Why Christians Are To Blame For SCOTUS Marriage Decision

Okay, now that we good Christian folk have all had a chance to lament the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage, I think it is time that we took a moment to consider our culpability in the situation. I know this really eats into your allotted time to wail about the evils of our society, but getting honest is a huge part of the Christian faith.

And I think it is time that we got honest about how we paved the way for this decision. Now there are a million and one things that we have screwed up royally, I plan on addressing several of them in the future, but right now I want to focus on one.

We have tried to turn Jesus into the Easter Bunny.

Not even Santa Claus, but the freaking Easter Bunny. Santa, at least, demands good behavior for rewards, but the Easter Bunny, he don’t care. All he demands is that go to sleep and you get all the feel good goodies you want.

We have told the world they should love him because he is soft and snuggly. We have said that he wants you to have your best life now, and that he doesn’t care what you do just as long as he can put a smile on your face, he’s happy bouncing in and out of your life.

The Jesus we showed the world doesn’t even care enough to stop you from facilitating your own demise. In fact, he will help and he will praise you while you do it because isn’t that what wanted? Isn’t he the one who filled your basket with desire, sexual or otherwise, so that you can indulge in it to your heart’s content?

When we started preaching love without holiness, grace without discipline, mercy without judgement, we started preaching a false gospel that only caters to the whims of the selfish. We began with money, because who doesn’t want more? We claimed that God wanted us to prosper financially, and we justified by calling God good and declaring that a good God did not want his people to be without this fundamental necessity for happy life. It was an easy sell. We all bought it.

Our views of God began to warp just tiny bit. It was easy to push aside those passages that talked about Jesus not having a home or caring for the poor. We found other verses that suited our cause so much better, and we began to declare them over homes, our families, and ourselves. We told the world that riches were not evil, and Jesus really didn’t mean it when he said that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. The love of money was certainly evil, but we sure didn’t see any reason not to love the things it bought us.

We were trained and groomed to use the Bible as shield against our detractors, and we became proficient in making converts to this gospel of self-fulfillment. Soon money wasn’t the only thing that this message could be applied to. We began to add marriage to the list, God didn’t want me to spend my life being unhappy or so the tale was told, and divorce became a valid option for all, not just those for whom it was not a choice. We tacked on “me time” and called it boundaries, when the reality was we just didn’t want to be burdened with a friend’s need. We found ways to justify fornication, but we never called it that. We knew that God just wanted us to love and be loved.

We stopped serving God and we started serving ourselves. Even church became an experiment in self-gratification (you have no idea the amount of control I used not to use the proper term here), worship was too loud, too slow, too new, too old, and too boring. It offends my sensibilities and tastes, so therefore it could not be of God, because he wants me to be happy. Sermons became pep talks, pop psychology, and self-help seminars so that we could be empowered to live the life Jesus died to give you. We were encouraged to live life more abundantly, but defined according to our new god of happiness.

And oh, how we have served that god! So many lives offered on his alters!

And we served with such devotion that the world caught our fervor. They became excited about this soft and lovable god who gave his people only sweet things and never required a thing in return. They took up his cause and began to evangelize in the streets, in the cities, and on the hillsides. “You were created to be happy! You know our god loves you when you are happy! You deserve happiness and you must fight for it because it is your right!”

Some of the new followed our example, and they still worshipped their god in the Christian churches. They found evidence of him in our sacred books, and they even prayed to him the name of our Lord Jesus. Those who refused to honor their right happiness became hypocrites, legalists, unenlightened, and bigots, and the god of happiness began to look less and less like the God of the Bible.

You want to know who to blame for the Supreme Court decision? Look in the mirror. Point the finger at Christians who failed to live their faith with integrity and who sacrificed the God of the Bible to the god happiness. Blame those who knew better and didn’t care, those who placed selfish desire above obedience, and those who refused to experience the pain of conviction when confronted with the truth of the Word.

