Tag: catholic

Original Sin

(This is #9 in a series)

Barr helped us understand how hierarchical patriarchy was self-serving for the Greeks and Romans and perpetuated a culture of war where those who control the resources—money, power, violence, property—make rules that have historically served themselves. She showed us how the Catholic church and then the Protestant churches used—profited from?—supported?—patriarchy as a social structure to elevate their own power and interests, even to the point that these social structures were then read into the Bible, turned around and presented as God’s Truth. 

This is a product of dualistic thinking, where the world is black and white, win or lose, best or worst, rich or poor, healthy or sick, fed or hungry, etc. Franciscan Richard Rohr believes that the human propensity for dualistic thinking is driven by our ego, which he defines as “that part of the self that wants to be significant, central, and important by itself, apart from anybody else. It wants to be both separate and superior” (www.cac.org 7/12/16). It is  base human nature to assert our self over others. The Catholic Church calls this base nature “fallen”.

In fact, here is how the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) describes Original Sin:

Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart, and abusing his freedom, disobeyed God’s command…in that sin, he preferred himself to God and by that very act, scorned him. He chose himself over and against God…Created in a state of holiness, man was destined to be fully “divinized” by God in glory. Seduced by the devil, he wanted to “be like God” but “without God, before God, and not in accordance with God” (CCC 397-398).

Unhappy with being “less than” God, humankind reduced God to his possession of power, then lusted for that power, in violation of the three sins of which John warns us in 1 John 2:15-16:  If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.

The disobedience in the Adam and Eve story is also sin, but it is not the Original Sin. It is the effect of the desire to be greater than God. Hierarchy IS THE ORIGINAL SIN. It has manifested itself throughout history as war, genocide, racism, colonization, fascism, communism, totalitarianism, nationalism, and patriarchy. 

Since sometimes the concept of hierarchical patriarchy seems too liberal arts college for most Christians—and no surprise there is a strong anti-academic vein in evangelical congregations—it’s important to have personal examples. Barr shares hers in Chapter 8.

It begins with a name familiar to the secular world through a scandal related to the Duggar family. You may remember that when news of Josh Duggar’s sexual molestation of 5 young women (including his sisters) broke, the Duggars claimed that at the time they had sent Josh to the head of their evangelical congregation for “counseling”. That man’s name was Bill Gothard.

Barr tells us that she attended a sermon by Gothard with her then-boyfriend. She makes the point that they were not dating, but “courting”—which meant that “marriage was in (their) future”. She speak of her understanding of marriage which came from her Southern Baptist upbringing: “that women are weak while men are strong”. As their relationship progressed, her boyfriend became abusive, and Barr felt helpless to escape what within her community was considered a de facto engagement. It was her job to stand by him “hoping that what I experienced as anger would mature into strength and that all would become right with my world” (202).

It took the movie Sleeping With the Enemy—a Julia Roberts movie about a woman who goes to great lengths to escape her abusive husband—before Barr realized she was in significant danger.

No wonder—she was raised in a church where men like Paige Patterson were powerful and prominent leaders. In 2000, Patterson said this, as reported in The Denver Post (5/4/2018):

Last week, an audio recording surfaced on which Paige Patterson, a high-profile Southern Baptist leader, says abused wives should avoid divorce, pray for their violent husbands, and “be submissive in every way that you can.” Patterson is an ordained pastor, a former SBC president and the current president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth.

“It depends on the level of abuse to some degree,” Patterson is heard saying on the 2000 tape. “I have never in my ministry counseled anybody to seek a divorce, and I do think that is always wrong counsel.” He adds, “On an occasion or two when the level of abuse was serious enough,” he has suggested a temporary separation.

This man was the president of a Baptist seminary. In 2018, when under fire for mishandling a rape allegation on SWBTS campus which would eventually lead to his downfall, when questioned by the victim’s mother about his decision making, “Patterson ‘lunged across the table, firmly pointed his finger in her face and threatened to ‘unleash’ lawyers on her if she dared question his leadership’” (baptistnews.com, 6/24/2019).

