Moderator Intervention:

Please - let’s desist with speaking to each other in all caps.  Perhaps this is not well known here, but speaking in caps persistently is understood in online communities as shouting in someone’s face.  It’s considered bad manners.  If you want to emphasize things, use italics, please.

Craig

Mr. Uffman:

Can you please teach me how to use italics?  The posting reply does not work like Microsoft Word.  It has buttons on top <  >.  How do I italicize?  If you also notice, I don’t know how to quote what the people are saying, the way you do, in grey boxes?  Can you teach me, please?

Mr. Uffman:

I also want to respond to your response to James - it is beautiful.  There is where I think healing takes place - magical healing.  When we divorce the condemnation of what a person does and attach it, instead, to the glory of Christ’s death on the cross, then our minds can be transfigured.  That is, we look at the mistake, the act, the movement and summon up and accept all of the grace afforded to us by Christ.  And by that I mean every single disease and act you can imagine.  That grace, that gift of grace and the sharing of that grace is exactly what we are called to do as a church.  He covers everything.

But, perhaps you can tell me where we draw the line?  In order for that grace to be accepted and received, time and time again - would there ever be a point where separation from the person that is committing the behavior and saying it’s okay and normal and that it won’t hurt - be warranted.

In the simple case of choosing the right friends?  Are we all expected to be as strong as Jesus?  Or, like Paul asked us, should we be aware that in lifting others out of their own sin, we might fall in?  Or, to separate ourselves because we are set apart and the body is our temple?  That can apply to all kinds of behavior?

Where do we draw the line - not in applying grace, but rather, in knowing when separation and a firm footing is the most obedient thing to do?  Perhaps there, in letting go is where the transfiguration takes place?  Parting from someone you love but is doing something wrong is never easy.  How does it apply in the practical realm and where does your post make provisions for the practical application of St. Paul’s instructions?

(Excuse me for using CAPS.  I don’t know how to italize or bold or quote).  I’M NOT SCREAMING : ) .

James,

This is an example of bad exegesis: “Jesus’ concern was with folks who only had time for OTHER PEOPLE’S infractions instead of their own.”  That’s a way of avoiding the demands of the gospel on us, for, as long as we (believe) we look at our own infractions, then we can assume that Jesus is not talking about us.  This is a classic way in which our culture domesticates the gospel.

Jesus did not demand that the Pharisees simply mind their own business because they were sinners, too.  He showed again and again that they did not get the deeper meaning of Torah. He demanded full social and economic solidarity with those the Pharisees excluded for the sake of purity, a practice that demonstrated how little the Pharisees understood the nature of God.  That’s another way of saying that the Pharisees did not understand that God’s love is the only given.

Cristina,

In response to your question, I encourage you to meditate all week on the entirety of Matthew 18.  I suspect you will find your answer as you chew on every word at length.

Mr. Uffman:

Thank you.  I know that my posts have been perhaps very emotional, but I cannot separate what I see from what I read.  And, so while Matthew 18 asks me to forgive my brother seventy times seven, it also says that if I cause one of these little ones to sin it is better that I tie around my neck with a millstone and throw myself into the sea.  Thus, you have asked me to walk through a paradox; of forgiveness and justice. 

AIDS is real to me; it’s not an abstraction for me.  So, when I speak of it, it’s like speaking of my own flesh.  I’ve seen the dying, I’ve heard their stories.  And, so I fear in my heart when I see a church divorce the double edged sword that Matthew 18 asks us to meditate on. 

I do not believe gay people are going to hell.  But, I don’t believe it’s a good thing to marinate ideas in the mind of innocents that cause harm.  And, so, that confuses me.  I will also take your post to mean that I should not post so frequently, it is only that there were inaccuracies stated and it seemed to me objectivity was abandoned for agendas, not Scripture and the Church.  While I do not believe the gay community is not pining after God too, it is my contribution to this communion and a humble suggestion that little people like, go out on dates and we are approached by all kinds of people and our minds are fragile and easily influenced.  So, perhaps, in that way, while I can forgive, it hurts that the church, perhaps, doesn’t have a practical way of ministering to those of us who live in the real world, go out and want to love everyone, but are also asked to guard our hearts and make choices.

I don’t anybody ever plans to sin.  Sometimes, it’s the small steps that lead to the worst kinds. 

