Prevailing Winds "For the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom . . ." 2 Cor. 3:17, TNIV

Summing up my discussion of judgment, consequence, and the Bush administration’s wreaking of havoc on the country, I’d like to add this . . .

Like everyone else in the world, I, too, have wondered why God allows war to slay innocent victims and brave, God-loving soldiers. I’ve agonized over why the poor suffer and I’ve wept when it seems He hasn’t heard their cries. I won’t have all of the answers to these questions in this lifetime, and neither will you. But there is a question that must be asked first, and, in its asking, helps me understand just a bit more of the “why does God permit harm?” ones:

Why do WE, the church, allow war to slay innocent victims and brave, God-loving soldiers? Why do WE disregard the suffering of the poor, refusing to hear their cries?

Where are WE, the very hands and heart of the Lord Jesus, when injustice rules and violence triumphs?

That’s a question that each one of us individually must ask — before we ever wonder where God is in turmoil and hopelessness.

In the three weeks since she was nominated for the GOP vice presidency, Sarah Palin has granted two interviews and no press conferences. Other than her highly scripted shout-out to the choir at the Republican convention, we haven’t gotten to hear from her much at all. Granted, the Charlie Gibson interview didn’t, ummmm, go real well for her, and maybe that explains her reticence to answer tough questions — a word that hardly seems to apply to the vivacious Ms. Palin, but neatly captures her unwillingness to speak. Granted, the Straight Talk Express has derailed rather messily for her boss, but wasn’t she brought on board to inject new fervor into the campaign?

Her and her campaign’s decision to keep the American people in the dark about who she is and what she believes is shameful, almost as shameful as calling a pre-nomination, bi-partisan investigation into her handling of her State Trooper ex-brother-in-law a “purely political” move on the part of the Democrats.

Still, though, it’s not quite as shameful as her having been chosen in the first place.

I think by now it’s been well established that Sarah Palin was a brilliant choice for the vice presidency, if the criteria for “brilliance” was to appeal to die-hard conservatives just obtuse enough to forget that, darn it, they generally haven’t been defenders of women, especially mothers of small children, in leadership. Pretty women with a lot of charisma can muddle the mind, I suppose, even of the most stalwart GOP patriarch.

But if the criteria for the Palin choice was something like demonstrating John McCain’s judgment, or choosing an able and worthy successor to him, or even establishing GOP concern for equality and diversity, it was an irredeemable failure. So, too, is the Republican’s newfound concern about sexism, a societal horror that evidently has reached its historical apex in the questioning by anyone of Palin’s record, competence, views on domestic and foreign policy, experience, and ability to lead the most powerful nation in the world.

It’s “disappointing,” the Right says, that the “liberal” media would treat Palin this way, raising questions about her experience as governor of a small state and mayor of a town 1/20th the size of Barack Obama’s state senate district in Illinois. It’s “shocking” that her family’s lives should be put under a media microscope, as if Palin herself were unaware that she had these kids or that husband until the folks at MSNBC reunited them. It’s “a sad day in America” when a woman who’s been handed her position on the GOP ticket because she’s a woman — does anyone seriously question that? — has to defend her qualifications? Or, conversely, it’s a great day in America, now that the first woman president may well be Sarah Palin, a woman whose politics do very little to uphold and enhance the status of women?

This newfound commitment to women’s progress, this nascent hatred of sexism, is a little like the ex-Socialist who, after winning a few million in the lottery, plunges into wealth and materialism with an enthusiasm unabated by his prior condemnation thereof. And who would blame him? The difference is that our hypothetical wealthy former Marxist is a small, singular voice — and even then, decent enough to recognize the hypocrisy of it all. The GOP, on the other hand, is acting like the newly rich lottery winner, gaudily and shamelessly hawking the virtue of a new lifestyle, unearned and undeserved, with nary a concern for the inconsistencies around him. It’s their moment in the spotlight, and I suppose that if I were tasked with having to defend the Palin nomination, I’d search frantically for cover, too.

But I’m not about to defend her nomination, and, as a feminist — for all of my life, even when it hasn’t gone well for me because of it — I condemn it wholeheartedly. It does “the cause” no good whatsoever when an unqualified woman is handed a position or opportunity she doesn’t deserve, and it brings about in me not even a little bit of pride that a sister is so close to making history. Sarah Palin is not my sister, except in the ecclesiastical church culture we evidently share, and her success on the ticket represents nothing to me but defeat — defeat for the cause of women’s equality, defeat for the struggling seedling of common sense and intelligence in this nation, and defeat for the thousands of women who remain mired in inequality and oppression yet are told to celebrate that “one of us” has made it.

