John Shore

Archive for the ‘God’ Category

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The One Sin God Cannot Forgive

In Christianity, God, Jesus on December 1, 2008 at 6:33 am

Have you ever wondered whether there’s any sin so bad God can’t forgive it? You have? Why? What are you planning on doing, anyway?

Sorry. If St. Thomas Aquinas taught us anything, it’s that humor and theology go together like confession and hand puppets. So I apologize.

As it turns out, the Bible tells us there is one sin beyond forgiving. We find it at Matthew 12:31-32, where Jesus says, “And so I tell you every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.”

Like just about everything Jesus said (and there’s no shame in admitting this) this is at first a deeply confusing statement. For centuries theologians, philosophers, pundits and others basically unsuited for normal employment have bent their minds trying to decipher what exactly Jesus meant by that quote. If Jesus and the Holy Spirit are one being, they’ve pondered, how is it okay to blaspheme against one, but not the other?

I believe that what Jesus meant in the above quote is that he understands why people might reject him; he has, after all, presented himself in mortal form, which is bound to leave some people unconvinced.

I believe that what he is saying there is, “Fair enough. I can forgive you if you insist that I, Jesus Christ, the Son of Man—the human-seeming person you see here today—am lying, am not who I say I am. Apparently raising the dead  just isn’t enough for some people, but whatever. That’s why I gave you free will; everyone has the power to doubt. But once the Holy Spirit has eradicated your reason to doubt the reality of who I am by awakening within in you the certain knowledge of it, you and I have bonded. Then the truth is within you. And if you later reject that truth—if, having accepted me into your house, you then kick me back out again—then you have visited upon yourself a woeful state that even I cannot relieve.”

This means (yay!) that a Christian cannot commit the one unpardonable sin, because doing so would mean they’re not Christian, since it’s impossible to simultaneously believe in Christ and reject him. So we believers can rest assured that there’s nothing we can do—and nothing we have ever done—for which Christ, in his boundless mercy, cannot lovingly forgive us.

Whoo-hoo! Bust out the hand puppets!

Now, if you don’t believe in the vibrant, transforming power of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit—well, then, all I can say is the obvious: God help you.

 

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“Can You Help My (Non-Gay) Husband Feel Like a Bride of Christ?”

In Christianity, God, Jesus, Religion on November 21, 2008 at 7:46 am

Yesterday a young woman sent me an e-mail in which she wrote:

I have a question that I’ve been researching for quite a few days now, with not much success. Recently, my husband tearfully confided to me that he trusts fully in Jesus (since age 6) for his salvation, but he finds it hard to feel the love for God that Christians often speak about. He is a man of integrity—he is kind, compassionate, and generous. He is knowledgeable in the Bible and believes that it is the true word of God.

Is it possible for someone to be a Christian and be reverent to God, but not feel love for him? Is it just more difficult for men to connect emotionally with God?  I have never heard this topic touched on or talked about in any capacity. 

My husband is a highly intellectual individual—a thinker. I want to be able to understand his feelings, but I can’t relate and haven’t heard this issue addressed.  I would be truly thankful if you have any ideas or know of any resources that may expound on these things. 

Here’s the short version of my answer to this earnest, good-hearted wife:

Tell your husband not to worry. His is a problem of language, not soul. Christians use the same language as everyone around them, but oftentimes what they mean by the words they use is so different from what the rest of the culture would mean if they used those same words that a kind of disconnect in the Christian’s mind can result. And nowhere is there a bigger difference between the way Christians and everybody else uses the language than in the way Christians talk about their “love” of Jesus.

Not long after becoming Christian I read about how a believer is meant to be the bride of Christ. My first thought was, “Oh no. I look awful in taffeta.” Then I tried to picture Jesus and me feeding each other cake at our wedding reception, and me getting it all over my veil, and everyone laughing and laughing until we all remembered that it’s wrong to be gay.

See? It’s a problem of language. I’m not a bride; I’m never going to be a bride. Jesus never got down on one knee and proposed to me. I would have loved to see his line of groomsmen, but … no. (I’m voting that his best man would be Isaiah.)