I’m going to take a break.  Mr. Uffman, thank you for giving me Matthew 18 as a healing tool.  I’ll write more in seven days.  Until then, I will not touch this computer.  To me, this is not about grace - there’s always grace - it’s just I know the dangers of suggesting something that is wrong, is right.  What then?  If someone cuts off my arm, I can forgive, but I still don’t have an arm.  I won’t cut off their arm, but I’ll tell them that they shouldn’t be cutting off other people’s arms, either.  In the case of the debtor, instead of turning him over to the king, i’d probably say, “listen, maybe we can come up with a debt consolidation plan or maybe give up our cars and take the bus so that we can help other people not get into so much debt!”

That’s what I’m trying to say here.  I’d ask the King for a debt consolidation program. 

Forgive me for posting; AIDS is close and dear to my heart.  It hits home too closely for me not to divorce your words from what I see. 

I won’t post for a week.  Thank you for your grace Mr. Uffman.

Cristina,

In suggesting that you meditate for a week on Matt 18, I had in mind that classic discipline of lectio divina.  I did not have in mind the frequency of your posts, but rather only the answer you said you were seeking.

Hi Craig,

You’re doing it again!  You’re peaking my interest considerably! 

author=“Craig Uffman” date=“1246327914”]Dick,
Thanks for your reply.  What you are calling a narrative-informed ethics is no more than acting exactly as Jesus acted in his encounters with many of those whom the Pharisees excluded from fellowship, as Dr. Wells shows in his exegetical support of the improvisation metaphor.  And as he notes, he is working with von Balthasar’s metaphor of a theodrama.  It’s not a new form of ethics; it is merely a helpful way of teaching people how to follow Christ over and against the world’s teaching of a worldview that presupposes the necessity of violence (as in in Niehbuhr’s “Christian Realism”).  So the use of narrative informed ethics is the only right ethics to the extent that the narrative informing our ethics is God’s story in which we are located through baptism.

Does this have any relation to narrative theology?  It is an outgrowth of that or a completely different animal?

I appreciate your wanting to insist on an ethics that makes judgments about right and wrong.  Certainly that is part of our ethical task.  We agree insofar as we understand the necessity of making judgments about particular claims.  But the more subtle point I am making is not about the necessity of making judgments, but rather about how we are to respond to brothers and sisters who make claims that might, in decision-based ethics, lead one to suggest that the only alternatives we have in life are to say “Yes” or “No” to our brothers and sisters. The improvisation that Jesus exemplified was that of continuing the story by imaginatively responding to those whom the various players in Judea (Pharisees, Saducees, Essenese, Bandits) had written out of God’s story, relocating them in that story.

Who are the Bandits?  I’m unfamiliar with them.

I hope you’ll keep writing on this.

In Christ,
Shawn

Hi James,

Craig - but how are we supposed to “transform” the fate of the lost and disconnected gifts of creation into a destiny consistent with the destiny God has for His creation unless we know What or Where the goal of “transformation” is?  Of what use is it to say “transform this” if we have no idea what we are supposed to transform it into?  First, we need to explore the question WHAT is the destiny God has for His creation.

I think this is where our faith comes into play.  What I hear Craig and Fthr. Humphrey suggesting is that we keep staying together, even when we disagree…even when we feel “the other” is indeed doing harmful things…perhaps very harmful things.  Because God never abandons us….even when we do such things ourselves.

So, to put it concretely, even though I firmly believe that Archbishop Akinola’s support of Nigerian legislation that would imprison gays and lesbians and their supporters in Nigeria will lead to their deaths, I must stay in communion with him as my brother in Christ. 

Similarly, how can we understand this “mystery” in a “faithful way” unless we first have decided what “faithful” means?  Again, this requires us to come to some decisions.

Faithful doesn’t mean getting it right.  Faithful means loyalty.  Semper Fidelis as the Marine motto goes.  That doesn’t mean that the Marines always know what’s right or that their commanders always get it right.  It means loyalty.  Always be loyal.  Always be faithful.

Being faithful to Christ is being loyal to Him….even when we don’t understand…especially when we don’t understand or when we doubt or when we think He’s dead wrong.  Or when we think those speaking in His name are all of those things.  We remain faithful.  We remain loyal.

This seems like a good deal of smoke being blown to try to avoid doing the hard work of discerning God’s will and being obedient to God.When Jesus was confronted with disobedience he didn’t blather on about “how can I see this affinity as as a gift through which God blesses the Church so that the Church is the blessing to all the nations she is intended to be?”  No, Jesus typically said “Stop!” and then he responded in a very pastoral and very appropriate way.  Jesus called for both radical obedience and radical mercy.  He never called for waffling.