Barr knows now that there is a link between patriarchal complementarianism and abuse in evangelical churches. The data bears it out as do the myriad of sexual misconduct scandals of the last decades. Barr sums it up here: “Hierarchy gives birth to patriarchy and patriarchy gives birth to the abuse of sex and power” (207). I see this reflected in my own Catholic Church and the sex abuse scandals that continue to plague us. They are a result of the clericalism of a hierarchical church, the elevating and isolating of a group of men, empowered with almost unquestionable authority, backed by wealth and prestige.

Both examples have one glaring fault in common—the absence of women in positions of equal power, resulting in a unnatural imbalance where men and the institutions they lead become extremely disordered.

We all—but women in particular—have an obligation to look at our churches through a new lens. How does our faith institution promote hierarchical thinking? How does it support patriarchy? How does it shield its male leaders when they become embroiled in scandals of sex and power? How does it make room for women and in what kind of roles?

How does it participate in politics and which candidates does it support? How successful has it been really in growing past Original Sin?

My Church doesn’t score well. Does yours?

I have one more topic next week, an extension of Barr’s conversation into our current social climate. Until then, I’ll leave you some of Barr’s final words:

Complementarianism is patriarchy, and patriarchy is about power. Neither have ever been about Jesus.

Jesus set women free a long time ago.

Go, be free!

(218)

Sacred Oppression

(This is #8 in a series).

After everywhere we’ve been in this book, Chapter 7 starts with some surprising facts: Women preached in evangelical churches for a century prior to WWII. Barr cites Timothy Larson’s “Evangelicalism” Strong History of Women in Ministry” (2017), in which he characterizes “women’s involvement in public ministry ‘a historic distinctive of evangelism’” (175). From Methodists to Calvinists to—yes—Southern Baptists, women have been allowed to preach. The SBC even ordained a woman, Addie Davis, in 1964 and sponsored a conference on women’s role in ministry in 1974 (175). Barr spends pages laying out the history.

So what changed?

Barr lays it at the feet of two events. The fundamental-modernist controversy in the early 20th century churches “split evangelicals into liberal and conservative camps, laying the groundwork for the modern culture wars. Liberals wanted a more ecumenical approach to missions and the freedom to modernize traditional beliefs; conservatives wanted to protect traditional beliefs against encroaching cultural pressures” (188). The “central drama” was over biblical inerrancy, with the fundamentalists firmly in the camp that believed “not only that the Bible was without error, but that it had to be without error to be true at all” (188). Barr says “the…emphasis on inerrancy went hand in hand with a wide-ranging attempt to build up the authority of male preachers at the expense of women” (189). A side benefit of inerrancy was “an atmosphere of fear. Any question raised about biblical accuracy must be completely answered or completely rejected to prevent the fragile fabric of faith from unraveling” (190).

The second event was the rise of the Arian heresy in evangelical churches. This heresy, discarded by the church in 325 CE at the Council of Nicaea, stated that within the Trinity, the Son and Holy Spirit are subject to the Father, making the power structure between the three uneven. The council rejected this idea and confirmed that the Trinity is one God in three persons, light from light, true God from true God. To suggest that the Son submits to the Father is to deny the heart of Christianity.

Barr shares the opinion of Kevin Giles that the resurgence of Arianism in the American evangelical church is a failure of education: “’In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, conservative evangelicals were among those with a very weak and sometimes erroneous grasp of the historically developed doctrine of the Trinity’” (195). Without a strong grounding in theology that would have helped them understand that we should be more like God, these preachers “fought to make God look more like us” (195). If the Son submits to the Father, then too the congregation to the preacher, the wife to the husband, the child to the parent, the slave to the master, the poor to the rich, and so on.

