God is the Problem

SERMON: GOD IS THE PROBLEM
Unitarian Society of Hartford, October 15, 2006
Carl S. Dudley, Faculty Emeritus, Hartford Seminary

Introduction to reading from the New Testament

My background is mainstream protestant. I was born in the early years of the depression, and grew up during WWII when “everyone” believed in God—it was foundational. Of course, I had the usual doubts and questions about space, time, creation, etc. but God was woven into my sense of self and reality. After college I worked in New York for a couple of years, and then attended seminary. I was ordained Presbyterian in 1959, and from 1962-73 served as pastor of a Black Church in St Louis. During that time I became active in SCLC and friends with Martin Luther King, Jr., who believed in a God that called us, through suffering, to create an inclusive community. From those challenging times, I want to read one of Dr. King’s sustaining New Testament passages-

Romans 8 31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can beagainst us? …. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? …. 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God made known in our Lord Jesus.

PRAYER

This beautiful invitation to prayer comes from Pitt St. Church in Sydney, Australia, and was published by Janet Morley, in Bread of Tomorrow:

“We share a common earth. We stand among each other. We share our planet,

we share birth, death, hunger and love. The sky opens above us and we receive space.

The earth stands beneath us and we receive ground. The air becomes our breath and we are one wind. The water becomes our blood and we are one sea. Living things die for us. And we die, returning to soil, sea and air. We are the people of pain and fear, we are the people of anger and joy, we are the people of compassion and grace. In all of us is a longing for a life that has not yet come, for a world that is free and just, a dream of hope for all people.

Let us pray ….

SERMON: GOD IS THE PROBLEM

I admit to a feeling of helplessness, being out of synch with the age we live in. We have a bumper sticker on our car, “Inside every old person / Is a younger person/ Asking what happened?”

I loved the 1960’s with its conviction that anything was possible. In that time of social change, we discovered the ecumenical movement, and listened to new interfaith voices. In addition to the Black Church, we also welcomed the voices of Orthodox Christians, Evangelicals, and the wide diversity within the Catholic Church. But then I began to hear new voices within the Christian community, voices that were dissonant and disturbing.

1) In the name of God, we heard a new voice that ejected homosexuals as sinful, and needing to be corrected, to be made “like us.” They were denied membership, leadership, ordination, and marriage blessings.

I remember on Mother’s day, 1968, in a sermon I said that my Mother told me, “Love is work…” and knew some Gay couples that worked at love, some straight couples that didn’t, and I had no question where God’s blessing abounded. Ten years later that would have gotten me in serious trouble. I recall in 1969 when our General Assembly denied gays ordination and marriage blessings, many of us wore arm bands with the Star of David, like Jews in Nazi Germany. We were certain that exposing this discrimination would make it disappear – but it has only gotten worse.

The anti-gay movement has gained momentum under the banner of restoring “family values” that were proclaimed as traditional from the Bible. In my Hebrew Bible, the Biblical families often had many wives and more concubines! No matter. Historical facts were sacrificed to emotional images.

2) In the name of God we heard a new voice in support of Israel. As a liberal I had agreed that the Jews who survived the holocaust should have a place of safety, a land of their own. But this new voice said we should support Israel whatever they did, in expansion of settlements, in wars with their neighbors.

Suddenly I became aware of a whole culture, with a new vision of the New Testament book of Revelation. I discovered Christian Zionism and dispensationalists, who believed that the second coming would arrive in waves of wars, beginning in the Middle East. To better understand, I spent a few days at Pat Robertson’s Regent University in Virginia Beach, with its special schools in theology, law and world wide communications. The electronic equipment was overwhelming, but everywhere there were symbols of battle, angels with drawn and bloody swords. The bookstore was full conservative Christian literature, like Hal Lindsey’s books on the great war that proceeds the Second Coming. Then came Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, a dozen books that have sold millions upon millions of copies. These books are driven by violent themes, where faith-heroes become conquers against the anti-Christ and the enemies of God, and violent movies – Apocalypse, Armageddon, Independence Day, Left Behind, Tribulation, Passion of Christ … in the name of God.

3) In the name of God, George W. Bush appeared. I believe that he had an authentic conversion experience: he was a drunk, and now he is a “dry drunk.” But in the name of God, he felt called to be President. At first he was a “compassionate conservative,” which sounded like my God. I tried to go with him in developing “Faith-based Initiatives” in social ministry, which were not openly political at first.

But then, in the name of God, the faith-based programs became linked to welfare reforms, which appeared more to punish those who did not find work than to reward those who did. God, it appears, rewards winners, and punishes failure.

In the name of God, battles were joined about abortion as a sin, opposing new rights of women; about capitalism as measure of freedom, relieving taxes on wealthy; about creation of the earth, then fossil fuels, global warming and (everywhere) in the battle for oil, God became wrapped in the American flag.

4) Then creation became the cornerstone: Creation as an act of God, in opposition to Darwin and scientific evolution. This was a fundamental attack on ordering of knowledge that most of us thought was settled in the Scopes Trial in 1920s.

GOD IS A PROBLEM (said a British report) when “creationism has certainty but rejects the facts, while evolution has the facts but rejects certainty.”

