Conscientious Objection About Wedding Cakes and Flowers is not About Slavery, Lynchings, Segregation or a Refusal of Service

Here's a post from Rebecca Hamilton over at the blog Public Catholic.  As always, she's on point a lot better than I am.



Conscientious Objection About Wedding Cakes and Flowers is not About Slavery, Lynchings, Segregation or a Refusal of Service

Western Civilization is a Dead Man Walking, but It’s Valentine’s Day and We Still Have Each Other

Here's an article from a Rebeca Hamilton, member of the Oklahoma state legislature and a very articulate and passionate Christian person:



Western Civilization is a Dead Man Walking, but It’s Valentine’s Day and We Still Have Each Other

Not the usual Saint Patrick's Day blarney, perhaps

I submitted the following to our local paper as a possible "guest column" for this weekend.  Apparently they decided not to run it, at least not for now.  But for all the rest of you, here it goes:

Ah, Saint Patrick’s Day!  The Wearin’ o’ the Green, the Drinkin’ o’ the Beer, the Shamrocks for Muscular Dystrophy, and everyone pretending to be Irish even without a single drop of Irish blood, to be sure, to be sure.  But what’s a little harmless fun, eh?  For the adults there’ll be the pub crawlin’, and for the kids there might be Lucky Charms for breakfast and a Shamrock Shake in the afternoon.  When everyone gets home in the evening The Quiet Man may be on television, or Darby O’Gill and the Little People on the Disney Channel.  Along the way we all may learn that Saint Patrick chased the snakes out of Ireland, used a shamrock to teach about the Trinity, and maybe even that he persuaded the Irish kings that the death of Jesus was enough for them to stop human sacrifices (whew!). 

But somehow we never learned in school (I wonder if they teach it these days) that Saint Patrick spent six years as a slave.  He was actually born in Roman Britain and grew up there until he was 16, when he was captured by raiders and sold into slavery in Ireland.  There he worked herding sheep for his master until he escaped and returned to Britain.  After he became a priest, he returned to Ireland to preach the Gospel, but never forgot his life as a slave – at one point Bishop Patrick excommunicated one of the Irish kings because he had sold some of Patrick’s Christian converts into slavery.

I’m going down this road for Saint Patrick’s Day because slavery is alive and kicking these days – and not just in some third-world, poverty-stricken country either.  Right now, as you’re reading these words, modern day slave-traders are trafficking illegal immigrants into the USA not so they can have a chance at a better life, but so they can be beaten down, abused, degraded and ensnared by their masters in farms and in fields.  Right now, as you’re reading these words, there may be a teenage girl who spends her days “working” for a family in your neighborhood, but she never goes out, she has no friends, she has no contact with her family – she’s their slave.  Right now, as you’re reading these words, there may be another teenager – boy or girl – who goes to the same school as your kids, does their homework, participates in sports – and leaves the house several nights a week when their pimp shows up to force them to “work.”  Right now, as you’re reading these words, pimps and traffickers of all descriptions are gearing up to transport their “workers” to the cities where the NCAA March Madness tournaments are taking place, because where there are tournaments there are also crowds and money to be made.  

And if you are getting uncomfortable as you read these words, please don’t just turn the page too quickly.  Instead, take a little time to find out more about slavery in our day, and the 21st century abolition movement.  Go to the Internet and look at the A21 Campaign, an international effort to abolish slavery around the world within the 21st Century.  Look at the work of Shared Hope International, which is working to end sex trafficking of women and girls.  Look for Polaris Project and other efforts to change laws to protect trafficking victims.  

Read the reports on their websites.  Follow their Facebook posts, on all kinds of anti-slavery victories from arrests and convictions of traffickers to the passage of legislation on victims’ rights and assistance.  Then do something with that information – share it with a friend or neighbor – sign up for one of those email newsletters – join one of those campaigns – even, maybe, set aside a little of that money you were saving for some of that Saint Patrick’s Day celebration and instead make a donation to abolish slavery – in Patrick’s memory.

Why the Super Bowl gets my vote for the most exploitative event on TV

Apparently I haven't written for a while, as the last post is dated December 27.  Been busy, I guess.

So some of my friends are writing about yesterday's Super Bowl, and not in kind ways either.  Some are talking about Beyonce's "performance" as the latest foray into the objectification of women; some are talking about it as a betrayal of women by the NFL.  Some are disgusted at this so-obvious display of sexuality in the middle of a sporting event that so many families are watching.  And President Obama used his pre-SB interview as a bully pulpit to push his opinion that the  Boy Scouts should admit gays into leadership positions.

