Perspective on Costs!

Gas is over $4.00/gallon. We all know that. But, as a Grandfather I really had no idea of the cost of milk until our grandkids for their annual time with us. Milk cost me even more than gasoline per gallon!
That gave me another view about the annual budgets for both the ELCA and the Northern Illinois Synod. While I believe both organizations accomplish many excellent results as stewards of scarce resources - I am also aware that both face major challenges due to finances.
Then I read this figure in the June 9th issue of The Nation. "The American cost of the Iraq War per second (as of March 2008): $4,563.18."
That means our entire budget in Northern Illinois Synod would cover less than 15 minutes of the Iraq War costs!
Whether one supports Obama [as I do] or McCain, the next President of our country has to provide tough leadership for an economic period some even liken to the 1920s before the crash in October 1929. That leadership has to confront us with choices we make. Choices not only how we spend our own monies - but choices on how we want government to spend our tax monies.
That leadership will not be easy - for either candidate! A significant portion of our citizenry has no idea of how tax money is spent - nor do they have daily access to the information sources in which such data can be accessed.
Do we, as persons who strive to follow Jesus as our norm, have any role to play in assisting our President-to-be?
I believe we do. Jesus said: "I am the way and the truth and the life." He then went on to say:
"If you love me, you will obey what command. And I will ask God to give you another Counselor to be with you forever--the Spirit of truth." (John 14:6.15-17a)
Putting "truth" before our co-believers will not be easy. Kierkegaard one said that "truth only exists in action". That is, there is no "static" truth.
Further, "truth" will always be impacted by our biases! Always.
So, in these next months lets gird up our loins, work collectively to gain a stronger understanding of "truth" for 2008, and use the resources within our congregations to educate our members so that they might make more informed decisions when they vote - locally, state-wide and nationally.

Politics, Moral Deliberations and Religion

The ELCA social statement For Peace in God’s World identifies the church “as a community of moral deliberation”. And, as I discussed here in a previous Blog entry, “moral deliberation” is the task/challenge accepted by the Northern Illinois Synod (ELCA) in Assembly on June 14, 2008!
On the surface such a challenge seems appropriate. Many within the church community believe speaking to morals and morality is one of the tasks of the church. (A task which some would argue has not been well addressed in recent decades.) Teaching youth right from wrong, correct behavior, and encouraging involvement of all ages in those charitable activities that make our communities kinder and better places – certainly those are important in addressing morals.
Yet moral deliberation on the major issues today – terrorism, poverty, hunger, war and peace, health services, global commerce – is a rarity in many of our church communities. Whether from fear or hesitation to take a stand, few parishes engage themselves in searching the resources of Scripture and/or church history relative to those issues!
I think the greater reason is our (clergy and laity) lack of education and training regarding morals and ethics and the processes whereby we come to some acceptable stances. There were no classes on either morality or ethics in my seminary days. The same was true in medicine, nursing, law and almost every other area of studies. Rather there was an assumption that the candidates would just be “morally acceptable”. Period.
Certainly such an approach began to change in the healing occupations in the 1980s. Still, even with added courses on ethics the controversy over treatment decisions for Mary Schiavo indicated there is still much to be done.
Morality as an individual is a major challenge. The right and wrong options each of us face daily are manifold – and our choices, as our Lutheran theology affirms, are never 100% “right”.
Morality in politics – that is, in the public arenas of life, is an even greater challenge. In The Moral Choice [Doubleday & Company 1978] Daniel C. Maguire (a Professor at Marquette University) said:
There is a perennial dilemma surrounding the relationship of good politics and good morals… The fact is that it is necessary and moral to do things in politics that would be unjustifiable in the circumstances of private life. In the political sphere, war might have to be waged, punishment inflicted, personal freedoms limited, properties appropriated by way of eminent domain, etc. The political order has exigencies and complexities that have no part of private life. Thus, moral behavior there will be correspondingly more difficult to judge.
The problem is that because it is more difficult, the moral dimension tends to be dropped. As a result, politics often gets done without conscience. Moral values get relegated to “questions of last resort”. Outside of last-resort matters, then, it appears that one enters a moral free zone where conscience can be dropped before entering….The tendency to create this moral vacuum is the prime problem confronting political ethics…
Questions that are important in private morality are more important in politics, because there is so much more power there. Bringing moral values to bear on the uses of power is the soul of the civilizing process and the goal of ethics. (pp. 19-21)
Pastors and congregations ought to challenge each other during the next months to truly engage in moral deliberations. The focus ought not to judge who has the “right” answer or who the “wrong”. More important is to help each other identify the process and processes whereby one arrives at her or his answer.
There are resources available to help.
Go for it – and there will be changes in which all of us can have hope because public involvement is the key to making democracy work.

