Why I’m Still Loving Jesus

    Jesus hung with hookers, hung with hustlers, not with cops
    and he made wine from water, so the party wouldn’t stop,
    and Jesus, he loved everyone, just like his Mom and Dad
    ‘cause Jesus knew the difference between broken and plain bad...

    Jesus on the hillside had a message for the crowd
    he said, “blessed are the brokenhearted, but woe unto the proud,”
    and when they all got hungry, he took a couple loaves of bread
    and he passed himself around till everybody had been fed...

    Jesus in the temple yard trashed every loan shark’s booth,
    but Jesus said to Judas, “let those little children through,
    ‘cause Jesus hung with losers and with posers and with narcs,
    and he got what was coming to him somewhere in the dark…
                    - from Brad Yoder’s WWJD? 1998 all rights reserved 

In case anyone wonders why I remain passionate about following Jesus, here are just a few of my reasons:

1. Jesus never hated people or committed acts of violence against them. Rather, he taught his followers to practice prayer and good deeds toward enemies, not harm or kill them.

2. Jesus demonstrated a life of simplicity and generosity. He never advocated amassing wealth or becoming financially well to do. He not only stressed compassion for the poor, but chose to become one of them.

3. Jesus consistently preached and practiced care for the marginalized and disenfranchised. Even in a strictly patriarchal society he had women as close followers, and regularly enjoyed meals with people regarded as outcasts and misfits. He makes a hated and heretical Samaritan the hero in one of his best known parables, a story he uses as part of his answer to the question, “How does one gain eternal life?”

4. Jesus avoided dogmatic sermonizing and theologizing in favor of telling simple stories and teaching easy-to-understand (but hard to practice) truths like “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” “Blessed are the peacemakers,” “Do not hoard/store up treasures on earth,” and “Let your ‘yes’ be a simple ‘yes,’ and your ‘no,’ a ‘no.’

5. Jesus rejected expressions of worship that require elaborate temples, complex liturgies, and professional clergy. Private prayer is encouraged, and “two or three” are sufficient when it comes to communal prayer and worship.

6. Jesus demonstrates that God loves everyone, and that his “Father,” far from condemning the world, is heaven-bent on saving it.

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.

While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

                                                                                          - Matthew 9:9-13 (NIV)

Small Child, Big Heart

Our oldest grandson, at the age of six, became big brother to a set of twins this June, a little boy (he had his heart set on a younger brother) and a baby girl. He has taken a great interest in them and has done a great job helping care for them where he can.

Recently, when they were about 3 1/2 months old, he came to his mother, our youngest, and said, in all seriousness, “Mommy, if we ever get so poor that any of us have to live in an orphanage, let me go. The twins are way too small to have to be away from their mommy and daddy, but I could take care of myself better.”

Needless to say, she was startled by his offer, and they are still wondering where he learned that poor people sometimes have to have their children raised in an orphanage, or why he feared his own family might become that impoverished. His dad, after all, is a neurologist and his mom, until recently, a college teacher. But all of us felt profoundly moved by his unselfish offer.

For me, one of the better evidences for the existence of a good God is that in spite of evil and suffering everywhere in creation, there is also in all of us the capacity to rise above that, and to behave in truly altruistic ways.

Where does that come from? Is there a gene for that? Can it be taught? Or caught?

I hope so. Certainly the world could use a more people with a lot more concern for the common good even when it may not seem to be in their short term self interest.

Out of the mouth of babes.

The Power of Good

During the official "Days of Remembrance" this year, members of our local Interfaith Association viewed the film “The Power of Good,” a 2002 International Emmy Award winning documentary on the Holocaust. It is the moving story of Nicholas George Winton, who in 1939 was instrumental in helping save the lives of 669 Czech children, almost all Jewish, by bringing them across Hitler's Germany to his native Britain.

Between December 1938 and May 1940, almost 10,000 children and teens were being rescued through an international effort called Kindertransport and given shelter at farms, hostels, camps, and private homes in Britain. However, this did not include children of Czechoslovakia, which is why the work of Nicholas Winton was so vital.