I think Christians feel stress over the way their emotions don’t fully accord with the language they use when they talk about God. I can say I love Jesus, but the relationship I’ve then connected with that word is so radically unlike any other relationship with which I ever connect that word that I’ve automatically set myself in uncharted territory. As much and as readily as we talk about Jesus as if he were an actual, living, corporeal being, he’s not. We can’t actually, literally walk with Jesus. We can’t hold his hand. We can’t get into anything like a normal conversation with him. We can’t send him a letter, phone him, hug him, tousle his hair, or buy him a tie he has to pretend to like for Christmas. The relationship we have with Jesus isn’t anything like any other relationship we ever have with anyone—and yet we talk about it using the exact same words we use to talk about all of our other earthly, loving relationships.

I think this perpetual linguistic dichotomy causes Christians stress and even doubt. I think Christians hear other Christians rhapsodizing about Jesus as if he really were their husband or lover or friend, and then they, following suit, say the same things about their relationship with Jesus—and then secretly feel weird because of the disconnect between the language they’ve used and the reality of the relationship they’ve used that language to describe. I think they fear that disconnect they’ve sensed is an indication that they’re in some way disconnected from God. I that’s what happened with this woman’s husband. I think it speaks volumes about the quality of his relationship with Christ (not to mention of his marriage) that he would be honest enough that perceived disconnection to bring it to his wife.

Young man: Fear not! You’re not suffering from anything more serious than a language issue. You love Jesus, and Jesus loves you. Your problem is that you’re stuck, as are we all, using the only language you have to describe the one relationship in your life for which there is, in fact, no language at all.

 

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What? Me, Critical?

In Christianity, God, Jesus, Religion on November 13, 2008 at 10:03 am

In response to yesterday’s piece, Sunday School: What a Drag. Literally!, I got a note from a reader that had the reprehensible quality of compelling me to cogitate. I am anti-cogitation! Cogitation is an abomination of an irritation that brings procrastination if not consternation to the creation and assimilation of my situation.

The thrust of Mr. Communication’s question to me was, “Why are you so negative? First you wrote about how badly Christians treated your wife, then about how your church insisted that you sign an anti-gay statement, and then the thing about the Sunday school teacher. For someone who’s a Christian, you sure do spend a lot of time criticizing Christians.”

So that made me think. Though it’s true that blogging some 25,000 words a month means almost necessarily writing about everything (and if you’re a regular reader of mine, you know I do), a preponderance of the evidence suggests that at least lately I have been about the business of, shall we say, gently rebuking my fellow Christians. So I thought I might think about that fact.

And you know what I concluded? Good for me! (Um … if I do say so myself.) I should be criticizing Christians. I should be doing more of it. If Christians don’t criticize the way Christianity is practiced and presented to the world, then who will? To whom else would we listen? To whom else do we ever listen? (Oh, sure, my book I’m OK–You’re Not: The Message We’re Sending Nonbelievers and Why We Should Stop launched a whole rash of books about how Christians look to non-Christians—but to whom else were we listening before that, I mean?)

And just for the record, or whatever, I don’t actually “criticize” anyone. All I do is relay stuff that Actually Happened. I was dragged out of that Sunday school class. I was rejected by my church for declining to sign that No Gays Here document. People at that same church did treat my wife poorly. The evangelist in the orange cap did violate the Great Commandment by screaming at my wife and me. Those aren’t guesses, exaggerations, or fabrications. They’re truths.

I take Jesus’ revelation that the truth will set us free as seriously as I take anything in my life. I think we all do. I think we all understand that lies and pretense are the lifeblood of hypocrisy and corruption. It follows that I’m naturally and viscerally repelled by any form of lie, hatred, or ignorance perpetrated in the name of the Prince of Peace. It makes me isane. It makes me … well, write.