I think if you look at those passages again, you will see that you have it reversed.  Christ first responds pastorally.  And only in those cases when the person is doing harm to another, does He tell them to stop.  Many, many that He encountered were considered sinners by the religious leaders of His day simply due to how they were born or a disease that they encountered.  In their eyes, they were sinners.  But Christ reminded us of the Law, Love God with all of our being and love your neighbor as yourself.

In Christ,
Shawn

The reference to ‘narrative’ was Dick Wire’s, not mine.  The ethics I am describing is called liturgical or ecclesial ethics.  Certainly there is an understanding of Scripture as our authoritative narrative that comes out of the old Yale School of theology.

The bandits or “brigands” were those who insisted that violence was the only hope for Israel in achieving liberation from the forces of bondage in which they found themselves in the first century.  They routinely raided Roman convoys, for example.  N.T. Wright describes them in his Victory of God series in some detail.  Below is a description from one of my own manuscripts:

The ruling elite ran the bureaucracies at the highest levels of management and participated in the struggles for power and prestige beneath Antipas.  Below them was the ‘retainer’ class, which included the scribes, clerks, military personnel, and tax officials.  At the same level as the retainers were the few merchants who had accumulated enough wealth to command the attention of the aristocracy.  At the third level were peasants and artisans who lived in rural Galilee.  Below the peasant class were the ‘unclean and degraded’ that were isolated from the rest of society by both Jewish purity rules and social custom.  These included prostitutes and others whose work put them regularly in contact with the unclean.  At the bottom of the social ladder were the ‘expendables.’  These lowest of the low rose in numbers with the fortunes of the peasants, for they were the peasant children whose parents could no longer afford to feed them.  They were sent into the streets to survive on their own.  During the harvest, they worked as ‘day laborers.’ When there was no work to be found, they begged.

Many of these ‘expendables’ took to the hills and became brigands that preyed upon military convoys, traders, and wealthy Palestinian aristocrats.  These brigands lived outside of the Galilean and Roman law but remained a part of the Jewish social structure. Most of them, because of the economic forces that drove them into banditry, shared the worldview and values of the peasants to whom they were related.  Indeed, man-made caves that were used as brigand hideouts have been discovered within peasant villages; and many peasants were punished for their support of the brigands. Their normal abodes were caves in the hills of Galilee, Samaria, and Judea. Operating in large bands, they descended upon their prey like packs of wolves.  They were lightly armed.  Their numbers swelled in relation to changes in the factors affecting the socioeconomic welfare of the peasantry.  Heavy taxation, civil war, famine, and large influxes of refugees from foreign lands swelled their numbers.  A brigand was short-lived; most were captured or killed within a few years of their fall.  However, the lifestyle of an ‘expendable’ was equally short-lived due to existence beneath the subsistence level.  At least brigands had the hope that their daring would be rewarded with occasional abundance.

James mentioned Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple.  One irony that seems to escape him is that the cleansing of the Temple was closely connected with - and indeed was an acted out parable of judgment against - the ethics we are discussing, which contributed to the conditions that produced the bandits. N.T. Wright develops this in his exegesis of the story as it is found in Matthew.

Thank you Mr. Uffman.  I’m going to the library and find N.T. Wright’s on his Victory of God series.  This last post intrigues me.  Thank you so much for the generosity of this website.  You have no idea how much I am learning about God’s word and the sword of his word in this very complicated world!  Good night. (I had to post quickly today and so my words were inverted more than usual).  When you have the time, please tell me how to do italics and bold, but it’s best, perhaps, I not use them just yet.  Today I had to defend myself! God loves everybody! Goodnight Mr. Strout.

Shawn Strout - 29 June 2009 09:38 AM

Hi Craig,
What an interesting way to pose the ethical question.  It would seem to me that this is the approach Christ took in the Gospels.  As I read them, I see Christ being far less concerned with what is right or wrong (not to say He was unconcerned) and far more concerned with how God’s love and God’s glory could be manifested for the world. (snip)
The other would be to require celibacy for all gays and lesbians, which is in essence putting us in a closet and saying, “We’re not sure what to do with you, so just stay here and don’t make a fuss.”  There might even be a bit of “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” about the reality of that celibacy.  Gays and lesbians would have our “friends” and no questions would be asked.  Does this manifest God’s glory? (snip)

In Christ,
Shawn

Requiring celibacy for gays and lesbians is no more a “closet”—i.e. hiding or being dishonest about one’s sexual orientation—than is requiring it of unmarried heterosexuals. That is not the church saying it doesn’t know what to do with you. The church has known what to do with you for two thousand years: exhort you to and support you in ever-greater obedience to God. The fly in the ointment is that you and others who advocate church recognition of SSUs refuse to go along with what the church says.

