CHEAP GRACE: Disengaging from the Church of Personal Peace and Prosperity

A sad fact about modern day Christian faith is the general lack of interest in those disciples throughout modern history who gave so much of themselves and yet remain so little known. A perfect example is the Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who defied the Nazi regime during World War II and paid for it with his life. Yet even on the day of his hanging, he was comforting other prisoners with little or no faith, providing faithful witness to the very end. He had opportunities to escape from Germany, and was often urged by friends and family to do so, yet he remained, fully aware of the possible fate that awaited him. There was nothing weak or uncertain about his faith or how he practiced it.

On a very personal level, Bonhoeffer is a hero of mine, and I’m a person with very, very few heroes. Bonhoeffer understood and took to heart the words of the Apostle James (1:22–25, 2:14–26) who spoke of faith without works being dead faith, a useless faith. Without action, without striving to be followers of Christ, without attempting to walk as He did, we show no faith at all. Our faith cannot be made complete without works. We can speak of Godly things and claim that our faith is strong, but if we do not follow Christ and engage in the work God so clearly calls us to do, our words are hollow and empty. We’ve accepted the gift of salvation and eternal life, yet rejected the call to put our trust in Him by doing the work He calls us to do.

I should note here that this lack of action doesn’t negate our gift of salvation, but it certainly cheapens it. This problem is never more evident than in American Christianity today, where so much of what passes for Christianity appears, at least on the surface, to be inward-looking and self-seeking. I have made it a point in my life to read and reread the Gospels and the Epistles several times a year, and I learn more and more with each reading. What concerns me is that so many Christians I know are becoming increasingly enamored with the new prosperity gospel, a gospel that is so at odds with the Gospel I’ve come to know.

Turn on any Christian TV channel these days and you’ll find a good deal of their programming devoted to preachers who tell us about giving as a means to get back, telling us to invest money in God and He’ll return it to us a hundredfold, telling us that we need to sow more money into their ministries so that God can bless us in return with material rewards. And if it doesn’t happen that way? Well, your faith just isn’t strong enough...so keep praying, and keep sending that money.

And that’s the biggest catch of all. Not a single one of these shows ever suggest that you just sow that money anywhere, to any worthy cause. No, it must come to them, so that they can bless it, pray over it, and ensure a good return on your godly cash investment. Furthermore, if what these people say is true, how can they account for devout Christians throughout the world who suffer oppression, hunger, poverty, rape and genocide? Do they suffer these things because of weak faith? Or because they don't have enough money to sow into false ministries? Apparently, people who take this self-centered approach don't consider anything outside of their own field of view.

This particularly warped view of Christian faith (among many) is what Bonhoeffer calls “cheap grace,” or grace without discipleship. The whole point of this warped faith is simply to confess your belief in Jesus and give as much money as you can to these online ministries, and in return God will provide you with perfect health and perfect wealth. This isn’t remotely true, of course, and isn’t to be found anywhere in Scripture without taking it wildly out of context. In fact, when we read the Gospels and the Epistles as a cohesive body of work, we're repeatedly told that we may have to endure great hardships and undergo tremendous suffering, no matter how devout our faith. Furthermore, Christ calls us to serve others first, not to seek for ourselves, and we'll find our just rewards in Heaven.

As Bonhoeffer writes in his classic The Cost of Discipleship, cheap grace “is the deadly enemy of the Church. The essence of this grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow upon ourselves; cheap grace is grace without discipleship.”

It is costly grace we must seek, Bonhoeffer tells us. “Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. Costly grace is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him. It is costly grace because it costs a man his worldly life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. And above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of His Son, because "we were bought at a price," and what has cost God cannot be cheap for us. This grace is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ; yet it is still grace because Jesus tells us "My yoke is easy and my burden is light."

I recently picked up Jim Wallis’s new book The Great Awakening, and read a short dust-jacket review on the back by Bono, lead singer of U2. He coined a phrase that struck a chord with me, and perfectly described a trend I see growing ever more prevalent in our American Christian society...the tendency to confess our belief in God as a means to attain personal peace and prosperity while largely turning our backs on the needs of the poor and oppressed of the world, those who Jesus calls "the least of these." That won't cut it, says Bono. His exact quote reads as follows: "I had always been a skeptic of the church of personal peace and prosperity...of righteous people standing in a holy huddle while the world rages outside the stained glass. But I’ve learned that there are many people of the cloth who are also in the world—from debt cancellation to the fight against AIDS, to human rights, they are on the march."