I love and absolutely believe the story of Christ as we have it in the Bible. If I didn’t feel as strongly as I do about Christianity, I couldn’t have poured into the book Being Christian so much of … well, everything I have. I couldn’t have written my apologetic, Penguins, Pain and the Whole Shebang: Why I Do The Things I Do, by God. I’m OK would have remained a formless idea. It’s true enough that I’m often not thrilled with Christians who dishonor their professed religion by acting boorish, arrogant, and hypocritical. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be with them, as, together, we all learn to better and more faithfully follow Christ. (And it definitely doesn’t mean that I’m unaware of when I, too, have acted like a boorish, arrogant hypocrite. Which I pretty much only don’t do when I’m asleep.)

I see every Christian as my brother, my sister, my mother, my father.

I know we’re all in this together—whether, at any given time, we like it or not.

 

 

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Sunday School: What a Drag. Literally!

In Christianity, God, Jesus, Religion on November 12, 2008 at 9:26 am

I waved my hand in the air. “Excuse me! Excuse me!” I said. “If God is love, I don’t understand why there’s hell.” What my Sunday school teacher wasn’t understanding, though, was why the new kid in class wouldn’t be quiet.

I’d never been in Sunday school before. Irrefutably proving once and for all that Christians were bonkers was the fact that they apparently couldn’t get enough school in their lives. But we were new to our neighborhood, and my dad, a salesman, had decided we should all attend church. And right off the bat I had learned that adults went to church, while their kids got shoveled off to some place that I was rapidly discovering was modeled on Actual School, but wasn’t.

For sure my new Sunday school teacher, Miss Quinn, hadn’t liked my latest question. She hadn’t liked any of my questions. I had asked them by way of participating, by showing that I understood that I was now in a school that was all about God.

Plus, I had gotten pretty immediately into it. Who doesn’t want to know all they can about the absolute ruler of the entire universe?

“The reason there is hell,” answered Miss Quinn with a studied patience “—although that is a bad word, class, that we must never, ever use—is because that is where people who do bad and evil things end up as their punishment for disobeying God.”

I shot my arm back in the air. It was obvious that somehow my relationship with my latest teacher had gotten off on the wrong foot—but I was confident she’d get back to her natural state of liking me if I asked a really good question that demonstrated with what care I was paying attention. Plus, I was genuinely curious.

I saw Miss Quin’s neck tense a bit as she looked at me. “Yes?”

“If God is all-powerful and all-knowing,” I said, “then before a person is even born, God must know if that person is going to hell or not, right?” Miss Quinn’s expression made clear she had not yet been moved to cuddle me. “But why would God make anyone just so they could spend eternity in hell?” There. I’d delivered the coup de’ cuddle.

“What did I just say about cursing?”

“You said not to,” offered a shiny-faced boy I instantly hated.

“That’s right, Bobby. I said not to curse.” To me Miss Quinn said, “And yet you chose to curse anyway, didn’t you? Why do you think that is?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just … I was just asking a question about … I mean … how do I talk about … that place, without actually calling it hell?”

The class gasped.

“What is the matter with you?” said Miss Quinn.

“Nothing. Nothing’s the matter. I swear. I mean, I don’t swear. I mean, I try not to swear if I can help it. I only wanted to ask a question about … that place. That’s all.”

“Well, you’ve asked enough questions for today. Why don’t you just sit there quietly and not ask any more questions, okay? That will be fine.” Having properly dispatched of me, Miss Quin turned back to her chalkboard.

Having apparently been born without the Shut-Up gene, I was talking before I could stop it.

“That’s not fair. I asked a real question. This is supposed to be Sunday school, right? You’re supposed to learn stuff in school, not be told you can’t use the words you have to use to ask the questions you need to ask to learn the stuff you’re supposed to learn. What kind of crazy trap is that?”

“Young man!” yelled Miss Quinn. “Sit down!”

“And that’s not even the point! The point is that I asked a real question. If God is all-knowing—if he knows everything that’s going to happen before it happens—and someone ends up … down there, then God must have known all along that that person was going to end up down there. If he let that happen to that person, then how can God be as loving as you said he was? If God didn’t know that was gonna happen to that person, then how can he be all-knowing? And if he knew the person was going down there, and wanted to change it, but couldn’t, then how can God be all-powerful? Now aren’t those good questions?”

