What Walking in The Rain Taught Me About Entitlements

This past Wednesday it rained heavily. It didn't rain for most of the day, despite what the weather forecast told us. No, it started raining just as soon as I left the office to head to my evening appointment.

To make matters worse, I hadn't driven my car to work and to get to my appointment, I had to walk 40 minutes between transit stations. Not only that, but the heavy winds made it impossible for me not to get soaking wet, despite my sizable umbrella.

As I walked, I started to get understandably upset. After I got upset, I started to feel sorry for myself. I'm fighting a cold, and now I'm walking in the rain I thought. After feeling sorry for myself, I felt that an injustice was being done to me. I grew bitter, looking for someone to blame.

And then, I remembered to give thanks for the rain.

My Comfort is Important!
We live in a place where most of us are accustomed to certain comforts that we take for granted. Most of us have a place to take shelter from the elements. Most of us can take a hot shower when we need it. Most of us have a warm bed waiting for us at night.

Most us are used to these comforts.

After so many years of living with these comforts, I must confess that I not only take them for granted, but I take them as my rights and entitlements. I have grown accustomed to expect those comforts, and when I'm deprived of them (like the day I found myself walking in the rain) I feel that an injustice has been done to me.

What's irrational about this whole situation is that I felt this way despite the fact that California is going through a drought, and we desperately need the rain! My comfort was more important than California's need for rain.

St. Francis is Wrecking My Life

I've been reading a biography of St. Francis and it has made me question how I'm living my life. When St. Francis started his order, the Little Brothers adhered quite strictly to the rule of poverty. They didn't own anything. They walked barefooted. Many times the brothers slept on the streets during winter, fighting the merciless cold weather.

And yet they were filled with joy and contentment.

Why is it that the Little Brothers, who forsook all comforts and dealt with worse circumstances than I ever have, found themselves with greater joy, while on the other hand I, when I found myself in an uncomfortable situation, was angry, filled with self-pity, and felt as if my rights were taken away?

The answer to that question is because I felt entitled. I have grown so accustomed to my comforts that they almost became an idol, and when they are taken away from me, my joy and peace lose all their bases for being.

We, The Entitled People
We are told that as Americans, we are an entitled nation. Whether this is true or not, it is undeniable that we are blessed with more comforts than many other developed nations in the world. I believe that the overabundance of these comforts breeds and feeds our sense of entitlement.

As Lent is well underway, the Church calls us to times of abstinence, penance, and almsgiving. What a perfect opportunity this is to shave away so many of the things we feel are our rights!

I invite you then, to fully go into this time of Lent and embrace all of its practices, not out of a mere sense of obligation, but out of a sense of love for God and others. Joyfully give up what you discern are entitlements, and give them to others who need it. Abstain not for the sake of abstaining, but as a spiritual practice that will chip non-essentials out of your life.

As you do this, see if you begin to shift your attitude towards those things you are abstaining from. See if you still consider them as entitlements, rights, or worse as deserved, or if instead you begin to see them as gifts of pure Grace from God.

Give abundantly and eagerly. Deny yourself and carry your cross. Give thanks to God in all things. This is our call for Lent.

Why I Believe Liberal Christianity is Doomed

2 Thessalonians 2:15 ESV “So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter”

To put it bluntly, I believe Liberal Christianity is doomed.

Many have claimed rather infamously that the future of Christianity is Liberal Christianity. Looking purely at satitistics, it is hard to see how. It is a very well known fact that Christian denominations that have adopted liberal stances, with a few notable exceptions, have experienced a dramatic, free fall drop in church membership.

Now, this is not to say that church membership alone is a great indicator of the health of a Christian community, but, at the same time, without members there is no community, and if things continue to go as they are now, many Christian denominations, especially the mainlines, will cease to exist in this century.

Look at it from any perspective you want, memberless communities, and communities who fail to attract new members to their communities, are hardly the “future” of Christian communities.

Healthy Christ-like Communities Must Be Attractive

Reading the gospels, it is hard to deny that Jesus had some sort of attraction. We see in the gospels, especially in the gospel of Mark, that crowds followed Jesus wherever he went.