Barr presents this information objectively, but it is impossible to read it that way.

And honestly, I don’t know where to begin.

Catholics do not read the bible literally, because there are textual errors in the Bible. For example, the earth is not flat; the sun does not revolve around the earth; dinosaurs were real and the earth is older than 7000 years. The folks who wrote the Bible did the best they could with the information they had. However, we do believe that the truth of the message of salvation is inerrant. For example, when Jesus said “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you” (John 6:53), this was not open to interpretation. For 2000 years, we have proven that it is possible to hold these two ideas—that the Bible has errors in it AND the Bible is the Word of God—without our faith wavering or God being diminished.

Also, the idea that the Word is frail is ridiculous. The Word is God. God is not frail. That’s the kind of thing Satan would have us believe.

However, these two events in the evangelical church underscore the point from two weeks ago—the Word is vulnerable. It can be manipulated by those with human and sinful intentions. The truth will out because God can’t be contained, but in the meantime, the Word can be used by those who would make themselves into gods. Barr doesn’t go this far, but I will–to suggest that the Bible in its entirety is inerrant and must be accepted literally is to ask people to accept that the world is flat, the sun orbits the earth, dinosaurs never lived, science is fake—

Do you see? It is a direct line from these two events to where we are today. Evangelicals have been trained to not believe what their eyes see, their ears hear, and their minds know.

None of this—not biblical womanhood, or biblical inerrancy or the emphasis on Greek and Roman hierarchical structures—is about God’s kingdom on earth. It has nothing to do with Gospel.

Last week, I taught my 4th and 5th graders to judge a tree by its fruit. We talked about the fruit that shrivels on the branch and the kind that falls to the ground. We talked about how a healthy tree produces healthy, life-giving fruit and we talked about what that fruit—the fruit of the Spirit—looks like in people: Kindness. Love. Goodness. Gratefulness. Patience. Joy. Peace. Self-control. Gentleness.

It’s time to apply these same ideas to our churches.

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing Christians that oppression is godly. That God ordained some people, simply because of their sex or skin color (or both), as belonging under the power of other people (173).

Resurrect

How do we walk with the Lord on His journey, especially in this year of so much change and uncertainty. Surrender. Endure. Grieve. Resurrect.

Easter: Resurrect

We are all Mary Mag on Easter morning.

We have surrendered, and followed.

We have endured.

We have grieved.

We have been promised a resurrection, but we don’t fully understand what that means. And we’re not sure how the dead guy, the one who did all the miracles before, is going to be able to help himself.

We are all Mary Mag.

When she woke up on that third day, she knew the prophecies, and she knew what Jesus himself had said. But the world looked the same, and in that world, Jesus’ burial needed finishing. So she gathered her oils and one or two other women and off they went to do their work.

She witnesses the empty tomb in all four of the gospels. In John’s, she runs to get Peter, who comes back with her, sees the empty tomb and flees. Flees. Mary stands her ground, in tears. She thinks his body has been stolen—“They have taken my Lord away and I do not know where they have put him” (20:13). She still doesn’t understand that in this moment, everything is new.

Jesus is new—the Risen Christ, the promise fulfilled.

The world is new, saved.

Mary is new, so new that Jesus names her again: “Mary”.  And in that moment, she sees the Truth.

This is the promise of the journey, friends. There is a point to our suffering, there is a reason for our sorrow and it’s this: if we do the work, we will die to our old life and rise again in truth.

Let’s don’t go “back” to normal.

Walk your surrender.  

Endure your trial.

Grieve your reckoning.

And rise again in truth.

Happy Easter!

Loaves and Love

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We paid off the new church.

We got a new pastor.

The newly paid off church almost burned up in a wildfire.

The new pastor had to be threatened to put down the garden hose and leave the church in the face of the wildfire.

For your personal edification, I asked my dad (He Who Used To Work For A Bishop) if there was any official protocol for evacuating a church in the event of a wildfire.