For nearly 50 years Winton told no one about his tireless rescue mission - not even his wife, who found out about her husband's work as a young adult after finding a scrapbook of his in the couple's attic. In 1988, BBC Television broadcast a show in which over 100 of these rescued children, now very grateful adults, were reunited with their rescuer to express their gratitude.

Today, there are more than 5,000 descendants of the Winton children - all of whom owe their very lives to this quiet unassuming hero. And what impressed me most was the joy everyone experienced as a result of his sacrificial effort.

It made me wonder, what kind of reward might Winton have experienced from investing that same amount of time and money in a larger retirement, a pricier home, or in more travel for his personal pleasure? In the end, the sheer happiness this man experienced was far, far beyond priceless.

Should We Ever NOT Forgive?

Recent killings by deranged gunmen bring up the question of forgiveness for people who commit terrible crimes of that kind.

When a similarly deranged shooter killed innocent Amish children at the Nickle Mines School in southern Pennsylvania in October, 2006, that religious community instinctively responded with grace and kindness. Everyone saw their actions and attitudes as amazing examples of Christian forgiveness.

I wonder if their response shouldn’t simply be considered an incredible form of “give-ness,” the giving up of any revenge or hate and the demonstration of a truly Christlike and unconditional love for an enemy who had harmed them in the most terrible way possible.

I prefer to call that cross-like love. The forgiving part is up to God.

Jewish writer Dennis Prager questions the notion that we “should forgive everyone who commits evil against anyone, no matter how great and cruel, and whether or not the evil doer repents.” He also believes we can only forgive those who have sinned against us, not those who have sinned against others.

“If we forgive everyone (unilaterally) for all the evil they do,” he says, “we have substituted ourselves for God.” Even Jesus, he adds, when interceding to God to forgive those who crucified him, “never asked God to forgive those who had crucified thousands of other innocent people.”

As a Jew, Prager does affirm Jesus’ idea of having us forgive those who wrong us based on their repentance, just as God surely does. He just wonders whether many of us have trivialized forgiveness, turned into something that’s about making us feel better rather than, like the God of the Bible, being concerned with both justice for evildoers and compassion for them when and if they repent and commit themselves to genuine change.

What got Prager to thinking about this was seeing a news article and photo of some students in West Paducah, Kentucky, some years ago displaying a large banner with the words “We forgive you, Mike!” referring to the 14-year-old who had just  shot and killed 3 teenagers at Heath High school. He believes they/we have neither the power or the right to forgive on others’ behalf.

So, should we distinguish between loving evildoers versus pronouncing them forgiven? The first is an initiative toward even the unrepentant, the second is a response based on a complete 180 degree turn on the part of  the one seeking forgiveness.

Please understand, I strongly agree that we should forgive our debtors. But a debtor, by definition, is one who is fully aware of what he or she owes and is unable to repay. A person who denies having committed an offense is not a debtor. Nor is the person who insists the offense is not really their fault, as in, “The devil (or my temper, my addiction, or my bad upbringing) made me do it.”

I have a book in my office with two title pages, one on the front and another on the back. It’s actually two books in one, written by David Augsburger. The first title is “Caring Enough to Forgive” which takes up approximately half of the pages, and the other, reading from the reverse side of the book, is “Caring Enough Not to Forgive.” 

The latter is a jarring title for those of us who’ve been taught that forgiveness is something we grant everyone unilaterally, no strings attached, just proclaim them off the hook. But Augsburger believes the implied condition for all of our “forgiving others their trespasses as we ask God to forgive us our own” is one clearly stated in Luke’s gospel, which says, “If others sin against you, and if they repent, forgive them.”

Meanwhile, for all who choose not to repent, we continue to love, do good to, and pray for them without question. All the while remembering that we are always in need of plenty of forgiveness of our own.

I'd love to have you respond with your thoughts below.