Innovative Protesting?

August 23, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I drive down the road and see corners filled up with clusters of people holding picket signs of hate. They spread their message of condemnation to the world. I must have missed the part where Jesus said, “It is the picket line that leads people to repentance.”

Just a few more blocks down and there’s more clusters of people only their signs carry words that spell out l-o-v-e, but the messages spread belittling statements about the other groups of people I saw earlier. I missed the part where Jesus said, “Belittle your enemies while there is hope.”

One group has men dressed in slacks and women in dresses. The other group has men and women in underwear.

Our kids are seeing all of this. 

“Mommy, why do people spend all day holding signs about each other when they can go to the beach like us and have fun?”

“Daddy, why are all those people walking around in their undies?”

“Grandpa, don’t those people go to your church? Isn’t that the deacon and his wife? I thought Jesus loves us. The bible tell us so.”

Sometimes a picket line works well, other times it doesn’t. Maybe it’s time we become more creative with how we protest and raise awareness. Especially if we want the end result to be equality, peace, and harmony.

Hate breeds more hate. 

It pays to speak of your passion with integrity. People are more likely to listen and maybe the kids can learn better ways for them to express themselves when they get older.

I think we would be naive to think our protests don’t affect our children. I see images of sweet little girls holding signs that preach hate for certain types of people. The bottom line is she’s being taught to hate.

Kids see men in their undies holding signs about love as he slips his tongue into the mouth of his partner. They’re teaching my kids that’s what love is.

I love my husband and can give him a simple kiss, but I don’t teach my kids to put their tongues in people’s mouths. I snuggle on the couch with my family, but I don’t lay around in my undies in front of them and their friends.

That would be inappropriate.

Some things are just not appropriate for the eyes of young children. This is why we have a rating system on television shows, movies, video games, and music.

But we’ll let people stand on corners and preach hate and sexuality where the kids can see it.

Maybe this is why people aren’t getting their messages listened to.

Aren’t there enough billboards, commercials, radio, ads on buses, and even on our smartphone apps?

The greatest way to get a message across is to live the message respectfully. No one is going to want to hear me talk about the love of God if it’s by carrying around a sign condemning people to hell. Likewise, people won’t want to hear about marriage equality if it’s by walking around in underwear and being sloppily intimate in public.

I guess, for me…. neither one of these is love.

  • I find love in helping the elderly cross the road, feeding the homeless, embracing a sad friend with a warm hug.
  • I find love in the cuddling of babies and kittens.
  • I find love in giving Eskimo kisses to my son’s freckled nose.
  • I find love in giving butterfly kisses to my daughter’s cheek with my eyelashes.
  • I find love in holding hands with my husband.

Anything more in depth than this is reserved for the sacred resting place in our little corner of the house. That private place where we can both be free to be love to one another. The place where it’s just between us.

People don’t need to actually witness our private intimacy to know we love and are committed to each other.

I understand groups who want their messages to be heard, but is it possible there could be more innovative and respectful ways of doing so?

 

Sisterlisa


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What is worship?

October 14, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The term ‘worship’ seems to have morphed into something I just don’t see in the bible. I’m not against a church having music, singing together, raising their hands, etc. That is certainly their freedom to do so. I’m just wondering if we have gotten carried away with ‘worship’ and turned the ‘act of singing’ into an idol. One church I went to before made ‘worship’ into a legalistic command. In fact, if you didn’t stand and raise your hands during ‘worship’ then you were in outright defiance to God. Some folks in that church would actually tell you that they doubted your salvation if you had a problem with standing, raising your hands, and singing the words to their music. What have we allowed to happen here?

Some would say, “What would Jesus Do?”, but I don’t find any passages in the bible where Jesus stood with hands raised, eyes closed, and singing hymns or Contemporary Christian music to God. Again, I’m not saying that singing together in corporate worship is wrong, just trying to get a better perspective on this thing we call…worship.