These people Bono speaks of (Wallis and others) take the key phrase of the Lord’s Prayer very seriously. Our salvation, our admittance to the Kingdom of God, is only part of God’s will, a will that must be done on earth as well as in Heaven. How easy it is to overlook that part. As members of the Kingdom, we’re God’s hands here on earth. We are here on this planet as flesh-and-blood human beings to do His will.

And there it is. It’s really that simple. We were bought at a price, and although the gift of salvation is free, God calls us to follow Him through the example of Christ, calls us to walk into the world and transform it, and not walk away from it and just hang around for our salvation when it's over. In Isaiah 58, God tells us to do away with the yoke of oppression, and to spend ourselves on behalf of the hungry, the naked and the poor, and He will raise us up and cover our backs. Christ repeats these commands again in the New Testament, in Matthew 25 (as noted above).

In thanking God for our salvation, we should also ask Him to best show us how to serve. I’ve heard so many Christian friends lament to me that they don’t know what God wants them to do, and they look surprised (and possibly annoyed) when I tell them that I know exactly what He wants them to do. God has a personal plan for all of us, but He also has a "group plan," and it’s spelled out very clearly. We’re called to discipleship, called to serve, and how we answer the call to do God’s will on earth as in Heaven, will determine how well we realize our faith through Godly works. We can start by stepping away from our "holy huddles" and refusing to settle for cheap grace.

EVERYTHING MUST CHANGE: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope

Do you remember how you felt the first time you read a book that coherently captured and explained some deeply-felt desire of yours? And if you're religious, or spiritual, or whatever you want to call yourself, also spoke directly to an unfulfilled need within your soul? Brian McLaren's latest book does exactly that for me. It stirred me and moved me. I found myself saying "Yes!" repeatedly, especially as I progressed through the book and he began to bring his arguments to fruition.

McLaren's book takes precise aim at our flawed social and economic systems and blows them apart using the words of Jesus, words that are as revolutionary today as they were two thousand years ago. It's a staggering irony that so many people who call themselves Christians in today's world (particularly American Christians) are completely comfortable with our free-market system and how it affects the rest of the world, oblivious to the inequity and oppression it causes in other parts of the world. McLaren asks us to consider what’s free about it. Is it free from any constraints? Free from accountability and responsibility? Free from restrictions that would make it more equitable for all involved? If so, what then is the cost of this freedom?

To change the way we think we must first change the way we view the world. Our "framing stories," as McLaren calls them, must all change. The stories we tell ourselves, or allow others to tell us, shape the way we deal with the world. Until people of conscience act to revise and rewrite these framing stories, and get people thinking in a new light, nothing will change. Christ's "framing stories," His parables and teachings that we find in the Gospels, are at complete odds with the status quo of the worldly hierarchy of His time...mainly the pagan Romans and the spiritually-compromised Pharisees.

McLaren points out correctly that Christ's message of rejecting the status quo—in His time, the world of the Roman Empire—and living life in a new way that treated all with respect was in essence turning the world upside down. Those who wish to exalt themselves would be humbled, and those who humbled themselves would be exalted. Those who wish to be the greatest must first be the servants of others. This radical worldview, so at odds with the worldview of the Roman Empire, is also at complete odds with the worldview of so many modern-day Christians, those who are willing participants and supporters of systems that corrupt and oppress those at the serving end. It also takes to task those people of faith who support wars that trade violence for more violence, combating aggressive terror with retaliatory terror, all the while helping large corporations grow rich through the manufacture and sales of arms and weaponry. It's no small irony that the largest seller and exporter of arms and weapons is the United States, and that those sold weapons often end up being used against us at some point. God will not be mocked: we reap what we sow.

Without giving away the point of the book (I think everyone should buy it and read it themselves), I will say that McLaren presents the radical message of Jesus in such a way that will either leave you squirming in your seat as you realize your own complicity in the machinery of injustice, or find you looking for a way to get involved at a personal level. It's a very powerful and well-considered book with a radical message that we hear over and over yet rarely heed: You're either part of the solution, or you're part of the problem. This wonderful book will help you find which side you're on, and then regardless of which side, will provide you with the next step in the right direction.

ARTICLE OF FAITH: A Universe by chance, or design?

Just about anywhere you look these days in Science vs. Creationist debates, you’ll find someone stating "Scientists no longer question the basic facts of evolution as a process" and that's a true statement if you're referring to Darwin’s Special Theory, also known as Natural Selection. No one questions natural selection as it is observable and testable. The problem arises from insisting that natural selection within a species can account for speciation, and even ardent evolutionists from Gould to Margulis admit the big problems there. Gould's punctuated equilibrium theory was an attempt to account for the startling gaps in the fossil record, but unfortunately there's increasingly little science to support his theories.