See the God of the Bible never prioritized happiness over maturity. He never condoned our selfishness, and he never praised us for meeting our needs. Instead, he asked us to love him above all other things including happiness and self-fulfillment. He said he wants to be the center of our world and life, he wants to be the source for all good things we have and experience, and he wants us to know the beauty of growing in him so that we can share that beauty with the world.

The God of Sinai is cuddly. The God who took out the prophets of Baal wasn't interested in sweet things. The God of who lead the children of Israel through the desert did just show up when they had a tummy ache, he was there through the hard times and the bad but he demanded that the people honor him with their hearts and their actions, and he hasn't changed. The God of the Bible is still the same, it was just us who tried to create him our image in an attempt to avoid the pain of growth.

It's time we repent, and we let him be God of our lives again, even when it doesn't make us happy because when we do there is once again hope that we can change the world - and maybe get it right this time.

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Hamburger Helper and Christian Books - An Emily Rant

Warning Emily Rant!

Ok, maybe I am being petty, maybe I am the only one in the world who has a problem with this, but it has reached the point where I am considering drastic action that might get me arrested. Why? Because I fairly certain it is illegal lurk in bookstores and beat people over the head with an umbrella for buying certain books. (Why not simply have these books removed from the stores you ask? Because I am all about free speech - there has to be some easy method to spot idiots.)

My problem is not so much that these books are out there, ok well it is but, my bigger problem is that we live in a society where every aspect of our faith relationship has been broken down into "1,2,3, Easy Steps for Health, Wealth, Prosperity, or Just Generally How to Get What You Want Out of God". My problem is that we formalized what is supposed to be relationship until it has become nothing more than a glorified rules with nothing relational about it.

Nothing, and I do mean nothing, is ever as easy as 1,2,3 Easy Steps - not even Hamburger Helper, but so much of our literature seems to have some insidious desire to make God even less than that. We want him to be easy and simple to use. We do this, he does that, and everyone is happy because we all get our way. He got the attention he desired and we get the fun stuff.

Who do we think we are kidding here? Who exactly do you think really believes that this could and should work? Does any other relationship - intimate relationship whose existence is not governed by contractual obligation operate this way? And do you really love another person whose only tie to you is a contract?

There is a reason so many of the wonderful things God has to teach us are written in stories. He did not want this to be a heartless exchange of your obedience for his blessing. He wanted this to be about a relationship, a real one where he is not pawn in your schemes, and gave us stories so that we could get to know him, not just learn the rules we need to about him. He gave us graphic accounts of his dealings with humanity so we could see how a relationship with him looked like, what it sounded like, and know that it isn't always neat and pretty, tied up with a bow.

A relationship is responsive, adjusting and meeting the needs at hand, not just pushing on to step number 2 because you finished step number 1. A relationship requires that we stop, slow down, and check in with another being to see where they are, what they feel, and how do we best meet their needs. A relationship with God is no different. It is about getting to know his heart so that we can respond.

If he was just a system to be operated we would have been given an owners manual, but we weren't. And we sure as blazes weren't given a stupid recipe book where we add a pinch of this and dash of that to get what we want. We were given an invitation, a first date written in prose, so that we could hear who he is, learn the things that are important to him, and discover his heart - and not so we could manipulate him by using the "rules" against him.

1,2,3, Easy Steps give us a false sense of control. They lead first to arrogance in our supposed power to get our blessings, and then to frustration and disappointment - anger, even - when we learn that God is not subject to our whims. He doesn't have to play by our rules. We have to play by his, and that means we have to get to know him, not keep him at a distance through blind adherence to any formula.

He never wanted us to work the system, and he never wanted us to emotionally check out of being in his presence. He wants us there with him in each moment, learning how to respond and move according to the demands and blessing of a relationship.

So please, stop buying these books. Stop feeding into a system that is distorting our faith and leaving us ignorant of a God who really wants to be known. If you are looking for books about him, look for ones that share his story that look at the principles not the steps for how to engage with him. Find ones that explore the Bible and talk about what it says in context, not a bunch of random verses strung together to support a broken system and designed to appeal to your need for control. He loves us, and the only step required to learning more of him is to love in return - everything past that is merely a new expression of that love.

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