In the Greek this word worship is proskuneó, which is to bow down, kiss the ground, laying prostrate, or to adore on knees. To adore on knees reminds me of when a man proposes to his lady. He is humbling himself to her to ask her hand in marriage. We also see examples of this when a courtier kneels before royalty out of respect. But these bowing down practices are not in and of themselves, ‘worship’. They simply represent worship, as in…they are outward expressions of what’s already going on in the heart.

Throughout the ages we have historical evidence that many cultures, regions, and religions have very similar, if not exact, ways in which they worship. Where do these practices come from? How did mankind ever learn to behave this way? Worship is an outward expression of love. It comes from within our hearts.

Now here’s where this gets tricky. According to the bible, God says that we are not to worship anyone or any idol other than him. We are taught that God is a jealous God. But then we say not to be jealous people because envy is a work of the flesh. So it makes more sense to say that God is jealous AFTER you..as in..He deeply longs for your embrace. Otherwise we would be saying that God exhibits a work of the flesh. God truly loves us, but is he really jealous of other gods the way a little girl is jealous if the cute boy in class likes another girl? I think we have this word ‘jealous’ mixed up in our modern thinking. So we have this God, who deeply longs for us and I’m wondering where we learn to ‘worship’?

God created us in his image, so perhaps this desire to bow down in love is something that he placed inside of us so we would naturally and instinctively do this. Remember that mankind has been doing this since the beginning of time.

Now as I get back to the idea of WWJD, I keep in mind that we never read of Jesus participating in a ‘worship service’ the way we see it in churches today. Did Jesus ever actually kneel in prayer? We know he prayed in the garden and while preaching he taught about prayer. But we do find one place where Jesus laid down… on the cross.

Stay with me now… in the days of the people throughout the bible we know that many religions were performing acts of worship in a variety of ways. One of the main  ways in which humans were worshiping was through sacrifices and the ultimate sacrifice they gave was a life, often it was children or virgins.

For many years I thought that was so sadistic to allow your child’s life to be taken for a god. But then I read that Abraham willingly went up to the mountain to give his son as a sacrifice to God. So maybe this concept was not as bizarre as I thought? Thankfully an angel came along and redirected Abraham’s attention to a bush where a lamb had got it’s horns stuck..a substitute sacrifice. And this was the foreshadow of the ultimate sacrifice of the Lamb of God, Jesus.

This is where my mind enters the paradox. Do I dare to go in? We’re talking about sacrificing humans, children at that, to be given to death out of love? Is it real love to allow our own children to die? I can’t help but to get a little sick here. What does all of this have to do with worship? How can it possibly be worship to slay a child on an altar to an unseen God?

Lets back up a bit, shall we? All through the ages people have been believers in some kind supreme being and they have had this strange desire to slay children to these gods. But isn’t it God who came to earth in the form of man to relate to us? He wanted us to know that he understands us and he desires that we understand him. To grasp this concept of sacrifice we have to allow our minds to go back several thousands years to understand why the people felt the need to sacrifice. Today’s generation doesn’t understand this, because we don’t do sacrifices like this anymore.

The people gave out of two emotions, love and fear. It’s never a clear message when we toss fear into love and try to express our feelings. It becomes convoluted. Which is why I have always had such a difficult time understanding this…this paradox.

People would dress their children or virgins in white and bring them forth with beatings on a drum and lay them on the altar to the gods. Often times we find paintings depicting people bowing down before giant pyramids. Abraham bound the hands of his son in preparation for the sacrifice to God.

What was God trying to show them? Was he trying to convey that HE requires this? I think that maybe he was trying to show us that He was willing to do this out of his love for us. God came to earth as Jesus and laid down his own life..he bowed down to humble his life for us. Could this be worship?

Perhaps this was where we get the idea of worship from. A love that is so great that it humbles itself for the one he loves. Maybe these ancient sacrifices were foreshadows as Abraham’s was. So that when Jesus came to lay down his life as a sacrifice, all cultures could understand his great love for mankind…paving the way for the Gospel to be told worldwide.