Make no mistake here. Sarah Palin “made it” as Governor of Alaska, certainly, regardless of the wisdom or lack thereof of the electorate. But she’s not “making it” here. She’s being made to be a trick pony, a cheerleader, a symbol of vacuity and vituperation, and a fool. The only thing her nomination says is that John McCain is a man of naked cynicism and horrendous judgment, and I find that hard to celebrate.

Next up . . . a country under judgment and the Presidency of George W. Bush

While in Tucson, I was watching CNN, which had a “man on the street” interview in which passers-by were asked “Is bigotry a sin?”

Is broccoli a vegetable? Are Converse All-Stars shoes? Is Paris Hilton unlikely to become an ordained Baptist minister? Is Tina Fey cooler than I am?

IS BIGOTRY A SIN?

That most, not all, of those questioned answered “yes” gives me little comfort. That the question even should arise — that thinking people would even offer up such a non-rhetorical question — is a soul-numbing testimony to how far we’ve fallen. Of course, greasing the slope are those right-wingers who spew forth hateful, mocking venom about undocumented workers, gays, poor women, autistic children, drug addicts, and others they don’t know, don’t understand, and sure as hell don’t like. Pushing us down it with a macho shove are those on the religious right who applaud them, or, just as shamefully, fail to condemn them. And worse yet are those nasty preachers whose only message to the poor is that their own membership in the Covenant allows them to develop a theology that legitimizes contempt for the needy around them. These are the ones who hurl invective at those on the outside — and celebrate the love of Christ with those on the inside. These are the ones for whom the obscenity of questioning that bigotry is a sin goes unnoticed, immersed as they are in the teachings of bigots themselves.

It’s a sin to despise others, it’s a sin to judge people on externals, and it’s a sin to revel in differences among people that keep “them” down and exalt the ones just like you.

And a people too calloused to recognize it are, indeed, a people under judgment.

From my hero, United Farm Workers founder Cesar Chavez, who I actually met when I was 10. This seems especially appropriate today, the 7th anniversary of the attacks of 9/11, but also because I’m in Tucson now and I was when I met him in 1971.

“It is possible to become discouraged about the injustice we see everythwere. But God did not promise us that the world would be humane and just. He gives us the gift of life and allows us to choose the way we will use our limited time on earth. It’s an awesome opportunity.” Cesar E. Chavez

People often ask me what Bible I use, and so I thought I’d spend a few minutes on the subject, especially since I just treated myself to the just-released New Living Translation Study Bible, which, so far, seems to be a real improvement over many evangelical-oriented study Bibles — it’s academic, comprehensive, and actually appears to have been put together with a reverence for the Word, not just how I “apply” it or “interact” with it. Kudos to Tyndale House.

I have most of the major English translations, and I use the Nueva Version Internacional in Spanish — a much more accessible translation than the Spanish stalwart, the Reina-Valera. I love the TNIV (Today’s New International Version), but until they print something with a reasonable type size, I won’t use it much. I’m very fond of the NRSV (New Revised Standard Version) and the New American Bible, a Catholic translation whose large print study edition is the best Bible I’ve ever owned. I grew up Catholic and detect no Roman Catholic bent in the notes, which are conveniently located at the end of each book. My genuine leather, indexed, Smyth-sewn volume cost me about fifty bucks, and it’s my go-to Bible for study. Like all of the Bibles I use, it endeavors to relay gender accuracy when the original language allows for it, although it’s not as gender-accurate as, say, the TNIV or NLT.

My everyday reading Bible is the new NET translation, another gender-accurate translation that I find eminently readable, avoiding the simplicity of the NLT and the God’s Word translation while maintaining clarity, a problem that I find with the NASB (New American Standard Bible). “The most literal,” as is claimed for the NASB, isn’t the most accurate, and while I appreciate the NLT and God’s Word greatly — they’re wonderful for less-educated readers or new believers — the NET Bible speaks with a frankness and clarity that God has used to grow my faith and mature my understanding of his Word. It’s a very high-quality Bible, too: Smyth-sewn, genuine leather, and the reader’s edition has an 11-pt. typeface that I’m coming to appreciate more and more these days, again for about fifty bucks. It’s original format included — gasp! — 69,000 translators’ notes; the readers’ version, while not quite a comprehensive study Bible, has just enough study helps to aid in everyday reading.

