outdo one another in showing honor...

Romans 12.10:love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. It certainly seemed like a "I'm nicer than you are, so there!" contest last Friday night. I visited the 2-person panel discussion sponsored by Emmanuel Presbyterian Church, a new church that meets in Arlington on the campus of George Mason U on Fairfax Drive. Pastor Scott introduced the church as one that provides a 'safe place' for people to bring their doubts, something, he said, he was not encouraged to do growing up in church. The church got Fred Edwards, of the American Humanist Association, and Jim Martin, of the International Justice Mission to speak to the audience of about 150 people and to each other on the question of "Why Do Good?" I heard them both passionate advocates of individual and group efforts to "do good" in the world. Their reasons were so different, but they both were so completely determined to show respect and civility that the discussion seemed a bit bland.
The question "What is Good?" was the first they tried to answer. The Mr. Edwards, the humanist rep put forth a two-fold definition: 1) enlightened self-interest, plus 2) compassion, which yields The Golden Rule. He pointed out that all major religions and many other cultures have something similar. Mr. Martin, a self-confessed Christian (as indeed IJM is identified), didn't really have anything to add, except agreement. I was disappointed not to hear anything about people being "created in the image of God" or other language that would have given a distinctly Christian spin on the definition. He was passionate about lifting up his energy for "doing good" that he shares with many other Christians--the passionate resource of faith as the motivation to keep going. IJM does some of the most dangerous work in the whole field of Christian mission: It works internationally through to ensure that public justice systems protect those most vulnerable to violent abuse. It exposes and prosecutes slave traffickers, international prostitution rings; it intervenes in cases of police brutality and illegal property seizure and detention. You can't be exposed to some of the brutal work without an amazing resilience and persistent hope. I wish Mr. Martin had explained where this hope comes from, for Christians.
Mr. Edwards said that "humanists don't need religion" because human beings can do good all by themselves and held up his own organization and its partners around the world as examples. Mr. Martin conceded that ground, too, by saying that he didn't care where the motivation came from, only that more workers are needed.
I didn't stay for the Q & A that followed. Maybe some more discussion took place. I just wish that more Christians had the facility to state what and why we believe as we do. We do have a story to tell, but it might not be exactly around this issue. Christians do believe that many people can do good--not everyone has to be an explicit follower of Jesus or even understand their own motivations in order to do good. Jesus himself seemed to recognize this. [John 10:16 I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.]
The Humanist Association seems to me to have all the trappings of any American Christian denomination, including a communication and network structure, statements of belief, principles, ways of connecting to other like-minded people, and some fairly strong statements explicitly rejecting "religion" as they define it. The problem is that their definition of "religion" is about as narrow as one can get. Christians reject it, too. Mr. Edwards said that he "doesn't need religion" to do good because humanist principles are adequate. I had to chuckle. The argument works just as well in the opposite direction: Christians don't need to rely on Humanist principles because we have Jesus.

SEX!

I didn't think that such a volume of "talk back to the preacher" would be unleashed when I preached on the Song of Songs text last Sunday. Sunday, August 30, 2009--Song of Songs text from the lectionary. Of course it celebrates sexual attraction between a woman and a man, harkening back to the creation story in Genesis. But because there is so much that could be said about this controversial topic in our time, I didn't want to start out with the controversy. I wanted to lift up what was GOOD and HOLY about sex.
Apparently it got a lot of people thinking. People have been sending me stuff--printed works, and links and publications and way more than I can absorb. We'll have to pray to see where all this takes the little church with a big mission...