all could seem like an  ethereal of a view of sovereignty that places either too much responsibility in God’s hands. On the other hand you might be uncomfortable with the idea that God’s own creation has some degree of effect upon him, but if you have written you will see no contradiction or problem here.

In the story I am writing I have had numerous moments where a character has pleaded with me (in my mind) and changed the direction of my narrative, yet somehow it is all happening within my own mind and only finds direction only from me.  The character which free thinks, still must use my mind to do the thinking.  I think of moments within God’s divine narrative of human history where similar things have happened, moments where God repented of what appeared to be his initial plan.  Moses telling God what would happen if he wiped out Israel comes to mind.  Again, in the 40k+ words I have written in my novel I can think of a number of times when my characters have advised me on my plot.  Nonetheless the characters cannot even think apart from me giving them my own thoughts.

I encourage you to try writing, if for no other reason to learn something about yourself, as well as how your own characters can have free will while under your absolute authority.

There are other things I have learned that will have to wait for other blog posts.  Not the least of which is how my own personal attitudes and desires are reflected in the way I tailor my story.  Every piece of narrative is somehow a reflection of the author, but that is a topic for a later date.

What about the Conquest?

I stand before a group of God created people, with the command to lead an army to utterly destroy those people, men, women, and children.  Everything in me screams out for the justice of God and the protection of the innocent, and yet through the messengers of God, the very anointed ones which we follow, I am told to kill, and to kill mercilessly.  Should I doubt the anointed ones?  Should I go rogue?  Should I begin an insurrection amongst my own people in order to change the course of history?  Or should I do as my leaders have commanded?  I mean, it is “our” promised land, the land which God had sworn to our fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Yet, there are women and children in that land, unsuspecting women and children who will die by my sword… if I obey.  How do I know that God has spoken these things?

One of the most troubling sections of scripture to most believers is the conquest of the Holy Land by Israel.  I think we tend to approach the text, placing ourselves in it, and have emotions elicited that follow the path of the paragraph above.   It is impossible to simply spiritualize the hostile takeover and still respect the scriptures themselves.  The Hebrew texts present this take over as historical text, and you would be hard pressed to read it as allegory.  Many well-meaning pastors have tried to turn this historical text into a mere life lesson about overcoming hardships, or claiming God’s promises.  In doing this the pastor, knowingly or not, is attempting to make a beeline past the history itself in hopes that nobody will notice.  The people of Canaan simply become ‘obstacles in our lives’ the land simply becomes ‘our idealized Christian existence’ and the carnage is quickly sterilized into mere addictions and habits that have fallen by the wayside.  We do this sort of thing with the cross as well, but that is another topic altogether.  The question is how do we deal with the history itself?  I suppose we could ignore it in favor of platitudes about victory.  We could do the opposite and celebrate it and find some sort of twisted pleasure in God’s vengeance.  We could write it off as God becoming progressively nicer, I mean the slaughter of Canaanites is certainly not as drastic as the flood account so God must be getting gradually nicer… right?  We could, in the same vein as Brian McLaren, view it as the people of God gradually becoming more aware of the mercy of God, and choose to see this hostile takeover as progress from seeing the flood as an act of God, but not yet seeing the fully realized mercy and inclusion we find in Christ.  There are a lot of ways to look at.  The spiritualized way is to ignore the history.  The ‘joy in the vengeance of God’ is a way to affirm the history, while ignoring all the other attributes of God which we cherish.  The ‘progressive understanding of God’ method acknowledges the history but denies God’s action in or authorization of it.  Where is a good place to stand?

I tend to think that we come to this section of scripture with some pretty faulty presumptions.  First we presume that these people of Canaan were relatively innocent, believing they were ‘sort of’ bad, but the women and children surely must have been innocent.  We give the benefit of the doubt, but on what is that founded?  Recall in the whole account of Sodom and Gomorrah, “yea if I find just 5 righteous men I will spare the city.”  To deny God’s patience is a mistake.  What was so horrific about these people that they needed wiped out?  Or was it merely the manifest destiny of Israel and these Canaanites were innocent by-standers?