That common descent has taken place is obvious. What drives large-scale leaps between species (and creates the gaps in the fossil record) is not. The few apparent transitional cases, such as Eohippus to Equus, appear as anomalies and not the norm. Farther confounding the issue is that the "transitional" horse species overlap at various levels.

As a whole, however, beneficial mutations happen far too slowly to account for the magnificent range of diversity and specialization we see in the world...and again, a number of prominent evolutionists are sounding the horn on that issue as well and have clearly stated the problems, some even calling for a post-Darwinian theory (Margulis).

On the surface, anyone can say that evolution is tried and tested when they're referring to the Special Theory...because it most certainly is a tried and tested process that takes place within a species. We can replicate it ourselves to some extent with the creation of different breeds of domesticated animals. But does it account for speciation and large-scale leaps? The jury is still out, as any intellectually honest person would admit.

In the end, I have to look at the Big Bang as the beginning of the issue. What was the cause of everything? Science can't answer that question because as we back up in time, science hits "Planck time" and breaks down right before we hit the singularity of the Big Bang. Science cannot give the cause of the Universe...that's an incontrovertible fact we must live with. To insist that the Universe had a purely natural beginning is purely a faith position, something some cosmologists have finally come to accept. I will openly acknowledge that my belief in a created Universe is a faith position. Will a “naturalist” admit the same? I doubt it.

We can continue to argue about whether or not evolution is a purely natural process, or one with intent and purpose behind it, but we won't get far because of the issue addressed above. To some degree, Darwin's personal philosophy was far more advanced than some of his modern colleagues today. He did understand a very important fact that seems lost on them. Even though Darwin wasn't familiar with the Big Bang theory, he did understand that the physical laws of science governed everything, and that nothing took place that didn't fall in line with those laws. Therefore, mutations of any sort, particularly large-scale ones that became new species, had to obey the laws of science. When they exceed those laws, or exceed a fractal expression of them, we must consider that something else is driving the process.

Scientists are reluctant to call in God, but Darwin himself wouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater. To Darwin, something else was at work. Darwin revealed this in his second most popular work, one which few people read or quote (The Variations of Animals and Plants Under Domestication). He sensed correctly that beneficial large-scale mutations simply couldn't happen rapidly enough to account for the diversity of species we see in the world, given any amount of time. Because of this fact, Darwin, like his contemporary Asa Gray, believed that his own theory could not be an ultimate theory, a point he states quite clearly in the book.

That common descent from single cell to complex life took place is obvious. That variation within a species takes place is obvious. What drove (and still drives) speciation is far from obvious, and in fact presents several huge problems that scientists still struggle with. To claim that the issue is solved is false triumphalism built on consensus. The fact remains that unless you can determine the cause of the Universe, you cannot determine whether or not the pattern of common descent is "natural" or intended, whether it's chance or design. Any conclusions based upon an unknowable premise cannot be considered true...only hypothetical.

Scientists, because they must use the laws of science to validate an idea, cannot give a scientific cause for the Universe and the driving force behind the subsequent spread of life on this planet. As a Christian, however, I do have an explanation...one that is made even more valid by the fact that it was written down 3,500 years ago and has only just been shown to be completely consistent with the known scientific record. Genesis and several other passages of the Bible state the progression of events in the same order as the discoveries of Science in the past 150 years. A universe that sprang from nothing, followed by invisible sub-atomic particles slowly forming into visible matter, and eventually living, thinking, breathing life. Genesis described it accurately (but as a deliberate act of God) , and science has confirmed it in the same order. Based upon the fact that the “natural origins” crowd must accept the cause of the Universe as a faith position, I find it infinitely more satisfying to choose God as the cause because it’s also much easier to accept on faith (with a dash of reason tossed in for flavor).

IDLE WORSHIP: Confusing the idol of nationalism with true faith in God

Like many American Christians, I grow more worried by the day at the displays of national pride that are tinged with images of God, as though belief in God is the equivalent of righteous military might. If there are two things that don't go well together, it's jingoistic patriotism and true faith in Christ. No matter how I view it, I can't see past the clear contradiction between Christ's calling and the demands of fervent patriotism. When I read articles such as this one, I can't help but feel that something’s gone terribly wrong. For a country that considers itself largely Christian, there’s little Christian about these public displays of faith, or what passes for it.

To call oneself a Christian is to be a follower of Christ, the Word of God made incarnate as Man, but so many of the public displays of faith I see have little to do with true discipleship, which requires surrender and forgiveness. Since 9/11, a large number of Christians have bought into the notion that actions against our country require swift, vengeful retribution, which couldn’t more of a polar opposite to the message of Christ. Imagine for a moment if a nation that’s largely Christian responded to 9/11 by forgiving our enemies for the attack, and then reaching our for reconciliation by attempting to find out what their problem with us entailed, and then collectively searching our souls for a solution. The thought alone is so radical that it probably never crossed anyone’s mind, yet that’s exactly what Christ would have called us to do. Yet try telling that to anyone and you get met with a blank stare, as if you were crazy.