But somehow I think we got our thinking mixed up on what worship is and why sacrifice was given. Many people view God as a tyrant who demanded blood with vengeance, needing lives to be slaughtered to pacify his anger. But there are others who believe God  is loving, always giving of himself with a heart of worship to love us and satisfy our own devilish need for blood and vengeance. Remember the story he told of the workers in the vineyard? The workers would kill every servant that was sent to take a message to them, so he sent his son…and it was the men in the vineyard who had a thirst for blood.

When will our thirst for blood end?

Wasn’t Jesus enough for us?

Jesus is the groom kneeling before his Bride..proposing out of love… worship? Is he demanding a yes reply to his porposal with a threat of violence if we decline? Or does he ask for our hand in ‘marriage’ because He loves us so much?

The apostle Paul said, “Let each man be convinced in his own mind,”

Jesus asks, “Who do YOU say that I am?”

Filed Under: Grace Tagged With: , , , , ,

Marriage Blessings

September 14, 2011 by Leave a Comment

I had the honor of being my best friend’s Matron of Honor at her wedding this last week and was given the privledge of giving the toast..here is the toast I gave and with all my love I pray the same for all of yor marriages.

You’ve heard it said to live, laugh, and love but sometimes days seem dark and you don’t feel alive, or willing to laugh, and sometimes love is hard to find when the storms come, but there’s one thing that shines the light so we can find our way again.. it’s called grace.

Grace is that unconditional love that is passionately pursuing us to live radically above and beyond the impossible. When it seems impossible to forgive..grace is the pathway home. May your marriage be lavished in love and filled with radical grace so that together, you can achieve the impossible.

bride by sisterlisa, on Pix-O-Sphere

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The Conversation About Gays Continues

May 25, 2011 by Leave a Comment

*This article is written as my own opinion as an American believer in Christ. I did not write this as an authority on the Bible, it is simply my own thoughts on the subject of gay marriage after reflecting upon the grace and mercy our Lord has given me personally. If we held each other up to the letter of the law, we’d all be blind, handless, and burned to a crisp in the nearest garbage dump. We can be all knowledgeable and have clean cups on the outside, but without love, we are just noise pollution.*

The conversation about gays in the faith community is not going away. It’s a hot topic in politics as well and Americans are struggling with where and how to draw the line between religion and politics in a nation that supports freedom of religion. The country is not to have an established religion, therefore people have the freedom to be religious or not. There are no laws governing the faith community’s interpretation of scriptures, although there are laws in place to protect under age girls from being forced to marry, to protect women from being beaten by their husbands, and even to protect adults from sexually violating children. Of course, not every pastor actually upholds those laws, in fact there have been many who actually cover up many types of abuse and claim it’s their religious freedom to do so. They have become their own law makers and unless someone presses charges, it goes undocumented except by those who have fled religion…but then they’re labeled as critical and bitter liars.

We’ve come a long way from slavery in this country and we have seen the slaves liberated and given their equal freedoms to vote, have jobs, get an education, and even become pastors in their own denominations. Women have been liberated as equals, given the right to vote, excel in the work force, and become clergy as well. Yet our nation is not quite fully equal for all adults, not yet anyway. Many religious communities deny a gay couple the right to be wed by the state and in some cases they aren’t allowed to sing in choirs, teach Sunday School, or preach the Bible.

Certainly each denomination has their freedom of religion and I don’t advocate the government forcing a church to allow people to have those positions in their communities. I believe each church has the freedom to decide who will teach or sing in their ministries. I don’t always agree that their decisions are right or fair, but it is their freedom. They can decide if a divorced, but remarried, woman can teach children, they can decide if a divorced man can be a deacon, and they can even decide that women can’t teach from their pulpits. This is their freedom.

While on the other hand it is the freedom of a divorced and remarried woman to vote, hold office in civic places, and even teach in a public school. African Americans can vote, get an education, have equal opportunities to a job, or to become a professor at a State University.

But somewhere along the way, the religious community is voting to deny some rights and freedoms to the GBLT Community. They will gladly take a gay man’s vote to have a tighter fiscal budget, but limit the gay man from being in a legal marriage by the state.

It boggles my mind how the religious won’t report children being molested in their churches, but will deny two adult men the freedom to be wed.