We can be cynical all we want and say that was because Jesus performed miracles, fed the crowds, and because the crowd all expected their military liberation from oppression from Him, and while all of this is probably true, I do believe there was something beyond that that attracted people to Him.

We shouldn't ignore how people were attracted to His teaching and the way He taught with “authority” unlike the Pharisees and the Scribes. We must not ignore how his character of compassion and attention to the poor were also things that attracted crowds, especially the poor and the oppressed.

I say with trepidation what I'm about to say, and I know it will sound harsh, but I feel it's true to my limited experience: whenever I go to a “liberal” congregation, it is usually not filled with the poor or the oppressed, but with people with power and privilege talking about, well, power and privilege.

That alone tells me there is something seriously wrong with these congregations.

What's more, the church, who is the bride of Christ, should be attractive! This attractiveness is described in revelation, where the church is a “spotless” bride, one who has been washed by the blood of the lamb.

Also, Jesus describes us as “light of the world”. One charateristic of “light” is its attractiveness.

If your congregation is not attractive, then a question that should be asked is “is that congregation Christ-like?

I'm not a Liberal. I am a Progressive

That might be surprising to some of you who know me and know what I stand for.

Some people might confuse and use the words Liberal and Progressive intercheangebly, as if they were the same thing. Some, filled with cynicism, may say that Progressive is just a new word for Liberal, a new marketing spin to clear a bad name.

I do believe there is a substantial difference between the two, and while I think that there is no future for Liberal Christianity, I do believe there is a future for Progressive Christianity.

Liberal, by definition is: open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values.

Using this definition, it is hard not to see why Liberalism is not compatible with Christianity. A central tenet of Christianity is the “passing down” of teaching from the Apostles, and the calling to “stand firm” on those teaching.

This “passing down” and receiving is just another way of saying “tradition”. The greek used for tradition in Tessalonians 2:15 can be translated not only as “tradition”, but also as the passing down or receiving a message.

As Christians, we are pleaded to pass down faithfully, to the next generation, what we have received. This goes in contradiction with the Liberal value of being “willing to discard tradition”.

This is evident in many Liberal congregations that I have been, where many people in authorities and responsible to pass down and keep the faith (like Bishops) are willing to discard, reinvent and innovate on many Christian traditions.

Jesus didn't really rise from the dead, but this is a myth that offers the hope of new life and new beginnings in our everyday life.

The Trinity is really just an ancient understanding of God, and we need not see God in that way.

Jesus is really not “Divine” but had the “divine” in Him.

Jesus didn't really die sacrificially for our sins, and His death on the cross has no atonement power, but He was simply killed by the system to give us a new model of non-violence to fight the system.

There are many other examples of how Liberal Christians are willing to discard traditions that have long been held universally by all Christians, but these suffice.

Progressive Christianity, on the other hand, is one preocuppied with the poor, stands alongside them, and advocates for their needs.

Progressive Christianity is involved in social justice, but should do so not just in solidarity with the poor, but joins the poor in their struggles and fights the system alongside them.

Progressive Christianity is not a willingness to discard traditions, but instead to stand firm in the tradition of Jesus to do His ministry with the poor. Jesus didn't come to serve the poor from a suburban, privileged place in Palestine. He came from Nazareth (what good can come from Nazareth?) had no place to lay His head. 

He ate and lived with the poor. He didn't serve the poor from a distance and didn't find refuge in a comfortable place of privilege after a long day of ministry with them. Rather, He “emptied Himself and took the form of a slave” and served alongside them.

Progressive Christians should not only talk about serving the poor, and about power and privilege, and fighting the system, but should talk about ways of emptying themselves of their privilege and power, and serve the poor in proximity, not from a place of privilege.

I believe Christianity has become a religion of privilege, of empire and of power. Liberal Christianity, despite all the talks to the contrary, it is still a manifestation of this kind of religion.

I want to see, instead, a Christianity that is Christ-like, willing to live and serve with the poor, willing to give away all their riches in service to the poor, willing to advocate and fight the system with all who are opressed.

I want to see a Christianity that empties itself and takes the form of a slave. When Christianity does this, then it will be truly Christ-like. Its light will attract all the nations, and the name of Jesus Christ will be glorified. Amen.

