It's Sunday, But Friday's Comin'

Though not my favorite writer to read or comment on, Joe Carter (click here for his bio) posted a Good Friday, poetic message by S.M. Lockridge (click here for his bio) on this past Good Friday. The message describes a number of very sad events that occurred on the first Good Friday, but with the poetic reminder that Easter Sunday was comin'. The continued repetition of how that Easter Sunday, with its resurrection of Jesus from the grave, was certainly coming to rescue us from what appeared to be Good Friday's tragedy is an essential part of the Christian faith (click here for Carter's article).

And though that Sunday's comin' is an essential part of the Christian faith, there is another essential part that gives us the reason why we need such faith. That message consists of simply reversing the order of Lockridge's message but replace Easter Sunday with Palm Sunday. If we remember, Palm Sunday was the day of Jesus's victorious entry into Jerusalem. His entrance was consider victorious because of how the people greeted him for they were shouting the following(click here for the account provided in Mark 11:1-11):

Hosanna!
Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord;
Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David;
Hosanna in the highest

Certainly, with such a greeting, no one could expect what would occur on Good Friday. And yet it did. But in quickly turning on Jesus, the people both revealed who they really were while repeating a pattern of Old Testament worship that was rejected by God. Consider the following from Isaiah 58:1-7 (click here for the account in Isaiah): 

“Cry loudly, do not hold back;
Raise your voice like a trumpet,
And declare to My people their transgression
And to the house of Jacob their sins.

“Yet they seek Me day by day and delight to know My ways,
As a nation that has done righteousness
And has not forsaken the ordinance of their God.
They ask Me for just decisions,
They delight in the nearness of God.

‘Why have we fasted and You do not see?
Why have we humbled ourselves and You do not notice?’
Behold, on the day of your fast you find your desire,
And drive hard all your workers.

“Behold, you fast for contention and strife and to strike with a wicked fist.
You do not fast like you do today to make your voice heard on high.

“Is it a fast like this which I choose, a day for a man to humble himself?
Is it for bowing one’s head like a reed
And for spreading out sackcloth and ashes as a bed?
Will you call this a fast, even an acceptable day to the Lord?

“Is this not the fast which I choose,
To loosen the bonds of wickedness,
To undo the bands of the yoke,
And to let the oppressed go free
And break every yoke?

“Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry
And bring the homeless poor into the house;
When you see the naked, to cover him;
And not to hide yourself from your own flesh? 

What Isaiah reported was what God was saying to Israel as He is rejecting their worship. That despite all they had put into their worship, because of their lack of care for those in need, God was rejecting their acts of worship.

The warning that God issued to some of the Old Testament worshipers as recorded in Isaiah 58, was also issued to God's people as they were living in comfort as recorded in Amos 6:1-7 (click here for the account in Amos):

Woe to those who are at ease in Zion
And to those who feel secure in the mountain of Samaria,
The distinguished men of the foremost of nations,
To whom the house of Israel comes.

Go over to Calneh and look,
And go from there to Hamath the great,
Then go down to Gath of the Philistines.
Are they better than these kingdoms,
Or is their territory greater than yours?

Do you put off the day of calamity,
And would you bring near the seat of violence?

Those who recline on beds of ivory
And sprawl on their couches,
And eat lambs from the flock
And calves from the midst of the stall,

Who improvise to the sound of the harp,
And like David have composed songs for themselves,

Who drink wine from sacrificial bowls
While they anoint themselves with the finest of oils,
Yet they have not grieved over the ruin of Joseph.

Therefore, they will now go into exile at the head of the exiles,
And the sprawlers’ banqueting will pass away.

And a similar message is given to the rulers of God's people as well. Consider the following from Jeremiah 22:13-17 (click here to read Jeremiah's account):

“Woe to him who builds his house without righteousness
And his upper rooms without justice,
Who uses his neighbor’s services without pay
And does not give him his wages,

Who says, ‘I will build myself a roomy house
With spacious upper rooms,
And cut out its windows,
Paneling it with cedar and painting it bright red.’

“Do you become a king because you are competing in cedar?
Did not your father eat and drink
And do justice and righteousness?
Then it was well with him.

“He pled the cause of the afflicted and needy;
Then it was well.
Is not that what it means to know Me?”
Declares the Lord.

“But your eyes and your heart
Are intent only upon your own dishonest gain,
And on shedding innocent blood
And on practicing oppression and extortion.”