According to many churches, gays are considered heathens. So if that is so, then why force them to adopt the religious views of these denominations? Why hold them to their religious laws, when they aren’t of that religion? Why do the religious continue to clobber gays and deny that they could stand under the same kind of clobbering for any number of things in their lives?

How many times have the religious folks allowed their religious convictions override another American’s Constitutional freedoms?

If gays go to your church, you have the freedom to say if they can teach a class or not, but the religious don’t have the right to force their views, legally, on those who don’t go to their churches. If we draw the line there we might as well draw it a bit closer for the whole nation then. If we do that, we will get back to the days when gays and disobedient children are stoned to death and burned in the nearest garbage dump. What about those women who end up divorced? They have to stay single for the rest of their lives?

We are a society of people who live among one another and Jesus commands us to do so with love.

  • Love your neighbor as yourself.
  • Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
  • That which you sow, you will also reap.

If I forbid gays to marry, am I willing to allow them to limit one of my freedoms?

Would I want gays to hold up hate speech signs about me being married to my husband?

Do I want to reap tighter laws on my own life?

I suppose each person has the right to not acknowledge gay couples in marriage, just as much as gays have the right to deny acknowledging that a person is really a Christian just because they go to church.

Marriage is a cultural issue for some and a religious issue for others.

Some churches are still refusing to allow African Americans to marry Caucasians.

Where does the Bible say how to marry a person? Where does it indicate exactly who officiates the wedding? Which chapter does the Bible specifically state what is said at a wedding? When did God tell Christians they needed the state to give them permission to perform a religious ceremony?

People were being given in marriage long before churches were established and many nations observe some type of wedding among their people outside of Christianity.

Yes, it takes a sperm and an egg to create a baby and that can only happen between a man and a woman. But have we forgotten that some women can’t have children? Some men can’t produce healthy sperm to create a baby. So what of those barren couples? Obviously their marriage is for more than just creating babies. Now what about women who are born without the needed body parts for a man to be pleasured through intercourse? So then their marriages are not just about sex. But since when is it any of our business if a couple is having sex or creating babies? Many married heterosexual couples quit having sex later in life so their relationships are being held together by something far deeper than the excitement of nerve endings.

Without sex and creating babies, what is a marriage for?

Companionship, support, love, these are things that are needed in life today.

If two men choose to be in a committed relationship legally, live together, and walk through life with each other, then let them be free to do so. What they do in the bedroom is none of our business, just as what my husband and I do in the bedroom is none of your business.

Related Articles:

This Conversation is Not Going Away by Sisterlisa

I Stand With You by Jeromy J

Come, Stand with Me, Time to Believe Out Loud by Chad Holtz

Filed Under: Grace Tagged With: , , , ,

This Conversation is Not Going Away

May 6, 2011 by 1 Comment

When I was graduating from junior high and transitioning over to the local high school, I heard rumors about a couple that was attending that high school. A homosexual couple. Teen girls who were dating. The rumor mill was working over time that summer and by the time the first day of school came I expected to see several couples like this on campus. That wasn’t the case. It was just one couple and once we realized that the topic of homosexuality didn’t come up at all during my four years in high school.

I didn’t think too much of it for the next several years until we ended up in a fundamentalist church where it was preached about quite often. More celebrities were coming out of their closets and more preaching followed. Now we’re in the twenty-first century and the conversation about homosexuality is not going to go away, neither are the homosexuals. They’re here among us and we can’t deny that. No amount of preaching is going to make them go away and the more preachers condemn them the more the communities will struggle with being a community with them.

Each of us lives in a community and each community has divisions. That’s a part of life, but to be a healthy community we need to learn to live together in balanced harmony for the benefit of the whole community.

The church I came out of two years ago got involved in their first political rally when Prop 8 hit the ballot in California. The Prop 8 group couldn’t find a church that was willing to host the rally in our area. So the pastor took it on. It was quite impressive actually. I was amazed to see how many people came out for it. People from several counties all around ours. That was about a year before we left that church. Looking back now and remembering the things that were said, how it was handled, and looking at the US Constitution diligently, I came to change my mind about Prop 8.