Sound Doctrine

“For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.” [2 Timothy 4:3-4]
This was one of the lessons read at the recent Northern Illinois Synod Ordination Service at which three (3) young persons accepted the commitments for service as an ordained clergy in the ELCA. I’m sure it has been reads at countless other Ordination Services – but, for some reasons, it spoke to me with impact this year.
For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine –
The HarperCollins Study Bible states that the author “regarded this prediction as being fulfilled in his time.” History suggests Paul wrote this while imprisoned, probably in Rome, Friends seemed to have deserted him and death was imminent. Understandable that any of these factors would precipitate a depression – yet interesting that he ties his misfortunate time to the thought that people were rejecting sound doctrine.
Hearing this text – and reminiscing about my 50+ years of ordination – I realized how often it is tempting to project blame for one’s struggles in ministry to the “people”:
- if only “they” were more faithful
- if only “they” were better educated
- if only “they” were not so easily duped by unsound (?) doctrine and myths.
Certainly such “projections” are frequent today as we (ELCA) strive to understand diminishing numbers or to resolve significant differences about biblical teachings or to find better ways of remaining true to values and be honest with the areas of cognitive dissonances that life in the 21st century presents.
I wondered if these young colleagues in ministry realized what challenges they face. Yet, it was no different in 1957 at my ordination. And, as 2 Timothy suggests, the challenges date back to be beginning of the Church (as well as Old Testament passages that suggest these challenges date to the beginning of time).
Interestingly, that thought was comforting.
We do not minister “alone”. Our seminary education gave us tools to use in our challenges – tools of Systematic Theology, Biblical text studies, Church History. These are not “static” resources, memorized by rote. Rather, they are to be used which includes keeping them up-dated. [The same is true for the tools in my garage workshop. Drills are still drills; hammers are still hammers; - but how they have changed over the years and how easily they rust if care is not provided.] Thus, collegiality is not just an elective. Collegiality is a necessity. We keep each other well-tuned and, where indicated, corrected.
Our real challenge is to “be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable (2 Tim 4:2). Success is the responsibility of God!
Later that evening someone asked if, after all these decades, I’d “do it again?” Without hesitation my answer was – and is – YES.
Hopefully I’d make fewer mistakes; do better in honing the skills and maintaining the tools for and of ministry.
Without hesitation, I can think of no other vocation in this age that is more challenging, more needed, and more rewarding than the Ordained Ministry.
[And when I really get bogged down by “their” addictions to unsound doctrine, may the words of Pogo stay with me: I [we} has met the enemy and he is I [us]!