I think we ought to at least consider the possibility that the people of Canaan were violently opposed to God, violently opposed to mercy, and violently opposed to life and creation, and that maybe, just maybe, they were getting the just rewards of their actions.  Recall that God waited until their ‘iniquity was fulfilled’ before sending in the troops so to speak.  We are back to Genesis “If I find 5 good men, I will spare the city.”  The question I ask is what ought to be done with a people who heat up bronze statues till they glow, and then place their infants in the hands of that statue in the belief that they could please their gods?  Moreover to consider that the reason they were trying to please their gods was so that they would have better weather and be able to grow more crops for themselves?  Ought a nation, or religion like that be allowed to continue? Would we not cry out for the justice of God against such a people?  Yet now we read of God carrying out his justice against such a people and we bristle at the thought that God would order the death of anyone.  Don’t leave this completely in the Old Testament either, lest you stumble across Ananias and Saphira in Acts.

I am not about to say that I am comfortable with the conquest of Canaan, or that I have some warm fuzzy feeling about it, or that I have reconciled the carnage in my mind.  I am not about to say that this portion of scripture fits neatly into my understanding of God, and ultimately of the grace of Christ toward the world.  It doesn’t fit neatly at all.  At the same time few people cried “injustice!” when storm troopers offed Nazis who saw it a duty to their god to mercilessly kill infant Jews and other minorities.  In fact if anything it seemed an injustice that many survived.

It’s good that we are troubled by death and conquest.  It is good that we are not comfortable with the conquest of Canaan, I don’t think God would want us comfortable with it.  At the same time, we ought to look more objectively at the people conquered, and be willing to see that there was a lot more justice in the whole thing than we tend to be willing to see.  Moreover as we look at the failing of Israel to fully carry out these gruesome commands of God, we see the very injustice of the Canaanite people infecting Israel themselves as they begin to make the same hideous offerings once made only by the people of the land.

I’m optimistic.  I think when Christ came, announced His kingdom, lived died and rose for the world, that things have gotten better.  I believe things will continue to get better, at least in regards to Canaanite-like death worship.

As we approach the conquest portion of scripture, at the very least, let us not minimize the culture of death which Israel was called to eradicate.  It is also critically important for us to see that post- life, death and resurrection of Christ for the sin of the world, there is no place whatsoever for militant conquest of a people.  The conquest was finished on the cross.  Nonetheless we ought to be a bit more objective regarding the conquest narrative of the Old Testament before we raise our fist at God and cry out ‘that’s not fair! My god wouldn’t do that!”

Without purpose, but not in vain

What benefit was gained by the shedding of young blood at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut? 

This is a question that I have not seen probed much in the news, in blogs, or in various Facebook dialogs since this tragedy.  Naturally our questions have not surrounded the benefits of such a tragedy, because to think of possible benefits seems to be trite, and distasteful.  Instead the primary question being asked is “why?”  That is a good question, a question that many have tried to answer, and every answer seems to fail.  There is Westboro Baptist’s answer that this is the judgment of God, there are other Christian commentators that say this is the result of removal of God from schools.  Still there are others who blame a lack of gun control, while others make the claim that if gun control were more lax we would not have these problems.  Other people, myself included, have pointed to lack of understanding of mental health issues, and the church and society’s unwillingness to come alongside the disturbed to offer them real help.  All of these questions of ‘why’ are appropriate, but none of them offer anything of peace, or give us any sense of hope, or any glimmer of light into the situation.  Of course the seemingly Christian mantra of ‘everything happens for a reason’ is equally void of hope, and Christians ought to be willing, especially in the face of such a tragedy to forgo that worn out line.  In the wake of this tragedy the atheist’s line of thinking tends to gain traction… “If God is good, he must not be all powerful because he has not stopped this, or If God is all powerful, then He certainly is not good because he has allowed (thereby effectively caused) these things to happen.”  I’m not here to defend God, or even to pretend to have a cogent response to that line of thought.  What I desire to come back to is my first question:

“What benefit was gained by the shedding of young blood last week?”

