LAmom

THAT WAS US

If you were passing by the Galen Center at USC tonight you might be wondering who those crazy holy rollers were out on the upstairs patio.  That was us.  The Pentecostal Assemblies of the World California District Youth Convention.

Allow me to explain.  See, we had promised that we would vacate our ballroom at a certain time (10:00, I think), and we wanted to keep our word.  But even though our time was up, the service was definitely not over yet.  So even though we moved outside, we just continued right on dancing and shouting, clapping and playing tambourines, speaking in tongues and praying for each other.  I left just after 11:00 and there were still 40 or 50 people there at that point.

So if you've always wondered what those Pentecostal church services are like, now you know.

I hope everybody else's weekend has been as good as mine.

WHEN CAN YOU CALL BLASPHEMY?

I remember right after 9-11 when Bush said that the individuals who attacked us had blasphemed Islam.  He was, of course, trying to make the point that he understood that such actions are not an expression of normal Moslem belief.  But I remember wondering whether it was appropriate for someone who is an outsider to a particular religion to decide that someone is a blasphemer.

On the other hand, when I heard a description on This American Life (start listening at the 23:30 mark) of things that are being done to prisoners at Guantanamo, I knew that it was time to call blasphemy.  There's a good chance that the person who kissed the cross and said the torture was a gift from Jesus identifies himself or herself as a Christian.  For any professed Christians who have invoked the name of God as a part of torture, you are being officially called out by an obscure Christian cleric (I really am a licensed minister, everybody) as a blasphemer.  Just doing my job.

BLAIR'S COMMENTS DON'T STRIKE ME THE SAME WAY

From the Independent:

Tony Blair has proclaimed that God will judge whether he was right to send British troops to Iraq, echoing statements from his ally George Bush.

I'm remembering that quote from Abraham Lincoln about the striving to be on God's side rather than claiming that God is on your side.

If Bush really did this:

Mr Bush once told Palestinian leaders: "God would tell me, 'George, go end the tyranny in Iraq' and I did."

that's quite different from:

During his eight-year premiership, the only decisions that have caused Mr Blair sleepless nights have been those that involved taking the UK to war, he said. But he added: "The only way you can take a decision like that is to try to do the right thing, according to your conscience. And, for the rest of it, you leave it to the judgement that history will make."

Mr. Blair sounds less like he's violating the Third Commandment, and more like he's hoping that he is on God's side.  He just got it wrong, that's all.

TWO COATS

He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise. -- Luke 3:11

Yesterday, the kids and I went to a party at someone's gorgeous new second home outside of Palm Springs.  The owners are retired empty-nesters who spend most of the week in their beautiful house in the Los Angeles area and then go to their desert property for weekends.

I dearly love these folks (they are relatives), but I have to say that I feel uncomfortable about the idea of people having two houses just for fun when there are other people who have no home at all.  It's similar to my zealousness about saving leftovers and eating them.  It really bothers me to throw away perfectly good food and go buy more when there are people starving all over the world.

If people decided not to buy luxurious houses they don't need just because they can, wouldn't home builders then put those resources toward building smaller houses for people of modest means?

Also, any time I see more of the planet getting paved over, I hope that it's because there is a real need to do so.

APPROPRIATING HOLIDAYS -- HOW FAR CAN YOU GO?

I've never known much about Kwanzaa, but DL was asking me about it, so I started reading up.  I noticed on the Official Kwanzaa Website, that the biography of the holiday's founder, Maulana Karenga, read more like a resume than a bio.  Nothing about his life or background, just his achievements and his titles.  Well, it turns out that it's written that way because Karenga is a pretty bad dude, with a history of violence, mental troubles, and a strongly anti-religious viewpoint (I don't just mean non-religious, I mean ANTI-religious).  This guy holds absolutely no appeal for me.

The seven principles of Kwanzaa are Unity, Self-Determination, Collective Work and Responsibility, Cooperative Economics, Purpose, Creativity, and Faith.  These are attractive values, but Dr. Karenga interprets them in a racially divisive way.  Blacks vs. the world.

Is it possible for Kwanzaa to become mainstreamed?  To become a holiday that speaks to all people and unites instead of divides?  Dr. Karenga has already stepped back from his some of his early anti-religion pronouncements.  In 1977 he said, "Kwanzaa is not an imitation, but an alternative, in fact, an oppositional alternative to the spookism, mysticism and non-earth based practices which plague us as a people . . .", but by 1997 he was saying, "Kwanzaa was not created to give people an alternative to their own religion or religious holiday."  He must have figured out that his holiday would have no future if he alienated Christians, who are a majority of the African-American population.

But will Kwanzaa ever be expanded to have meaning for people of all races as well as religions?  I would love to see the principles discussed more, especially as they relate to geographic communities rather than racial ones.  But I doubt that Kwanzaa will be going in that direction as long as Dr. Karenga is alive and maintains his influence.  I would welcome it if the larger population did to Kwanzaa what the Christian church did to Saturnalia.  Until that happens, Kwanzaa will not be celebrated in my home.