It is absolutely possible simultaneously to be completely open and above-board about one’s orientation and celibate. Loads of unmarried heterosexual Christians, monastic and otherwise, do it for years on end. There is absolutely no reason that homosexual Christians can’t do it too—and they should. The Church should most assuredly not settle for “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” from anyone, gay or straight. Accept only the genuine article—no sex outside marriage.

The hypocrisy of fake celibacy, as you rightly point out, does not manifest God’s glory at all. But when the Church holds fast to the Apostles’ teaching, and when individual Christians gain victory over temptation, His glory is manifested in a big way.

Cristina Kevia Molina - 29 June 2009 09:03 PM

Mr. Uffman:

Can you please teach me how to use italics?  The posting reply does not work like Microsoft Word.  It has buttons on top <  >.  How do I italicize?  If you also notice, I don’t know how to quote what the people are saying, the way you do, in grey boxes?  Can you teach me, please?

Cristina,
Those buttons are the ones you use. Select the text you want to format, then click on the button with a “<b>” for bold, or the one with “<i>” for italic. Or, you can just include the hypertext tags yourself as you type. Just remember to use a close tag (add a “/” after the first bracket) to turn off your formatting.

Karen

Craig Uffman - 29 June 2009 08:59 PM

Moderator Intervention:

Please - let’s desist with speaking to each other in all caps.  Perhaps this is not well known here, but speaking in caps persistently is understood in online communities as shouting in someone’s face.  It’s considered bad manners.  If you want to emphasize things, use italics, please.

Craig

AFAIK the stricture against all-caps does not include abbreviations, and IMO that is as it should be. IIRC, use of the caps-lock key for abbreviations is not equivalent to shouting. But YMMV. <g>

Hi Karen,

Requiring celibacy for gays and lesbians is no more a “closet”—i.e. hiding or being dishonest about one’s sexual orientation—than is requiring it of unmarried heterosexuals. That is not the church saying it doesn’t know what to do with you. The church has known what to do with you for two thousand years: exhort you to and support you in ever-greater obedience to God. The fly in the ointment is that you and others who advocate church recognition of SSUs refuse to go along with what the church says.

It is absolutely possible simultaneously to be completely open and above-board about one’s orientation and celibate. Loads of unmarried heterosexual Christians, monastic and otherwise, do it for years on end. There is absolutely no reason that homosexual Christians can’t do it too—and they should. The Church should most assuredly not settle for “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” from anyone, gay or straight. Accept only the genuine article—no sex outside marriage.

The hypocrisy of fake celibacy, as you rightly point out, does not manifest God’s glory at all. But when the Church holds fast to the Apostles’ teaching, and when individual Christians gain victory over temptation, His glory is manifested in a big way.

We have discussed celibacy before.  It is my strongly held opinion that requiring lifelong celibacy of people who are not called to celibacy is not only spiritually dangerous for those people it is degrading to the vocation of celibacy.  The Roman Catholic Church is an excellent example of this.  They have mistakenly combined the vocation to priestly ministry with the vocation to celibacy.  And look what has happened.  There are constant scandals among the RC priests because of this requirement.  They are not at all the same vocation and should be honored as such.

I agree with you that the Church should continue to teach that sex outside of marriage is wrong.  Obviously, where we disagree is on the Church allowing same-gendered couples, who are not called to lifelong celibacy, to get married as heterosexuals have that option.  I have yet heard anyone give me a rational reason as to how this would cause harm to the individuals, the Church and the world.  As I have pointed out, it would cause much good and glorify God.  All I ever hear are Scriptural passages thrust out of context, while neighboring Scriptural passages with similar injunctions are completely ignored….or the statement that it has been the tradition of the Church for 2000 years….also ignoring very important changes that have occurred in the Church going against her 2000 year old tradition.

Christ was quoted Scripture and given tradition by the religious leaders of His day.  He responded with love.  In all of His responses you see that he is attempting to show them that Scripture and tradition are not meant to keep people from full participation in the life of God but to bring them into it.  The religious leaders of His day had many rules about who could and could not be included in Temple worship and allowed within society.  Christ systematically broke through each and every one of those barriers.  When a person was doing something harming another person, He told them to stop.  Otherwise, He told them that their faith had made them whole.

In Christ,
Shawn