This is a great and a healing question.  It is not a question in which the answer poses ‘the reason’ or ‘purpose’ of this happening, not at all.  It is a question of whether or not these children died in vain.  So as I begin to outline the ‘benefits’ gained by this tragedy, I am NOT saying these benefits are some grand divine purpose for the tragedy in the first place.  In other words, I don’t offer the remainder of this post as words to help us understand the question ‘why?’  The event was senseless.  However what I am posing here is that these children did not die completely in vain.

This past Friday countless children across America received something from their parents that they have not received in a long time.  They received hugs, affirming words of love, glances from their parents that showed that they were indeed deeply cared for.  Parents walked into their homes from work, and for the first time in many weeks even they were happy to see their children.  They dropped their coats and ran to their children and gave them the love they should be giving them every day.  We ought to give thanks to those twenty children for this; their sacrifice (however unwilling) produced a newfound love for children who are starved for it.  Millions of children received long overdue love.  I would not contend that this was worth the price those twenty children paid, but I will say that they did not completely die in vain.

This week countless teachers across this country are looking at their students differently.  Children again are being seen as something of tremendous and sacred worth, not mere pupils for teachers to educate in order to get their paycheck.  Most teachers have always loved their students, but somehow after a tragedy like this we begin to see the true worth of the students given into our care.  As the news of this was being reported I am certain that every elementary teacher in the country began to think about each of their students in ways they had never thought about them before.  Millions of students were seen by their teachers for what they really are.  Again, I would not contend that this was worth the price those kids in Connecticut paid, but will say that they did not completely die in vain.

At the national level we saw corporate weeping, as collectively we were reminded again of the value of life.  Thoughts surrounded around the protection of children, which is odd during this during the Christmas season which is marked more by exploiting the desires of children for a profit.  Flags across the country are at half-staff, churches are joining in praying unified prayers for those affected.  Even the President of the United States has read words of comfort from the scripture to bring comfort to the whole nation.  These are wonderful occurrences.  Certainly these occurrences are not worth the price paid to attain them, but they remind me again that these children did not die completely in vain.

In the midst of all this we were reminded again of what our first responders and our teachers are really all about, we are reminded of valor, and sacrifice.  Of course the price was too high to make it all worth it, but let us at least see that these children did not die completely in vain.

Let me be clear that I do not believe that the ‘reason’ for this event was to reap the above benefits I expressed.  I do not think there is a good ‘reason’ or ‘purpose’ for tragedy, I have no desire to cheapen it all with reasons or purposes.  As far as a cause, that is simple, fallen humanity in a fallen world doing wicked things.  That is what caused this, and it is sad and terrifying.

Yet despite these events being completely senseless, reasonless, and purposeless, the victims and their families at least deserve to know that their children’s death was not in vain.  These families deserve to know that the blood their children shed fertilized the fallow loveless ground of millions of homes.  It doesn’t bring them back, it doesn’t make it worth it, nothing could make it worth it, but the blood wasn’t spilt completely in vain.

While the victims ought to naturally be bitter that the rest of the nation still has their children to love, I hope they will hear the unspoken thanks of all the children who have unexpectedly found themselves loved sincerely by their parents again.  The blood was not spilled completely in vain. 

Is there another way?

In the lead up to yesterday’s election I was fairly vocal that voting third party was an intelligent and influential way to vote.  Needless to say I was greeted by no small amount of criticism for that position.  In hindsight I think we can look more rationally at third party voting than we are really capable of doing during the emotional ramp up to the elections themselves.

First, for a very obvious case where third party voting makes sense; if someone lives in a state that is going to be a landslide victory, and they are voting in opposition to the landslide, then they above all people are biggest vote wasters.  There is no reason for a Californian to vote for a GOP candidate if another candidate offers a platform more congruent with their desires.  That seems obvious.  Of course if all minority party voters in landslide states would take this to heart we would quickly see a rise of a third party, and they would receive enough popular vote to receive federal campaign funding, as well as a like place at the table during the debates.  This goes for red states as well.  If you are a hardcore liberal and live in a red state you are better serving your cause by voting for the most liberal third party candidate that you can.  Remember that popular vote doesn't (and might I add, shouldn't) matter in the election.