None of the Bibles I’ve mentioned are “feminist” translations; the ones I recommend merely use, and use correctly, gender-accurate, gender-inclusive terms for the Body that the original languages allow for. No “Heavenly Parent,” “Sophia-as-Holy Spirit” translations, just honest scholarship that endeavors to do what the original writers did: include women and men in the addressing of the saints. Revolutionary, and shouldn’t still be thought so.

I treasure my Bibles, and, as I’ve mentioned before, I always have a few to give away. Please contact me if you need one. But check out the new NLT Study, the NET, and the NAB Study — the three I’d grab in a fire, while hollering for Jeff to reach for the Spanish NVI. And my Birkenstocks.

OK, the title of this post might be a bit morose, given that the subject is my upcoming 30th high school reunion, for which I fly out tomorrow. I graduated in 1978 from Cholla (pronounced “choy-a”) High School in Tucson, Arizona, having grown up in a neighborhood roughly one-third Black, one-third Anglo, and one-third Mexican-American. I look forward to seeing old friends, renewing acquaintances, and maybe meeting new spouses who are more appealing than the classmates they married. Plus, I have better hair now than I did in the late ’70s, when my attempts at a Dorothy Hamill-style wedge were sadly fruitless. Even comedic, and not at all helped by the wire-rimmed aviator frames that managed to look cool on everyone else but resembled welding goggles on me.

Humor aside, though, it’s a poignant time for me. Too many of my classmates, some of them kids I went to school with from first grade on, won’t be there. Nicky died of AIDS, Marvin got shot to death in the last few months of his battle with cancer, David died mysteriously, Pam got shot by her father and is likely too crippled to attend, Kevin got killed drag racing, Kelly is in and out of prison, Jacinta drifted away, Raymond is serving a prison term for attempted murder, and many more than I can list got lost along the way. Crime, drugs, and violence have taken a lot of the friends I grew up with and loved; my childhood, while difficult, was at least free from the violence that too many of my classmates lived with.

By the time I was about 15, I knew several kids who’d been shot — Martha, Pam, Jorge — and some of the best and brightest escaped violence only to drown in drugs and alcohol, or be drowned by abuse from the bad men they married. I wonder what happened to Erasmo, a T’ohono O’odham Indian whose family lived in a hut by the river and told time by the sun, or to Gloria, who couldn’t come to school sometimes because there weren’t enough shoes in the family to go around. I grieve how Alvin got left behind long before the term came into vogue and at a time when no one particularly cared what a developmentally delayed, fatherless, poor African-American kid ended up doing. I wonder about Ruby, one of the brightest girls I ever knew, who traded on looks when smarts didn’t seem to gain her entry into the marketplace of success, or Theresa, who sang like an angel but sang from a hell we could only begin to comprehend. And I weep when I’m reminded of Barbara Jean and David, whose athleticism defined them without propelling them out of poverty, and Victor and Peeto, whose charm wasn’t enough to stave off the demons of drug use. They should be there, and they won’t be. That makes me sad, and it makes me determined to speak out for those who weren’t born with the advantages I had, and who deserved the chance to write these words instead of being the subject of them.

And so I won’t be blogging much in the next week, but if you’re a praying sort, please pray for the ones who won’t be at the reunion, and not because September in Tucson didn’t seem like such a great idea.

So. Why respond?

Because every ugly term, every snotty joke, every bigoted pronouncement, is a sin when spoken by a minister of the Gospel. Every example of public bad behavior deserves rebuke, not because, finally, after 487 times, it’ll cause him to change — but because, after 487 public calls for repentance and Offense Number 488 just a “send” button away, the danger to his soul at least won’t be made a reality because he never knew it was in peril.

It may seem — it may be — foolish of me to bother, to engage him at every offense, and to hope for repentance, but my foolishness is for Christ. If the silliness is mine, the shame is his.

Call it “heaping coals on his head,” one by one, in the hope of a true and lasting metanoia. I may get singed, but the flames are licking at him, fed by his every smug, self-important, testimony-be-damned, belligerant utterance.

I’ve been a fool for worse . . .

From Blog and Mablog, and, I’m guessing, with me in mind:

“I use the term injun here merely in the hopes that some pc-leftist will stumble across this blog sometime and be annoyed by it. I try to spread a little sunshine wherever I go.”

How very pastoral of you, Doug.

“Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” 1 Peter 2:12

We don’t call people “pagans” anymore (nor do non-bigots use “sodomites,” but I digress), yet there’s a point here that seems to elude you. Your recent use of “Homos,” “Paco,” and “Injuns” is unbecoming a minister of Christ. But, come to think of it, I’m not sure that argument is necessarily relevant to you.

“Uncle Jeff is how I want my brothers to grow up to be.”
My precious niece, Diana, August 2008