Miss Quinn came charging down the row of desks directly at me. “Oh,” I said, and waited for her arrival. She grabbed my arm, and with it yanked me so violently forward that it knocked me off my feet.

“I can’t believe you’re actually dragging me out of class!” I cried. I called out to my classmates. “Those were good questions! Good questions!” With my arm wrenched painfully over my head I then fell silent, and watched the ceiling of the classroom going by.

 

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Godly Lessons I Learned From a Dog

In Christianity, God, Humor, Religion on October 22, 2008 at 5:02 am

As I promised in my recent post I’ve Finally Gone to the Dogs, here are the Godly Lessons I learned from a white poodle I called Munch over the two weeks (which ended yesterday) in which she was in my care:

Just like Munch loved chasing me, running from me, barking at me, and biting my toes as she and I maniacally chased each other up and down the stairs of our three-story townhouse, God, while granting me endless hours of joyous interactive fun, could also, at a moment’s notice, cause me to flip head over heels onto my living room floor and die.

Just like Much totally surprised me by being able to fit through our front gate, so must I be encouraged by remembering that the inner me is considerably thinner than the outer me.

Just like Munch can’t see another dog without desperately desiring to play with it, so I must yearn and even strain to be with God, only not in such a way that I whine, choke myself, and cause others to hope I don’t become physically unrestrained.

Just like when Munch returns from a walk and then spends 15 minutes furiously throttling the dishrag I tied into knots so she could pretend it was one of the many birds she just spent 20 minutes being thwarted from attacking, so I must always be sure to resolutely take between my teeth my own knotty issues, and to keep chewing them over until I forget all about them because I suddenly remember that I’m starving to death.

Just like Munch can’t go five steps on her walks outside without stopping to sniff and intensely concentrate on something, so I must remember with gratitude that God has seen fit to make it so that I don’t go out of my mind with joy every time I see a little pile of dog You Know What on the sidewalk.

Just like over the course of a week Munch so determinedly scratched at a spot on her upper front shoulder that it became bald, red and raw, so I must remember how I, too, can take a relatively minor discomfort and, through obsessive diligence, turn it into something that ultimately causes people to take me to a doctor.

Just like if I so much as think about going into the kitchen Munch appears at my feet wondering what meal we’re going to share together, so I must remember that, sooner or later, God rewards the vigilant.

Just as Munch decided straight away that her greatest nemesis was the apparently evil beagle who lives a few doors down from us, so must I remember that just because someone is cute doesn’t mean I can’t wish they’d explode.

Just like it’s impossible for Munch not to instantly entangle herself in her leash if for a moment while walking her you sit down for a moment to enjoy the view, so I must remember that while God has me on the leash that is my love and devotion to him, I could still manage, through sheer stupidity, to choke myself to death.

Just like Munch habitually gnawed on herself in places I wish she didn’t even have, so I must remember to thank God that, in his wisdom, he limited the limberness of humans.

Just like her owner returned and took Munch away, I must never forget that, no matter how much fun I’m having, all good things must come to an end.

If you would like to see Actual Footage of Munch the poodle, please feel free to suffer through at least some of the video in which she makes a cameo appearance here.


Beyond the Christianization of Abortion

In Christianity, God, Politics, Religion on October 20, 2008 at 1:34 pm

(This is a follow-up to my last post, Will God Forgive Me if I Don’t Vote for McCain?.)

With all of my heart, I wish everyone was Christian. I wish divorce, drug abuse, alcoholism, premarital sex, spousal abuse, racism, and every sort of the exploitation and moral degradation amidst which we all live everyday was gone forever, burned away in the bright light of God’s infinite, immediate love for each and every one of us.

I don’t live in that place, though. I live in this one. This world. This place. This country.

Many in America are, as I am, Christian. Many ain’t. But all we Americans live under the same form of government, one mandated by its defining documents to forever endeavor to balance itself, and by so doing us, on the thin line between Doing the Right Thing and Doing Whatever You Want.

You can drive whatever car you want—as long as it’s licensed, and you don’t drive it too fast.

You can make all the money you want—as long as you give the government the percentage it requests.

You can have all the sexual congress you want—as long as the act isn’t contingent upon you or your partner getting paid for it. And so on.