The Second case is when you think that your own party absolutely blundered when nominating their candidate.  For instance, say you believed strongly in a much more limited use of military on foreign soil, massive limitations to government, and a truly balanced budget and you were a Republican.  The odds are that you supported someone like Ron Paul in the primary.  You are a prime person to vote third party.  In fact, by voting major party when you fundamentally disagree with the selection that party made, you have given them license to continue selecting those types of candidates.  However, if they continually lose close elections because people like you refuse to support their candidates, then they are forced to rethink their views.

The third case is simply a vote of no confidence.  There is no way in our system to cast a ‘no’ vote.  You can elect to not cast a ballot for any given candidate, but there is only one way to vote ‘against’ both candidates, and that is with a third party vote.  Again the vote of no confidence should not be looked as a mere ‘wasted’ vote.  In fact it is a potentially nation altering vote (especially in a swing state like Ohio where I live.)

Beyond simply having the potential to swing an election, you also have the potential to bring the third party closer to that magical 5% number which gets them in on Federal Campaign Finance money, and a possible seat at the table for the debates.  This is really important.  Now granted we are nowhere close to the 5% number right now with any third party.  However, by clearly articulating the good reasons to vote 3^rd party we can push the number closer to that line.  As that % approaches 5, both parties begin to get scared and have to restructure themselves to accommodate you and your views.  So in voting third party you have the potential to fundamentally change a party’s platform, while voting major party you give an endorsement of the party’s current platform.

Now naturally there are some large psychological hurdles you need to get over to be able to vote third party.  I think the tallest of those hurdles is the notion that the future hinges entirely on one particular election.  We hear it every four years “This is the most important election ever”, and with many people, maybe even a majority of people, their vote is cast more out of fear of the opposition than anything else.  There are a number of problems with that; the biggest is that voting out of fear promotes supporting things that are not rational.  When everyone is in fight or flight mode they will do anything for survival, including voting for someone or something that they adamantly oppose.

My suggested plan for moving forward:

1.       Get minority party voters in landslide states to cast 3^rd party votes.

2.       Get people who honestly believe their candidate got hosed in the primary to cast 3^rd party votes.

3.       Remind people that dispensationalism is wrong and we don’t stand on the cusp of the end of the world with every election cycle.

4.       Get current 3^rd party voters to speak rationally and winsomely about why 3^rd party voting makes sense at times other than the election cycle.  Clue them in on things to look for during the upcoming elections, and try to get people to solidify their stance on various issues prior to the party’s selection of a candidate.  This lays the ground work for getting them to vote third party once the madness starts.

5.       Finally, if a main party does move their platform because of third party influence, support that main party, and enjoy the fact that your vote really did matter even though it never got close to being for a winning candidate.

Anyone else have thoughts on this?

Make Babies or Open the Border

I suppose in the midst of the political season it would be a great time to post some politically charged idea and see where it leads.  This is a bit of a divergence from what I normally like to do here, but hey, it’s my blog so I’ll give it a whirl.

The topic I want to look at is immigration.  It seems to me that there is an intense fear of immigration among those who are adamant about closing down the borders.  Of course those who support the lock down of the borders will say, “I have nothing against immigration, I am only against ‘illegal’ immigration.”  However in the course of discussion with a majority of these people you will find that they want legal immigration to be a very difficult process, which includes the learning of our language, a better understanding of our government than most 20 year old Americans have, along with countless other regulations that would make immigration nearly impossible for any nominally educated person from south of our borders.  (Let’s be clear that when people talk about securing our borders they are not usually talking about the Canada or our Eastern or Western seaboards.)

Now the arguments against a loose immigration policy are many, and we have heard most of them over and over again.  Many of those arguments have some merit, or are at least grounded in something that resembles truth.  For instance, the people who come across the border will need jobs, and we have limited jobs already.  Or the people who come across the border will force us to provide all sorts of bilingual amenities, signage, etc.  There are a number of arguments that make sense at face value.  Of course there are other arguments that seem to me to be a bit petty.  “You know if we let them come in, we will quickly become the minority.”  (“We” meaning people of European decent.)  God forbid our society becomes a shade darker over the next 100 years.