My first thought about the Marriage Act is that the government should never have been given ‘marriage’ to begin with. If ‘marriage’ is truly of God then why is the government making a law about it? There was a generation of Christians that dropped the ball on protecting their religious traditions when they allowed the state to license marriage in the first place. I could go ever further by addressing the fact that Christianity also has allowed the state to license a pastor, but I’ll save that one for another article.

Now my second thought is about homosexual individuals as US citizens. The US Constitution is there to protect them as well. Is the US Constitution only protecting the right to pursue happiness for heterosexual couples? As I think back on our nation’s history I can remember there was a time when it didn’t protect women as individuals, nor African Americans. Our nation went through tremendous battles to bring about the freedom of women and African Americans. The idea that the US Constitution only protects the rights of white men would be preposterous!

Upon a closer look at the state’s individual constitutions we see that there is indeed a civil union law that gives homosexual couples rights in their state approved union. There are a lot of disagreements about the benefits that come with both civil unions and marriage. Are they equal?

Since Christianity gave ‘marriage’ over to the state’s authority they now run the risk of seeing it redefined to keep up with the Constitutional rights of all American citizens. This is where the problem rises to the surface and it is met with a lot of hostility.

A lot of the argument about homosexual marriage is coming from the religious community.

I find it interesting that before Prop 8 hit the ballot Fundamental Baptists and Mormons were sharply divided, but become quite unified to stop homosexual equality for marriage. All kinds of churches that otherwise have absolutely no communication, fellowship, or otherwise have suddenly agreed upon something. Enough of an agreement to send their money to the Prop 8 campaign to fight for marriage in court. If marriage was this important to them, why not just take marriage out of the state constitution and give it back to the religious community where they claim it belongs?

Then the state can have civil unions for all people regardless of their orientation and the church’s can maintain their own definition for marriage aside from the state.

There’s something very interesting brewing when the religious community actually wants the state’s approval on their religious ceremonies, pastors, and ministries.

For now we have this issue and each state has varying laws about this controversy, but aside from that there is this ongoing conversation taking place with churches and pastors all over the nation.

Are homosexuals allowed to become members of churches?

Can a homosexual couple attend a couple’s class?

Is it appropriate to allow a homosexual to teach God’s grace to a group of people?

For some people the argument becomes one of the Law. The Law was given to the Jews, not the Gentiles. I’m not a Jew and I think it would be fair to assume that most churches that consider themselves “New Testament Churches” aren’t Jews either.

We aren’t required to live by the Law, but if we choose to live by the Law we have to live by all of the Law. If we offend just ONE law we are guilty of ALL the Law. Each church certainly has the freedom to live by the Law, but if they do they need to uphold all of it and I’m quite certain they won’t be changing their Sunday services back to Saturdays any time soon.

Living in the New Covenant with Christ, there is this new way of living. It’s called living by faith. To live by the Law is opposite to living by faith.

We see an example of this when Paul is explaining the wisdom of allowing one another to eat certain meats that others might claim is a sin. The argument was that the Law forbade it, but under grace it’s allowed. I believe his thoughts in Romans 14 is quite fitting for this discussion.

In the New Covenant we reap what we sow. There are consequences in this life, therefore major decisions should be taken seriously.

I believe there is a balance for this ongoing conversation about the homosexual community and the religious community and I think we need to take this entire conversation very seriously, full of grace, and in the wisdom of God under the New Covenant of Christ.

I will close with these thoughts and another article is to come soon.

  • Each church has the freedom to live by their convictions as interpreted by their denomination.
  • The US Constitution is supposed to uphold the rights of all it’s citizens.
  • Not all Americans are religious, therefore should not be made to living according to religious convictions.

In my upcoming articles I will be examining the words in the Hebrew and Greek in the popular passages that many churches use to uphold their convictions about homosexuality and bring them into the Light of the New Covenant life in Christ.

I welcome comments, but I reserve the right to withhold publishing any comments that are belittling or condemning. I do hope you will let me know what questions and concerns you have so I can prayerfully consider those things while I am studying this topic.