The Importance of Recognizing Your Own Privilege

In last week's post I talked about how God's calling to men for leadership meant that men were called to give up their power and authority and serve as "the slaves of all", and how this makes sense in Jesus' pattern of humbling the powerful and uplifting the powerless.

This week I want to move beyond gender and their relation to power, and to the importance of recognizing our own privilege and power as followers of Jesus.

Why is this important? Isn't talk of privilege and power just another way of confusing liberal political values with the Gospel?

How Jesus deals with the powerful
Whenever we read the Gospels it is difficult to miss how he deals with certain people of power. We read about his encounters, debates and clashes with the Pharisees, and His rebuking of them.

We notice as well how he deals with the Roman authorities. In fact He doesn't really deals that often with them. He seems more occupied preaching the Kingdom of God to the poor and marginalized that He spends little time trying to convert the Romans.

In one famous encounter with the Rich Young Ruler, Jesus asks him to sell all he has, and give it to the poor. He is telling this to a man who has kept all the commandments! And yet Jesus tells him "one thing you lack". The one who had it all figured it out and had it all, so it seems, lacked one thing.

If we read carefully, we see that an undeniable pattern emerges in Jesus' encounters with people. With the rich and powerful He almost always deals in a negative way. With the poor and marginalized He almost always deals in a positive way.

Of course there are exceptions. But these exceptions do little to eradicate the undeniable pattern that emerges.

Why is it important, then, that we recognize our own privileges and powers?

It is important because if Jesus is the same today as He was yesterday, that means that His pattern of dealing with people of power, privilege and authority will most likely be the same now. This means that if Jesus is truly alive and risen, as Christians believe Him to be, His dealings with the rich and powerful NOW is most likely the same as it was THEN.

The Question really is, how do we want to be dealt with by Jesus?

If we miss to recognize our privilege and power, then we risk the danger of missing Jesus, or perhaps more accurately, Jesus missing us.

I believe this is not so much mixing liberal values with the Gospels, but this is most likely something that Liberals are correct about what the Gospels are telling us.

So how privileged are we really?
If you, dear reader, are living in the United States, or from another part of the "developed world", then you don't need me to tell you about our own privilege in terms with people of other poorer nations.

To deny our own privilege would be tantamount to being in a state of hopeless lunacy or unbelievable ignorance.

On a macro level, we are unbelievable privileged to live in a privileged and powerful nation.

On a micro level, we know that even in this powerful nation of ours, we still have people with less privilege and power. We will always have the poor among us.

We can recognize that minorities are statistically marginalized in this nation. People of color, undocumented immigrants, formerly incarcerated,  all of these are populations who we can recognize as underprivileged.

To deny this is to turn a blind eye to the statistics.

On a more personal level, I can recognize my own privilege. First, I am male. As a man, according to statistics, I am more likely to earn more money than women.

Yes, I am Latino and immigrant, and this has put me in a position where I lack power and privileges. I can tell you thousands of stories of how this has played out for me, but that is beyond the scope of this post.

And yet, within my own Latino community, I am privileged. I am college educated and have a great paying job with benefits. To deny my own privilege would be the definition of denial.


The Call of the Gospel
After we have examined our own power and privilege, then the crucial question, as followers of Jesus, is to ask ourselves, what is the Gospel calling me to do?

I believe the Scriptures are clear on this: we are to give up our power for the empowerment of others.

Whether we earned (or feel we earned) this power and privilege is irrelevant. Jesus rarely asks the rich and powerful how they earned their positions. Failing to see this can moves us to meritocracy, where we see ourselves as deserving and the poor as undeserving.

In my experience of living in the United States, I have time and time again seen how privileged people see themselves as deserving of this privilege, because they worked hard or because their families worked hard to get where they are.

While this may be true, failing to recognize your privilege often leads to a self-righteous perspective on the poor as lazy, not driven enough, and therefore undeserving of our sympathy, or worse, our help.

If this is our attitude to the poor, how can we reconcile our attitudes with Jesus' attitudes and dealings with the poor?

If Jesus is our example, shouldn't we imitate this undeniable characteristic of His ministry?

The calling of the Gospel is simple and yet terrifying: give up your power and use it not for your own comfort, but in service of others. If you can't identify your own power and privilege, then you won't be able to empower others as effectively.

It is hard to give what we ignore we have.