It seems to me that people who are in favor of a looser immigration policy have done an absolutely horrible job of expressing to the general public the great value of a looser policy.  Usually their arguments surround around the simple fact that immigration will actually be easier to control if there is less incentive to do it illegally.  There is some validity to that argument, but it doesn’t even begin to touch upon the real value of a looser immigration policy.

Here is why I am for loosening up our borders.  The first thing we must realize is that our entire society is essentially a pyramid scheme that relies on population growth to sustain it.  Social Security, Medicare, Pension Plans, our very economy itself, is dependent on a growth of consumption.  If the economy is not growing, it dies, period.   Couple that reality with the birth rate continuing to drop, and the age at which people begin to have children continuing to go up, and the reality that our whole system is in a precarious state becomes obvious.  Loosened immigration allows for the population growth that we are not achieving with our own birthrate.  As you read this do not underestimate the importance of this simple factor.  Regardless of how conservative or liberal your politics may be, the economy cannot sustain a decline in population.

The other big thing to realize is that an immigrant comes in with virtually nothing, and in most cases a legal immigrant catches on to the American dream relatively fast.  This means that they need shelter, which means the production of homes and apartment complexes needs to occur.  They need places of worship, requiring the construction of Churches.  They need transportation, which necessitates the building of cars. (The list could go on and on.)  The very needs that an immigrant has are an asset to our economy.  It is no different than the birth of child in the sense that it adds another consumer to the economy.  With an aging population that is not replacing itself there is a desperate need of consumers to keep the economy thriving.  It’s not hard to get your mind around this.  If you work in a clothing shop you want customers who need clothes, not those who simply browse, if you are a realtor you want people who need houses not just nosey neighbors who drop in at an open house.  If you operate a grocery store you hope that people with an empty pantry at home will stop in.  It just makes sense.  The greatest contributors to any economy are people who have little who are working their tails off to obtain more.  That is exactly what the immigrating populace by and large is.  The caricature of immigrants being people who merely come across the border to obtain the social services supplied by the US while not contributing anything themselves is patently false, and if you have ever met a first generation immigrant I am certain that you would concur with the falsity of that caricature.

There needs to be a distinction made, between the poor immigrant, and the generationally impoverished American.  We middle to upper class people tend to lump poor people into some homogenous group, and it is sad that we do.  We see poor people who seem to do nothing to get out of poverty other than looking to what social services they can receive.  Certainly there are poor people like that, whether they are at fault, or whether it is a generational thing can be debated.  However not all poor people fall into that category.  The impoverished immigrant who comes across the border looking to work for a better life has already (by their immigration) proven that they are in a different class of poor.  They are those who are coming to make a life, obtain a dream, to earn and to purchase.  Again the poor who seek a better life through work and consumption are the greatest asset an economy can have, and a loosened immigration policy provides our economy with a great influx of that type of person.

I contest that in the not so distant future you will find that countries with dwindling birthrates will begin to court immigrants and actually attempt to draw them into their borders.  If we don’t get on board with that idea, eventually immigrants will choose to go elsewhere and we will have missed a golden opportunity to make our economy more robust.

Obviously this whole post reduces people to mere economic units, which is unfortunate.  I have almost dehumanized people by looking at them only to ultimate gain we receive from them, that is not my heart in this.  My point is only to say that a loosened border is a positive economic move for us, in fact I believe (unless we decide to start making babies fast) it is a necessary economic move for us.

Where's my candy?

It is difficult, albeit not impossible, to give what you do not possess already.  I don’t mean this in the obvious sense, but in a deeper more psychological sense.  For instance, if my son has no candy and he is asked to hand out candy at a parade, it is incredibly difficult for him to do such a thing if he is not to receive any of the candy himself.  In his mind there is an injustice in the whole thing, “daddy why do I have to give out all of this candy, I don’t have candy, this is not fair.”  Of course the typical “Christian” response to my son would involve telling him how much he does have, and how he shouldn’t be selfish and so on.  Nonetheless a psychological barrier will still exist no matter how much explaining we attempt.  To give what one does not receive themselves is a near impossibility.