I’m against abortion. I’m not against it because I’m a Christian (although a deeper knowledge and love of God can’t help but give me a deeper knowledge and love of people). The primary reason I’m against abortion is because I’m human. Everyone thinks abortion is horrible. Everyone wishes no one ever felt the need to get one. Nobody gets or agrees to an abortion cavalierly; no one thinks of it as just another form of birth control.

Everyone loves babies. Everyone thinks babies are cute. No one wants anyone else to murder babies.

All people love babies. Okay? So could we Christians please stop talking about anyone—especially anyone who’s actually been nominated for the office of President of the United States—as if they “support” the murder of babies? That’s beneath us. We’re better than that. And so are the “baby murderers” at whom we keep pointing fingers, waving signs, and screaming.

I think that when it comes to abortion, we Christians have got to agree that virtually everyone agrees on the end we all desire, which is no one ever wanting an abortion, ever. Christians, atheists, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists, car salesmen, budget analysts, movie stars, my insane next door neighbor with the rabid rottweiler—it’s a certainty that 99.99% of people alive on the planet right now would agree that in a perfect world every baby would be welcomed and loved and cherished and fed and dressed in the coolest little baby clothes ever.

That relative to abortion everyone wants the exact same end—no abortions, ever—isn’t in question. It’s only the means by which we attain that end about which we have varying ideas. But agreeing on the end of our desire for a matter should make for a very definite cooling of the rhetoric of the conversation about the means by which we might most effectively achieve that end.

Which brings me to the point of how I can be a Christian, against abortion, and for Obama.

Obama doesn’t support the murder of babies. I think it’s safe to say that he’s against the murder of babies, given that literally all sane humans are. Obama simply feels that ultimately, when a woman is struggling to make a decision about whether or not she should have an abortion, it’s beyond the purview of its function for the government to step in and make that decision for her.

That’s it. That’s the entirety of his equation. The man is a Christian; he loves babies (he had babies, after all); he wishes no woman ever wanted an abortion; he doesn’t think that ultimately it’s the government’s job to invade so deeply into the lives of its citizens that it essentially robs from them the power to make up their own minds about such an exceeding difficult, deeply personal matter.

That’s a dense enough calculation to make—but it’s not an immoral one. It has as much to do with an analysis of history as it does morality. It’s about process, not purpose. Obama thinks the best way to avoid abortions is to dedicate all possible resources to minimizing the conditions most likely to result in a young pregnant woman deciding, for any of the terrible reasons people make such decisions, that she simply can’t have her baby. He thinks the most effective way—I daresay he believes the most moral way—to eradicate abortion isn’t through laws, but through education.

I can respect that approach. I get it. I’m not in any particular hurry to give the government any more power than it’s already given itself (especially in the last few years) to invade peoples’ personal lives. And I know what education does for people. It changes everything about them and their lives. It opens up to them vast ranges of possibilities. It gives them the power not to get into the kinds of situations that force desperate, life-denigrating actions and decisions in the first place.

I like Obama’s approach to this problem. I think it’s realistic, morally sound, and demands a deeper comittment that’s more likely to actually stop abortions than would simply passing laws against them. All that tends to happen when you criminalize abortion is that people travel further to get them, get them in deplorable underground “clinics,” or do it themselves. (Rich people, of course, continue to get them as they always have.)

What I think is important overall, especially right now, is that we Christians remember that being Christian gives us no uniquely deep claim on abhorrence to abortion. Abortion is as much a “secular” concern as it is a Christian one. When I was a teenager a Muslim friend of mine got an abortion, and the tears her father cried about it were as real as any that ever fell to earth.

I’m a Christian; I wish no one ever wanted an abortion; I wish our economy wasn’t in such harrowing tatters; I wish we could gracefully exit the two wars we’ve now been fighting for a year longer than we fought in World War II; I’m voting for the guy whom I think offers America its best chance to gain back its power and dignity.

And you, of course, will vote for whichever team you think best prepared and qualified to do that.

We’re both moral people. We both love our families, our parents, our babies. We both want what’s best for everyone.