MORAL DELIBERATION AND NEUTRALITY

One of the Resolutions considered by the Northern Illinois Synod [ELCA] at its 2008 Assembly was a “Call for Moral Deliberation”. The many “Whereas” statements preceding the “Resolves” focused on:
The Call of the Gospel to be peacemakers, to repent and to “transform” the world, not “conform” to it.
The repeated role of biblical prophets to “speak truth in love” to the powers & principalities.
Reminder of Bonhoeffer’s instructions to the church to be an active voice for peace.
Reminder of the ELCA social statement For Peace in God’s World and our call to be a “setting of freedom and respect where believers of different perspectives may learn from one another”.
There were two (2) “Resolves”. One was for the Synod, in Assembly, encourage members to enter moral deliberation & discussion concerning our nation’s foreign & military policy. The other was to encourage persons, congregations, clusters et al to become involved in studying a document known as “The Kairos Statement: A Time to Speak and a Time to Act” as well as resources from the ELCA.
There is little doubt that the Kairos Statement takes a definite stand against the U.S. policies as they proceeded to pre-emptive war against Iraq, of the use of brutal treatment of our enemies, and of the growing military budget that necessitates a lower budget for peaceful needs.
That “lack of neutrality” exceedingly bothered some members. There were no discussions as to whether or not we were/are bothered by:
the deceit which led us into a war against Iraq
the loss of more than 4,000 lives and the injuries/trauma to over 25,000 US soldiers
the loss of as many as 100,000 Iraqi lives and untold numbers injured
a cost of billions at a time when our nation and our states are having difficulty funding programs of service to the poor, the homeless, and those in need of healthcare.
Moral deliberation will involve us in “taking sides”! Neutrality, when confronted by evil, [whether it is the evil of 9/11 or the evil of bombing Iraq pre-emptively] is the worst response a Christian can make! It is the “luke-warmness” that Jesus found offensive.
Both the Republican and the Democrat candidates for President are stating that this is a time for change.
Effecting those changes will require the involvement of all citizens in a “moral deliberation” that will be passionate! The congregations and the pastors of the ELCA could play a critical role in these deliberations – provided we are willing to risk moving beyond neutrality.
Dare to believe in your values. This will be a process during which women and men of all persuasions will come from opposing stances. Trust that we can discuss those differences and remain committed to the community of faith to which we have been called.
Let’s have no more calls for neutrality.

The pigeon man

Thursday’s Chicago Tribune (12/20) carried a story about “one of the least” amongst us. Joe Zeman spent nearly every day sitting on a red fire hydrant in Lincoln Square allowing pigeons to perch on him. “Pigeons on his head. Pigeons on his shoulders and right down to his arms. Pigeons poised on each palm. Pigeons clinging to his chest. Pigeons on his lap. Pigeons on his thighs. Pigeons, of course, on each foot. The pigeons peck and coo, occasionally flutter their wings. Sometimes even scatter. But not the man; the man is motionless. You might mistake him for a statue. Joseph Zeman can sit for hours, barely flinching a muscle…except for those lips.” [Barbara Mahaney; Tribune staff writer]
Hit and killed by a van, Joe was identified only because he carried several laminated news clippings of a story written about him by Barbara Mahaney. Living alone in an attic room, Joe focused on the pigeons. His funds, meager as they were, helped purchase the varied foods he used to keep the pigeons prospering.
Joe’s life was truly uneventful: he had a stroke when only 8 months; grand mal epilepsy from age 14 months till 48 years old. Yet, he told Ms Mahaney that “sitting on the hydrant the most important work he had ever done. “I’m really advertising to the public how easy it is to be good without an attitude; it’s just as easy to show decency as it is hate today.”
No doubt, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “the world will little note nor long remember..” the life of Joe Zeman. Yet, we should!
Especially should we note and remember Joe as we approach Christmas in 2007. Surrounded almost constantly by articles and stories of the many ways humans are capable of showing hate to each other, it’s tempting to skip over the “miracle of Christmas”. The “miracle” that reminds us of how the Divine elects to communicate with us. Moses – set afloat to be raised in the Pharaoh’s home; Jesus – born in a stable to a marginal fam,ily.
And, Joe Zeman – a man whose life spoke volumes about the only way we can bring peace. Individually. Each person electing, daily, to be good to each other.
Mahaney reported that many compared Joe to St Francis of Assisi and that he kept dozens of St Francis postcards printed with the peacemaker’s prayer:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where thee is hatred, let me sow love…”
However we celebrate the birth of Jesus this year, take a moment to reflect on Joe Zeman. Truly he might have been “the least amongst us” – but that is exactly the way the Lord of Peace is revealed.