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The Pastor’s Affair

January 23, 2011 by 4 Comments
In all my years of ministry, there has been a dynamic of ‘looking down’ upon ministry wives that don’t meet a specific criteria. If your husband isn’t a 501c3 ‘church’ with a building and tithing members, he’s not REALLY a pastor and you’re not REALLY a pastor’s wife. Then over years of study and deep questioning among theologians all over the word we discovered that a 501c3, a building, and tithing members isn’t what makes a person a minister or minister’s wife. Being a minister is a gift in the heart. It’s Christ manifesting Himself through His chosen vessels. Then you attend a variety of conferences for Christian women where certain pastor’s wives get special treatment. You know the ones. The ones who’s husband’s have the largest churches. “Your husband’s ministry isn’t big enough for you to be considered among the highest of pastor’s wives.” Sounds like high school all over again.
I was once told by a pastor’s wife this statement, “If you publish a book, we’ll have you in to speak to the women”. So now authoring a book is the prerequisite to sharing my story. I don’t see where this is in the bible that a woman has to write a book before she can minister to other women.
After the teaching sessions have ended and the pastor’s wives are signing their books, autographing the inside cover of bibles, I look around the room. I see a woman sitting alone at a table, in deep thought. I ask if I can sit with her. Her face lights up. The first kindness shown to her that day, she begins to unfold her life story to me in great detail. During the course of her story it dawns on her how something in her life had been a stumbling block to her family and she confesses it through sobs.
She somehow sees herself as a wedge between her husband and his ministry. She’s a pastor’s wife. She had been judged harshly by the other pastor’s wives. This woman is in deep depression and her husband has been trying to send friends to her side to comfort her and lift her up. You see, he’s so busy with ministry and his wife’s depression is ‘hindering’ his work. My heart breaks. Her heart is broken as she is under the weight of the condemnation the other minister’s wives have placed on her. She is suffering enough as it is. I continue to listen and she continues to speak, pausing every few words so she can catch her breath. She grips her chest and her face winces in pain. Her eyes flowing with tears and her neck tightening with gulps of air.
She tells of her husband’s ministry. She describes a seemingly glorious work, a magnificent building of crystal chandeliers, plush carpets and padded pews. After every service, women are lining up to get his autograph in their bibles and they cry their tears of sadness that their husbands don’t attend church with them. He pats them on the shoulders, assuring them to stay faithful to church, give their tithes, and bring their kids. She tells about how he gives public praise to these women for coming to church, that their faithfulness to serve in the house of worship is highly commendable.
But he rebukes his wife in the car on the way home. She hadn’t reached out to these women. He scolds her for spending too much time at the altar praying alone, when she could have been praying with these women. He tells her that she is selfish and should present a better example to the church…to be a good pastor’s wife.
She sobs under muffled words that I can’t understand. She catches her breath again, hoping no one notices her talking to me. She whisper’s, “He’s having an affair with the ministry”
This is a scenario that many minister’s wives face every week. They think they are alone in seeing this dilemma. My dear sisters in Christ, you are not the only ones who notice.
This is a serious issue that needs to be brought to the light. Many minister’s wives are in deep agony over their pain and they need help. They face the fear of speaking up, thinking that ministry could crumble under the weight of the truth being revealed. So they suffer in silence. They sacrifice their own hearts on the altar of the pastor’s desire to grow a ministry.
Jesus Christ is the Groom to the Bride, His Church. The minister has his own bride, his wife. But he wants Christ’s Bride. Is this not the story of David and Bathsheba all over again? Wanting what isn’t his and forsaking his own for his fleshly desires. A minister’s marriage is not higher than the others. It is also not to be neglected in order to further some man built building. We are all equal in Christ. Any marriage in a fellowship that is suffering needs help. It’s high time Christianity stop trying to protect the image of the pastor and his church at the cost of other people’s lives.
Women of the church,… leave the preacher alone. He has a wife.
Cross Sculpture by cherie, on Pix-O-Sphere

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