Most importantly, we’re all of us—no matter our convictions or lack thereof about God—brothers and sisters.

 

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We Get Our New Home Today: I’m A Basket-Case

In Family, God on August 11, 2008 at 8:41 am

On Friday my wife Cat and I went The Escrow Office, and while a notary watched and directed us signed a trillion papers attesting to the fact that we really and truly wanted our new townhouse; that we could pay for it; that we would pay for it; that it was insured; that we wouldn’t sue anyone if it suddenly sank into the ground or floated off into space.

Today all of that should come to its fruition, and we should at some point today, in some way, from someone or other (the seller’s Realtor, I think) receive one key to our new front door and one remote control for our new garage door. At that moment the place will be ours. The months of waiting and hoping and waiting and waiting will finally be over—and we’ll nary be renters again. (We won’t move into our new place until the last week of this month. First comes the air conditioner install guy, then the painter, then the cleaners, then the carpet cleaners. Then comes we. Us. Whatever.)

I’m now a bit of a basket case. Nothing is staying in my head. I can barely imagine living in a place I actually own. Living in my own place involves an emotional paradigm shift I can ride—but that’s about it.

As a kid, my home was taken from me. That fact fed informed and helped solidify what I had already learned about life, which is that Everything Changes: Nothing is permanent; constancy is illusory. To me, the moment has always been where it’s at. That’s always been my Big Philosophy of Life—my bedrock assumption, my Constant Context. “Everything Changes” is an excellent philosophy; throughout my life it’s served me very well indeed. It definitely altered when I became a Christian—and now it’s undergoing another Major Overhaul.

Signing a 30-year lease will do that.

Anyway, today’s the day the place below becomes Exhibit B in God’s effort to present to me evidence that some things do, after all, last at least a little while.

 

Casa de Shore, almost

If We WERE Descended From Apes, At Least I Wouldn’t Have To Work

In God, Humor, Religion on April 28, 2008 at 4:38 am

Ahh, Monday Morning. The sun is rising, the birds are singing–and I’m bitterly angry at Adam, Mr. Former Mud, who said, “Oh, sure, I’ll take a bite of this exact fruit God commanded  me not to eat. I’m sure that when he said, ‘Never, ever eat the fruit off this tree,’ what God really meant  was, ‘Never, ever eat too much of the fruit off this tree.’ So yeah, I’ll take a bite! Give it here! What could it hurt?”

What could it hurt. Moron!

I wish we were  descended from apes. Even an ape  wouldn’t have been that stupid. You can train an ape. But the first man? Not so much.

And because, lo those many years ago, Adam wouldn’t listen to God, today I have to listen to my alarm clock. When, like hard-hatted rats attacking my spine with a jackhammer, my alarm clock shrilly bleats at me to get out of bed, it’s only a matter of time before I’m basically forced to think about whatever infernal work I’m going to have to do that day.

Work! The very word is a cuss word to me! How utterly I loathe it! I am decidedly anti-labor. If I were British, I would vote for the Labor Party—then ditch the “Labor” part. I support the Labor Unions—minus the labor part. If I were a doctor, and a woman said she was going into labor, I’d run.

Actual Effort and enjoying my life go together like lowfat soy milk and Cocoa Pebbles. Forget it. And it’s not like I haven’t tried to combine work with having an enjoyable life, either. I have. I know that that the key to a happy life is getting paid to do what you love. Well, what I love to do is lie on my couch and watch Seinfeld, The Office, The Simpsons, and old Jerry Lewis movies. But do you think anyone has the decency to pay me for doing that? Well, think again, Uncle Bucko. You wouldn’t believe all the times I’ve screamed at some neighbor passing by outside my house, “Hey! I’m doing what I love! Fork over some money!” But do they ever stop and pony up? No.

Losers.

Thus have I been forced to learn, yet again, that the proverbial ”they”—whoever “they” even are—are evil liars.

That stupid Adam! Why did he have to eat that apple? And we don’t even know if it was an apple. All we know is it was some kind of produce. Produce! My life has been ruined because Adam couldn’t resist gnawing on some produce!