WAS IT WE?

In the 1990s we visited the Holocaust Museum in our Nation’s Capitol. Seeing the depth and breadth of inhumanity that was inflicted on the Jews [and others] wherever the Nazi Regime held power, and remembering that much of this happened between my 8th and 15th years of age, the question on my lips was “Did my parents know?” How could all this have happened, including the ship turned away from our Florida ports, and remain so invisible?
It certainly wasn’t because we were an uncaring family. We attended, and were very active in, a German Lutheran Church. We prayed regularly for peace. We grew a Victory Garden. We saved the tinfoil from chewing gum wrappers. We wanted the war to end and we wanted peace restored across Europe.
We did hear of some atrocities from that “other” theatre of war – the South Pacific. We heard of the Bataan Death March and the horrific way our troops were treated. Perhaps that is why we ignored the terrible way we treated Japanese Americans who lived on the west coast!
Then, when we saw the early pictures from Dachau and Auschwitz and the many other camps dedicated to eradicating the Jewish problem, then we knew what terrible people those Nazis had been! Then it was easy to forget the questions: “Did my parents know? How could this have happened in a nation that worshipped the same way we did?”
I don’t know if there will be a museum built to display the terrible things that have been done in Iraq. If there will be some place where my kids and my grandkids will visit – and ask, “Did Dad know? How could these things have happened and we were so silent?”
Of course they will know I opposed the war even before March 2003. They will know the contempt I felt towards the Administration and Congress and Judiciary that had perpetuated this terrible action in our name. They will know I wrote letters and even became involved in supporting candidates who were opposed to the war. And, they will know that my efforts were generally impotent.
Frank Rich, in a New York Times Op-Ed article “The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us” [October 14,2007], categorized many of the atrocities done “in our name” during the Iraq War years. He ended with this paragraph.
Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. “et the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains our country’s good name.
There is something even worse to lose! In Matthew 25 Jesus is quoted as saying:
Then he will turn to the ‘goats’, the ones on his left, and say, ‘Get out, worthless goats! You’re good for nothing but the fires of hell. And why?
Because—
I was hungry and you gave me no meal,
I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
I was homeless and you gave me no bed,
I was shivering and you gave me no clothes,
Sick and in prison, and you never visited.
Then those ‘goats’ are going to say, “Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or homeless or shivering or sick or in prison and didn’t help?
He will answer them, “I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me—you failed to do it to me.

Culture Wars

Today, on NPR, a woman from Ohio identified herself as a "culture warrior". "We are involved today", she said, "in a culture war. One the one side are the progressives. On the other side are we traditionalists. We must fight to preserve our traditional values."

Her remarks provoked many thoughts and feelings.

Initially, I felt sadness. How unfortunate in 2007, living in a country and land with so much, to perceive one's self at "war". A war that is far more deadly than what we are fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan. One of the gifts of our heritage is the freedom to create a civilization in which different cultures may live together side-by-side, with no one having to fear that her/his will be destroyed by another.

Being a lover of words, my next thought was to wonder how she might define "traditional" and "progressive". If one if not "progressive" is s/he "regressive"? "Stagnant". Can one be "traditional" and still move forward into this 21st century without needing to sacrifice "values"?

What is a "progressive" value? Is it new? Is it a 'traditional' value that has matured or evolved so as to incorporate the changes of living?

Were the values proclaimed by Jesus "traditional" or "progressive"? There is no question as to how the religious rulers would answer that.

I would love to engage in discussion with that woman in Ohio, and her many like-minded friends across our nation. A discussion that, hopefully, would not make her [them] feel at war [i.e. defensive] but as co-seekers hoping to proclaim the same values without needing to fight over externals. I have done that with Amish, neither seeking to make them dress like myself or use modern machinery. It should be easier to have dialogue with her [them].

Such a dialogue is far more important - and urgent - today than wondering which candidates will win in Iowa or New Hampshire. If we do not regain an ability to move forward as a unified nation, then the winner in November 2008 is irrelevant.