GOD IS A PROBLEM when they only accept “sound science” that agrees with their convictions about health and education; about women’s rights and global warming.

Its a problem, says Bill Moyers, when “something does not need to be true to be believed,” in the name of God!

5) Immediately after 9/11 -- God took center stage.

Do you remember those religious shrines on streets of New York, but also in Washington and even rural Pennsylvania—the pictures, ribbons, messages, prayers, anguish, candles of loss / hope? We had a moment where the whole world shared our pain. And in that moment, we might have shared the pain of the world. We felt God’s presence, as a nation.

But for some people, the God of Battle was firmly entrenched. The war mentality was already in place. This group of Christians did not need to be convinced. They expected war; they were primed and waiting for it. For them, our Christian God was calling us to take arms and punish the aggressors, the infidels.

Michael Lerner calls this “The Right hand of God:” Take control, use force as necessary, whatever it takes. Be as ruthless as you ascribe to your enemy.

6) It’s an easy step from there to torture and the extremes of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. It’s a short way to anti-terrorist legislation that includes tapping our phones, suspending our rights, packing the courts with conservative judges – and two weeks ago, passing legislation that gave retroactive absolution for all involved. In civil discourse, God is the trump card. Andrew Sullivan has made clear that introducing God suspends all arguments, denies all research, erases the facts.

Very simply, GOD IS THE PROBLEM: Every assault on the health and inclusiveness of our society has been justified in the name of God.

More, the New York Times and Boston Globe this week showed an even more invasive problem. Both had feature articles documenting the intimate mix of political and financial clout of religious right. They have denounced the venerable agency of CARE as “anti-American,” and used faith-based disciples in government positions to replace secular (non-ideological) agencies to distribute $1Ms of tax breaks, food, clothing, and financial aid to and through religious groups.

GOD IS THE PROBLEM in government, churches, media, and throughout our society…

But not just American society: The last words on the terrorists on 9/11 were to their God as well. Israel’s justifications for its recent attack on Lebanon were in the name of God. This War-like Right Hand of God is a problem throughout the world.

Therefore, for me, facing GOD AS THE PROBLEM helps. (Unitarians knew that…!)

It helps me explain why I am so exhausted, because God’s name, or power, or consciousness is invoked

For death and destruction, not life and creation;

For exclusion and suffering, not inclusion and community;

For arrogance and greed, not humility and the common good.

At least now I understand that part of the reasons why this world feels so disorienting. I am tired because I am out synch. My God has been hijacked ( Becky Garrison), kidnapped and held for ransom – at a price too high to pay.

If I can name the source of my exhaustion, then maybe I can do something about it.

Initially, in my uneasiness – I wonder, shall we get rid of God? Certainly going it alone would be better than the vicious, oppressive, war-wanting Right Hand of God (above)

But, then I am jolted, I am shocked by a terrible incident. In a one-room schoolhouse in Lancaster Co, Pennsylvania, ten young girls were bound and shot—and five have died—by a crazed man haunted by terrible demons. And for all the world a window opens briefly on the Amish community. In their simple ways of faith, of anger, of grief, they embrace their own Amish families with their unspeakable loss. Then before nightfall they reached out with words of forgiveness and compassion to the wife and parents of the crazed man who had attacked their precious children.

Amish hold God at the center of their lives:

Not the Right Hand of God – domination and denial;

But the Left Hand of God – caring and inclusive.

We stand in a great tradition of those who affirmed the Left Hand of God, including David Henry Thoreau and Martin Luther King, Jr. Recently a new generation of biblical scholars and social activists have rediscovered the New Testament as a protest against the oppression of the Roman Empire, in ancient times and in ours.

This new wave of scholars and religious leaders has three elements in common:

They report their encounters with God as an experience in humility not domination.

They find God on the side of the marginalized, the oppressed. They look from the bottom up at the exploiters and oppressors.

In what the early Christians saw as the Roman Empire, they see the brutal, dominating super power of the United States of America, throughout the world, today.

The war in Iraq, they say, is the Empire at work… again. It is the hubris of the Right Hand of God. In the face of a horrible situation, the Amish make clear, there is a different God of caring community that embraces even the criminal killer. As a Christian I see that the robe on Jesus at crucifixion was not Red Jesus or Blue Jesus—his robe was purple, a mix of red and blue, not for sovereignty, but more likely the ancient symbol of a prostitute, suffering with two other common criminals.

Where do we begin? Yesterday the Nobel Peace Prize was given to an otherwise unknown banker in Bangledesh. Yunus gave microloans to neighbors – no more than $200, usually under $100 – for chickens and cell phones and common place things, to start them off in a business of their own. He gave in groups of five people, all five had to be current before more loans were extended. He began in 1978, unseen, unknown, to build a bank for the poor that has grown to about $6 billion, with 99 % repayment rate, and 97% went to women.

Where do we begin? – with small actions among our neighbors. And what makes us accountable? Each one to the other.

If the God of violence and oppression is a problem, then the God of caring and building community is our hope—not explained, but lived, you and me, here and now.

Amen

Let us know of any comments, errors and corrections - thanks (revised 10/119/06)