Me?  I didn't watch.  I never have.  I don't care about football at all (although I have now become a fan of my grandson's elementary / middle school teams).  I don't even care about the commercials.  Don't get me wrong - perhaps the Super Bowl is an exciting thing to watch, and I have lots of friends who enjoy Super Bowl parties.  But the Super Bowl is kind of like a picnic, if you ask me - everyone gets excited about planning a picnic, but doesn't seem to want to take into account the possibilities that ants will show up, that bees will hover over the soda and hornets over the meat, that people will get sunburned or past-their-glory football dads will sprain ankles and wrists in the pickup game.  Are these reasons not to have a picnic?  Not really, but they are realities that need to be anticipated and addressed.

So one of the realities of the Super Bowl (and indeed of the entire NFL) is that it is not just about sports but also about sex.  Was Beyonce's outfit too scanty?  I don't know - have you seen the outfits that NFL cheerleaders wear Sunday after Sunday?  Someone wrote that Beyonce's performance was "over the top with estrogen" - but doesn't that fit right in with an event that's basically three hours of flooding testosterone? Should we be surprised that advertisers are willing to shell out almost $8 million a minute without blinking so that we'll notice them, during a game in a city where no doubt even one of those $8 million checks would go a long way toward helping some of those poor or homeless or in-shelter folks who never get noticed, even by the locals?  Should we be surprised that all kinds of cons flock to the game for the weekend, eager to make a quick buck - from T-shirt hucksters to human traffickers?

Surprised, no.  This is the way the world is.  Whoever thought we live in a Christian country hasn't taken a good look around lately.  We live in a pagan country in a pagan world, where the worship of money and sex and the celebration of everything related to both is celebrated always and everywhere.  This is the way the world is.  It's more like the Babylon of Revelation than we want to admit.  We should not be surprised that this is the way the world is, even our own country, even our own communities.  

But we should be horrified.  We should be horrified that the Super Bowl objectifies women like Beyonce or the cheerleaders, and that it objectifies men like the NFL players.  We should be horrified that people are taken advantage of by all kinds of thieves and scoundrels at what should be a fun event - and that many who are taken advantage of are enslaved by cruel and hardhearted masters who sell them for profit - and that many of those sold are children.  We should be horrified that grown men (and women, presumably) actually pay money to have sex with these children, and think that this is fine.  We should be horrified that corporations are willing to spend millions upon millions of dollars on commercials that will benefit themselves or the NFL or the broadcast network, and yet none of that money will make its way to the homeless shelters or the soup kitchens or the free clinics of New Orleans or any other city.

There's a lot we should be horrified about.  To rail against the NFL or Beyonce isn't going to do much, though.  To refuse to watch football games or to boycott her records won't do much.  But to do nothing isn't an option for the horrified, either.  Much better to do something like - 

• put in a shift at the local soup kitchen
• bring in some food to the local food pantry
• look online for some charity to join
• join A21 or some other group to work to abolish slavery of all kinds
• join the pro-Life movement
• volunteer at your local library to help children read

PS  Click this link to see a PSA from the Archdiocese of New Orleans on Human Trafficking on Super Bowl weekend:

PSA on Human Trafficking from Archdiocese of New Orleans

Everett and Jackson

The other night our Christmas Eve "crowd" included a couple of families with little guys.  In one family, Dad was holding Jackson (who's maybe about 3 years old) on one knee and a lit candle on the other while Jackson was sobbing because he wasn't being allowed to hold the candle - until he sobbed just hard enough to blow out the candle, which startled him into stunned silence!  Mom and Dad relit the candle, and all was fine.

Then there was Everett, just a year old, who knows how to say "OH-oh!" and was saying it at the end of every hymn and carol.  Well, he doesn't know "Amen" yet, but "out of the mouths of babes will come praise" and I think he just wanted us to know he didn't want us to stop!  In the meantime, he was saying "Oh-oh" loud enough for everyone to hear, and everyone took it in stride with grins and chuckles all throughout.  

I love it when even the littlest ones are paying attention in worship!  That's life in the family of God at it's most fun.

Our "Grief-Illiterate Culture"

In an interview on the Today Show this morning, Maria Shriver made a comment about our "grief-illiterate culture" that gave us pause.  My wife and I thought that was an interesting and pretty accurate observation.  While there are still some pockets in our society that seem to know what to do about grief and mourning, most of our 21st century American culture seems to be a vast wasteland when it comes to dealing with grief and loss.