We see this often when it comes to charitable causes.  The person, who for their entire life, was forced to ‘pull themselves up by their own bootstraps’ often finds it incredibly difficult or even deplorable to offer a free handout to anyone.  On the flip side, the person who has consciously benefitted from the charity of others to attain a decent station in life will typically find it much easier to return the favor back upon society.  The person who has received a handout, and used it wisely, will typically have the audacity to believe that handouts work, while the people who have always refused the handout will believe that works of charity will only produce laziness and not develop character.  Both people have legitimate arguments from experience.  The point is that it is easier to give if you have received, and it is far more difficult to give if you perceive that you have not received.

When we bring this line of thinking inside the walls of the church we see a bit of a strange picture emerge.  Pastors are constantly urging to people to be more forgiving, to be more outward, to be more of a transformational agent to the community and so on.   We hear ad nauseum about everything we are to give, and we are promised blessing in return, but precious little is done to break down that psychological barrier that was outlined above.  We say that if we are going to be the church we must do (insert pastor’s favorite act of mercy here) while that particular act of mercy is never actually enacted upon the hearers.

Here is how it plays out.  It is relatively easy to get a group together to feed the homeless, to build a habitat house, or to do various mission work.  People realize that they have food, so it is relatively easy to give food.  People realize they have shelter so it is relatively easy to give shelter, people realize they have a clean environment to live in so they find it relatively easy to go clean up a neighborhood.  However in the midst of all of this these same people, in most instances, will find it very difficult to offer real grace, real forgiveness, and true mercy to those who they encounter in the midst of their charitable service.  It is not for a lack of desire that charitable people struggle with this.  I am certain that most if not all Christians who do charitable work operate with the most upright of intentions.  Nonetheless most of us have nothing more to give than the tangible service that we offer.  In other words, when the rubber meets the road, and we are face to face with the destitute, we find it very difficult to offer them hope, we find it very difficult to hear of their situations and audibly absolve them of their sin.  We find it very difficult to speak of grace in Christ.  We default to offering an invitation to church (which may or may not be appropriate) or maybe a few platitudes of comfort that have little effect.

I contend that the reason we struggle at getting beyond physical charity into legitimately offering spiritual grace to people is that very same psychological barrier that keeps my son from wanting to hand out candy if he hasn’t received any himself.  We are people who have spiritually pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps, attended worship, got involved with service, and done the work under our own power and have had a drive to do good.  The truth is that in most worship settings the church is never directly told the words ‘you are forgiven’.  The church is rarely told, ‘you no longer stand under judgment.’  The church almost never hears ‘you are the light of the world’ ‘you are the salt of the earth’ no strings attached.  Instead we are told, if you pray this prayer all will be forgiven, or you need to go be salt and light.  In most preaching no grace is ever really offered, instead a way of purchasing grace is all that is offered.  It is no wonder that Christians struggle to offer free forgiveness when wronged, because nobody is offering them free forgiveness from wrong without certain conditions attached.  It’s no wonder that Christians are quick to offer everyone biblical advice, but slow to offer biblical grace.  We have been inundated with ‘relevant’ messages that we can apply to our life, but are rarely given messages about what has already been applied to us freely (namely the life, death, and resurrection of Christ on our behalf.)

It’s really hard to hand out candy at the parade when nobody has handed you candy first.  Yet if you frequently receive candy with joy, there is no psychological barrier in place to keep you from distributing candy with joy.

Every pastor must remember that it is a primary duty of theirs to distribute grace, offer absolution of sin, pronounce that their people are no longer under condemnation.  If this is done weekly, and rightly, we will find that it is much easier for our people to distribute real grace in the conversations, to withhold judgment of others, and be merciful beyond simply providing for physical needs.  If our preaching does not pronounce forgiveness, we ought not to expect our people to pronounce a forgiveness to the world.