Whether our comfort and self-affirmation comes from the blessings we've received or from how we worship God, we should note that when we visit injustice on others, God seeks to disturb that the self-assurance with which we bathe ourselves in order to warn us of the truth about ourselves and consequences for our actions. Those truth and consequences put us in the same category as the Jews to whom the Old Testament prophets preached. That because of our idolatry and the injustices we have visited on others, all that we use to ourselves of our own goodness is why we need the message Carter posted in the article being reviewed. We need God's victory that occurred from Good Friday to Easter to save us from the consequences of our treatment of God and others which forever plays the period of Palm Sunday to Good Friday in our lives. That we should never allow our worship of God and the blessings we've received to deceive us as to who we are and what we deserve.

And that message about who we are and what we deserve should control how we challenge the injustices we see in the world. For we can never afford to call on those who unjustly treat and exploit others from a position of moral superiority. We can only call on such people to change as fellow sinners and their peers because we have all treated some of those who have crossed our path unjustly.

Weaponizing Christianity

If you ask most of us religiously conservative American Christians whether Christianity is a religion of love, most of us would adamantly say 'yes.' However, certain groups of people have good reason to disagree with our self-assessment. That is they see our religion as a religion of violence and hate. How can there be such a divergence of opinion here?

First, we need to go through Church history. We should note that one of the most persecuted groups in Church history were the Jews.  For whatever reason, Western Christianity has a horrible record in terms of how it has treated the Jews. In fact, the creation of the state of Israel was due to European Christian anti-Semitism. One only needs to read Church history to see how the Jews were persecuted for their persistent unbelief.

But though there has been anti-Semitism practiced by Christians here, it has never approached the level that it did in Europe. However, due to Dispensationalism, one of a few schools of the study of the end times, a new group has been marginalized on their own land. That group is the Palestinians. Because of the popularity of Dispensationalism and because Displensationalism teaches that the second coming of Christ revolves around the Jews returning to the Holy Land, many religiously conservative American Christians have supported whatever the government of Israel does to the Palestinians to secure more of the Promised Land for itself regardless of the price the Palestinians have to pay.

Now one might not think a lot about the plight of the Palestinians because they are so far away, but a similar story happened in parts of the United State. After European Christian settlers established themselves here, some believed that the land lived on by Native Americans belonged to them. Why? Because some of these settlers believed they belonged to the New Israel and that the Native Americans were nothing more than the Canaanites were when Israel was taking over the Promised Land.

The LGBT community must be mentioned here as well. For though most of the news regarding that community has been recent, that is because this community too has suffered at the hands of many of us religiously conservative Christians through the laws that had been passed regarding sex, marriage, and discrimination protection. Homosexuality was counted as a criminal offense for most of America's history.

Of course Blacks should also be included in the list of those who have been marginalized by religiously conservative American Christians. After all, many, though not all, religiously conservative American Christians supported slavery from our nation's beginning until some time after the Civil War. Some of those who supported it did so because of what they believed from the Bible. While others may not have approved of slavery, they did believe in White Supremacy and segregation that followed slavery. And some did so because of how they understood the Bible.

We could probably include other groups as well. For example, many religiously conservative American Christians were very disturbed over Starbucks announcement that it was going to implement a program to hire 10,000 refugees from predominantly Muslim nations. The Facebook response by some conservative Christians was to ask why Starbucks  would not hire veterans instead. This question was asked in complete ignorance seeing that Starbucks was already in the middle of program to hire Veterans and their spouses.

In each of the above cases, Christianity has been used to rationalize the abuse and marginalization of others by its believers. Thus, Christianity has become a weapon that enables Christians to hurt others.  How has Christianity been revised so as to enable Christians to severely abuse so many people?

We should note here is that Christianity isn't the only religion that has been weaponized. Neither is religion the only belief system that has been weaponized. Nor is a belief system the only kind of identity that has been weaponized. What enables us to weaponize the different identity and groups we belong to? Perhaps the best answer can be found in Dave Brubeck's cantata entitled Truth (see http://ums.aadl.org/ums/programs_19740117b ). In part #5, called Speak Out, it says quite clearly how any identity can be weaponized. The weaponizing of a particular identity takes place when those who are advancing their own group's cause forget the needs of people outside their group. Those needs are for love, justice, kindness, mercy, and truth. Of course, maybe forgetting people's needs isn't the issue. Maybe we believe that some are not entitled to being treated well. When Christians believe that, it is because they have decided, for whatever reason, to ignore Jesus's parable of the two men praying.  In that parable, the Pharisee praises himself as he prays and shows disrespect for the publican who is also praying.

When we hurt others either as individuals or as members of some group, we often do so for the reasons Brubeck lists in the previously cited work. It isn't just us or the members of our group that need love, justice, kindness, mercy and truth, it is all those whom our own group comes in contact with. Thus, in seeking our own group's cause, we forget or choose not to care about others. As stated in Speak Out,  this can be done in the name of God, people, our nation, or our beliefs. But unfortunately, we often become the last ones who are willing to recognize how and why we hurt others while we put our group first.