You know, if the Bible said, “And so did God commandeth unto Adam, ‘Do not ye eat of the fruit of this tree, which produceth the corndog,’” I could maybe understand what happened. I’d eat an aardvark snout if it came deep fried on a stick. But I have to get off my couch for produce? 

It’s just too wrong to contemplate.

If My Gay Loved Ones Go To Hell, I’m Going With Them

In Christianity, Gays and Lesbians, God, Jesus, Religion on April 16, 2008 at 3:51 pm

In case anyone’s interested, the impetus behind my writing my last post, ”Homosexuality Isn’t Stealing or Lying …”‘ is this simple truth: If my gay friends, whom my life experience tells me can no sooner stop being gay than I can stop being straight, have to go to hell after they die, then I’m going with them. Too many gays and lesbians have been too good to me in this life for me to leave them behind in the next. I won’t do it. That’s really all I was saying.

What I am not saying (and certainly haven’t said) is that the Bible is wrong, or should be changed, or that fundamentalist or “conservative” Christians are wrong or should change. I’m not even saying that it’s true that gays and lesbians are born homosexual in the same way I was born straight. Maybe I’m wrong about that. I don’t care. I leave those kinds of questions to the future and those in the present who, unlike me, like to debate. (And you better believe I have no interest in alienating my fundamentalist and “conservative” Christian friends, for whom I have nothing but love and respect. I wish I had blood relatives who’d ever been as good to me as some of my conservative brothers and sisters in Christ have been.)

Again: I’m saying nothing more than this: If any of my dear gay friends get condemned to hell for no other reason than that they’re gay, then I will choose to go to hell with them. I am sure Christ will let me make that choice. I’m not sure of a lot of things, but I’m positive Christ understands sacrificing oneself for the love of others.

 

Related piece: How I Broke My Lesbian Friend’s Heart


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Whad’ya Get For Christmas?!

In Christianity, God, entertainment on December 25, 2007 at 11:25 pm

Sure, it’s shallow. It’s embarrassingly shallow to ask what other people got for Christmas. It’s just the lamest. And of course it couldn’t be further from the meaning and spirit of Christmas.

Of course, it is is true that Jesus received some excellent gifts on the occasion of his physically committing to going from being the supreme, all-powerful ruler of the universe to being someone in swaddling clothes who has to be burped. It’s not like Myrrh grows on trees, you know.

Wait. Does it?

Be right back.

Okay, so myrrh does grow on trees. Sort of. It grows intrees. It’s fragrant-smelling dried sap from a tree that … that must make other trees feel like they smell like feet.

Myrrh used to be worth more than it’s weight in gold.

Can you imagine, going into an international currency exchange place, and going, “Yes, I’ve four pounds of myrrh here I’d like to change for five pounds of gold? And can you hurry — I’ve got a bus to catch.”

Anyway, tell me what you got for Christmas! Unless you got nothing. And then, God bless you — for real. For then you can be closer to the true spirit of Christmas than can anyone who can’t help but equate the miracle of God’s incarnation with the personal acquisition of material goods.

Wow. Now I don’t want to tell you what I got for Christmas.

Well. I’m actually thrilled with what I got, so here it is: This year for Christmas my wife Cat got me a two-volume, 17-pound boxed set of Don Martin cartoons. (Don Martin used to be a cartoonist for Mad Magazine.) Here’s a picture of the set, lifted from it’s Amazon page:

don-martin.jpg

Can you believe it? Don Martin, being treated like Michaelangelo wishes.

Cat was moved to buy these books for me out of her conviction that humor is what saved me when I was a kid — when, it’s true, Don Martin meant so very, very much to me.

I used to study his stuff, and think, “Okay. So anything’s possible.”

Cat is a phenomenal giver of gifts. It really is a talent, of which she is an absolute master.

But enough about what I got. What did you get, friend? Do tell!

(And to my fellow believers: Can you believe the joy this time fills you with? God, born as man, come to show us how to live a life beyond this life! For free! We did nothing to deserve it! It’s just … all the love from God that we can possibly process! MERRY CHRISTMAS, INDEED!!)