“Take Jesus and go.”

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Father Freddy is from Columbia and he has his English in such a way that he knows the words, but he sometimes says them in the order of the Spanish in his head. This is not the way we speak them. It is so much better.

Today the reading was about the loaves and the fishes, which is propitious because next week is VBS and it’s all about encountering Jesus and one of the focus stories is loaves and fishes. So when Father got up to preach, I snuggled down into the pew to listen.

It was beautiful. He talked about how the little boy in the scripture brought what he had, which was not much. He gave it willingly though and Jesus took it, blessed him and made it BIG. Five thousand people big—well, scripture says men, so if they had wives and kids with them, it was even bigger than that.

Jesus fed them all til they were full.

Father said if we could just be like that little boy, and bring our love to Jesus, he will make it big. Even if we don’t know how our little love could be enough. Jesus knows.

I was super on board with this. Yes. YES. Father is using metaphor. The loaves and fishes are a metaphor for the love we have for others. And if we bring that love to Jesus, he will bless us and make it BIG. Awesome. I am SO using that at VBS.

And then, a little voice inside my head wondered if maybe Father should have explained the metaphor better because you know, not everyone is a used-to-be English teacher.

I started thinking how I would make that connection for the kids at VBS, maybe a giant math equation with a loaf and a fish and an equal sign to a heart…

And then it hit me. He’s not saying love. The whole time, he’s not saying love.

He’s saying LOAF.

The English teaching in me went down screaming, because she doesn’t like to be wrong. The rest of me laughed all the way to Communion.

I mean, it still works. Bring your loaf, which by your very willingness to bring it, shows your love. Jesus will multiply it and use it to feed others. But for reals—the story has stood the test of time. It doesn’t need improvement.

Just better listening skills.

Welcome, Father Freddy. I promise to try harder.

 

 

 

 

God Calling

I forgot to tell you a story about Vacation Bible School.

The theme was hearing God’s call in our lives. One of the first things I knew I wanted to do was have a phone call from God every morning to kick us off.

Joyce, our director of ministries, thought this was awesome sauce. Not because of the edgy, cool connection between technology and God’s message, but because she had just bought a foam cutter for the parish. To this day, which is all the days between when I told her I needed a giant foam phone until today, I have no idea what a foam cutter is. But Joyce used it to make me a giant iPhone.

I wrote a script. I asked Don to be God. We put a chair in the closet and gave him a microphone. Kelsey, our youth minister, made the phone ring. I just had to hit accept and say “Hello?” Five minutes before I did it the first time, I panicked and thought “This was the lamest idea EVER!”

I underestimated the five year olds, who have the most tremendous capacity to suspend disbelief in all of human nature.

When God said good morning, they yelled back at him “Good morning God!” And even though it was in the script for God to tell them “I love you”, one of the girls screamed it out first. “I LOVE YOU!!!!” Some of you evangelical Christians may not be surprised by this. But we’re Catholics. We took ourselves very seriously for 2000 years. Since Vatican II, we’re still learning to be ok when our spiritual emotions overflow.

The daily phone call from God became a thing. One little girl wrapped herself around my leg on day 3 and whispered “Do you think God will call us today?” On day 4, at the end of God’s call, I forgot to walk over and smack the “Reject” on the big foam and paper phone. Riley, an almost 1st grader who doesn’t miss a trick, shouted at me from 3 feet away “Miss Jen, you didn’t hang up the call! You are WASTING GOD’S DATA!!!”

And on the last morning, this:

Waiting on God to call.

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Jesus said “Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus didn’t mean that we should be treated like children, although too many churches have interpreted it this way. He wanted us to believe like children, with a bone deep certainty that God is there and He is love.  He wants us to have that same selfish focus for Him that allows kindergartners to think God has nothing better to do on a Friday morning than call 70 kids at a VBS in Southern Oregon.

See God through the eyes of a child.