We don't know how to deal with the emotions that come with grief.  We're taught to buck up, to shake it off, that big girls don't cry and that boys certainly don't.  When we see a person at a time of intense grief who is not crying, we say "he's holding up well"; when they cry we say "she broke down."

We think reason fixes everything.  So we come with lame explanations,  pitiful comments, measly excuses for comfort that do no good.  In truth, nothing can fix the loss or cure the grief.  It will likely always be there for the person whose loss it is, but over time they will discover their own ways to look at it, to come to terms with it, and perhaps even to embrace it.

It's not our grief, so we move on quickly.  Like driving past a man standing on the roadside with a cardboard sign "Homeless Vet," we may feel a twinge of pity for him for a moment but our own plans and commitments quickly put him in our rearview mirror.  We attend the wake or the funeral and quickly move on, expecting the grieving person to do the same and are surprised when they don't.

I think we respond to grief this way because we don't understand that grief is a holy place, a sacred space.  It is a place where people meet God, or they don't meet Him.  It is a place where they are angry with Him, or they are comforted by Him.  It is a place where they hate Him, or they know His love for them.  It is a place where they wrestle with Him, or they nestle into Him.  Grief is the Jabbok River to which each of us comes eventually (Genesis 32), and some fear crossing it more than they do crossing the Jordan.

But whether in our anger, our hate, our wrestling; our being comforted, our being loved, our being nestled; our meeting God or our not meeting God, grief is still a prime place where all this happens.  Certainly we can encounter God in other places and at other times; but when our defenses are down, our props are washed away, our self-structure is shattered, our composure has decomposed - these are the places where God comes to meet us.  These are the most sacred spaces of life for those who are in them.

The Great Lie

My Message from our Prayer Vigil this evening

In days like these, following terrible and unfathomable tragedies like this shooting in Connecticut, one of the things we try to do is to understand a bit of what has happened.  Hundreds of news clips, sound bites, interviews, articles, and special reports break in at all hours and on all media to bring us the latest in somebody’s effort to make sense out of the senseless.  Eventually, Christian and non-Christian alike are confronted by the question (often asked in anger, without any real desire for clarity), How could God let something so terrible happen?

There are certain background assumptions behind this question, assumed by both Christians and non-Christians (although Christians take them to be true, while non-Christians take them to be false and just assume them to be true for the sake of argument).  These assumptions are:

1.       The world is basically a decent place.

2.       People are basically good.

3.       God is basically good.

4.       God is Sovereign (which means, He rules the whole world).

Now, when any evil thing happens (like the shootings this weekend), there are a number of possibilities.  Let’s consider them by number:

1a.     The world is basically a rotten place.  We should not be surprised when bad things happen, but rather when good things happen.

2a.     People are basically evil.  I’ve often said you have to teach kids how to be good, but they know how to be bad all by themselves. 

However, in general people don’t want to buy into either of these statements.  They prefer them in their original form, because life is a lot less scary and a lot more comfortable that way.  They also like 3 and 4, but modified a bit in these ways:

3a.     God is basically a good God; He just has trouble keeping track of things (particularly the evil ones).

4a.     God is basically a Sovereign God; therefore, “everything happens for a reason” that He hasn’t told us yet.

Here’s where all of these fall down – none of them account for the fact that there are more players on this field than you and God!  Yet when something bad happens, we try to figure it all out based on our own ideas while ignoring some basic Biblical thoughts, like these:

5.       Satan is a major player in this game, too.

6.       In the Garden of Eden, Satan’s promise to Adam and Eve was that if they ate the fruit of the tree they would “be like gods, knowing good and evil.”

7.       Since that time, all humanity has been infected by sin in general and this one in particular – that we like to think we are like God in this one respect, that we now “know good and evil.”

8.       To put it more specifically, when a tragedy happens, we want to claim this promise that because we are now like God we should get to know, to understand, where the good and the evil are in it.

9.       What we consistently fail to realize is that the promise to “be like God” and to “know good and evil” is the promise of Satan, not God!  We also know from the Bible that Satan is the father of lies, and therefore cannot be trusted to keep his promises the way we expect they should be kept.  And so, the result is that

10.     When a tragedy happens and we want to understand, we have fallen right into Satan’s trap of lies!

The better option is this:  get out while you can!  Forget understanding!  Hang on to grief, even to anger if you need to – but hang on to Christ even more closely.  Hang onto His cross, where He bore our pain and sorrow, our wounds and stripes.  Hang onto His nail-pierced hands and feet, no matter what happens!  Forget understanding – “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, but Blessed be the Name of the Lord” – and just cling to Him in worship.  Thy Kingdom come!