TAKING ON THE REAL GRINCH

Sojourners reports on the demonstration staged in Washington, D. C. by religious leaders protesting the budget.

From Jim Wallis's article:

The real Christmas scandal is the budget proposed by the House of Representatives that cuts food stamps, health care, child support, and educational assistance to low-income families - while further lowering taxes for the wealthiest Americans and increasing the deficit for all of our grandchildren.

A quote from one of the protesters:

[I got arrested] because I love Jesus and am trying to love my neighbors as myself. These are extreme times - the question is not will we be extremists, but what kind of extremists will we be - extremists for the rich or for the poor.

Jim Wallis's article, in its entirety, is below the jump

CALM DOWN ABOUT THE TREES!

Some Christian folks are getting really worked up about what other people call their decorated trees.  I could hardly believe my eyes when I read this:

After all, if there were no Jesus born in Bethlehem there would be no so-called holiday tree.

Really, I thought everybody knew by now that the trees were originally used in pagan rituals that pre-dated Christianity.  We Christians adapted them from the pagans to use as a part of our religious holiday.  Retailers have taken the trees to use in the service of their own religion (the worship of money).  People of other religions (or no religion) enjoy the trees as a part of the holiday season, whatever the holidays mean to them.

If we tell other people that they have to acknowledge our holiday in order to use the trees, should the pagans come down on us next and demand that we call them Saturnalia trees?

Nobody has tried to stop me from calling my own tree a Christmas tree.  And I don't have a problem with anybody else calling their tree whatever they like, be they an individual, a chain store, or a city government.

THOU SHALT NOT . . .

take the name of the Lord in vain (source).

Usually we think of this commandment as referring to expletives.  But if someone makes a questionable claim that God told them this or that, are they also potentially violating this principle?

A young woman at our church, a recent convert, once came to some of us for advice.  A young man had told her that the Lord had revealed to him that she was meant to be his wife.  She felt no attraction to this guy, but she didn't want to rebel against the will of God.  Those of us who had been in the church all our lives were able to tell her that that is one of the oldest lines in the book.  "If God is really in it, He'll give you the vision, too, sister."  That was a long time ago, and that woman is now married to the man that she fell in love with, not the guy who tried to play the God card.

Sometimes people start thinking that if they really, really want something, then God must want it, too.  As Bible believers, we can say confidently that God wants stuff that is specifically outlined in scripture.  But if we get very far from that, whether it's "God gave me a vision of your hair in waist-length braid extensions" (yes, a hairdresser really said that to a friend of mine) or "God told me to invade Iraq," we're getting into dangerous territory.  The Lord will not hold a person guiltless who takes his name in vain.

"THE PASTOR SHOOK MY HAND!"

We recently had a visitor at our Friday night Youth Service.  He was a pre-teenage boy who is the neighbor of some of our church members.  Along with his mother, he attends one of the biggest black churches in Los Angeles.

Our church building can seat 150 people maximum, and we probably had about 25 people at Youth Service that night.  A lot of big church attendees might think of us as puny.

But this young man was amazed.  His neighbor told us on Sunday how excited he was to tell his mother about the service.  "They had little kids up in front leading the songs and reading Scriptures!  And the pastor shook my hand!"  His mother said that that was the part he kept talking about over and over.  The pastor of the church shook his hand.

It reaffirmed to me that there is a place in the world for small churches.  Bishop Noel Jones doesn't know that this kid exists.  But when he visits our dinky little church, he is somebody.

Back when I was in midwifery school, we worked with a patient who was having trouble handling everything in her one-week postpartum life.  Baby, housework, and her physical recovery were wearing her out (we tell all the ladies to forget about the housework, but cooking and laundry never go away).  Her mother worked full time, her husband wasn't into "women's work" (grrrrrrr . . . ), and she had no other support system.  We knew she was a Christian, so we asked her, "Don't you have any friends at church who could drop by to help you out?"  She said, "No, the church we go to is so big that we don't know anybody there."

I violated my school's usual principles of professionalism and invited her to my church (my preceptor said later that she agreed that it was appropriate in that situation).  It turned out that she had seen my church before; it's close to where her mother lives.  When I described the location, she said, "Oh, you mean that small church."

She never visited.  Maybe she found some support at the Faith Dome.  I hope so.

MY TURN TO DECLARE A FATWA

In these turbulent times, when our faith is attacked from every side, we face a serious threat to the values that we cherish.  And that threat, brothers and sisters, is Pat Robertson's microphone.  We must not let this instrument of destruction turn our airwaves into a launching pad for murderous extremism.

I urge agents within the Christian Broadcasting Network to assassinate that microphone.  We have the ability to take out Mr. Robertson's sound system, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability.  We don't need a huge media war to shut down one, you know, murder-mongering blabbermouth. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives cut off his electricity and get it over with.  It's a whole lot cheaper, and I don't think any oil shipments will stop (do all fatwas have to include a projection about their effect on oil shipments?)

The time to act is now!