I recently took an Internet tour of a number of websites with pro-Christian music videos, and left feeling very unsettled. Over and over again I saw the same thing...images of American might, largely military, being associated with God’s blessing America. And that’s the problem in a nutshell. Do people really believe that an all-loving God, watching over a world filled with His creations, favors soldiers from one country and not those from another? Stop for a moment and look at the big picture from God’s perspective. Wouldn’t you imagine that He’s terribly saddened by the manner in which we all treat each other, and how we all attempt to justify our actions by claiming that God’s on our side, or that Americans are somehow more righteous and deserving than people of other countries? Or that the deaths of 3,000 American civilians on 9/11 was a terrible tragedy, but the deaths of nearly 4,000 Afghan civilians caused by our bombs was somehow acceptable and okay?

Back in the mid-1960s, Senator William Fulbright once commented that great nations often confuse great might with God’s favor, and once a country starts to feel that way, anything goes. America is in this position right now, and it’s a dangerous position to be in. The problem with this train of thought is that once we start thinking God is behind us, we will take any sort of action without bothering to examine our motives too closely. I hear so many Americans speak of how our soldiers are defending our freedoms by fighting abroad right now, but I would ask them this question: What freedoms specifically are they defending? Our “right” to a steady supply of foreign oil? Our right to keep our consumer economy rolling by exploiting the resources of other countries? No matter how you cut it, I don’t see how they’re defending my personal liberties.

Please understand that I’m in no way attacking the character of our young people who make up most of our fighting forces. They, for the most part, are dedicated and loyal people who believe they’re doing the right thing. My problem is with the powers-that-be who are misusing them terribly. As a conservative relative of mine recently commented, “Our all-volunteer army has become little more than a mercenary force for big business.” Sadly, I believe it’s true. Even worse, many conservative Christians continue to promote our wars as “us against them, good against evil,” and the madness continues.

In the end, we’re left with a choice many Christians don’t want to make. Either re-examine our faith and get it in line with the commands of Christ, or sink deeper into a corrupted, cultural faith that claims God as its leader, but instead worships the idols of nationalism and patriotism.

ASKING THE WRONG QUESTIONS: Searching for loopholes to ignore God's will

The first time I saw this photo I was devastated to the point of tears. I was shocked by its simplicity. It was not an artful piece of photojournalism by any stretch of the imagination. It was stark and shocking and its message hit me with tremendous force. I was browsing through an article about the photographer, Kevin Carter, and discovered that he’d committed suicide in despair after winning the Pulitzer Prize for photojournalism. It’s easy to understand his despair, even if I don’t fully understand his response. His award was for his work in Africa, work that drained him emotionally as he struggled to answer the question of why such atrocities as starvation and genocide are allowed to exist. It’s a fair question, and the answer has always been with us...but usually ignored because few want to own up to the responsibility that comes with it.

Why would a loving God allow such a thing to happen? Only in our Christian faith can we find a satisfactory answer, an answer that has been provided to us in the second chapter of Genesis. And it’s in the answer that we learn that we’ve been asking the wrong question all along.

The right question, the proper question, should be, “Why do we allow it to happen?”

How quickly we forget that God has made us stewards of the Creation. We are our brothers’ keepers in every sense of the term. It’s a job that’s been entrusted to us since the moment God first breathed His spirit into Mankind. Yet it appears that so few of us are truly up to the task. When I think of all the wasted time and energy that some Christians put into attacking others, for wagging their fingers and pointing out how everyone else seems to be getting it wrong, I can’t help but think how much better our world would be if those same Christians put their time, money and energies into making the world a better place for the less fortunate, for “the least of these,” as Christ calls them. I can sympathize with the secular world for feeling hopelessly ineffective, but I cannot understand why so many Christians seem to think that death by starvation and disease is someone else’s problem. I find it terribly sad that even some of my own Christian friends feel this way. They simply shrug it off and say, in some form or another, “That’s the way it goes sometimes.” They’re saddened by it, but feel any singular effort on their part would go unnoticed anyway. I know this because I’m often one of those people, and it pains me to admit it. I do donate my time and money when I can, but I mostly feel ineffective, as though I am working alone and trying to fill up the ocean one drop of water at a time.

Yet the solution is simple, and these are the facts...

There is no excuse for any child dying in the manner of the child shown in this photo. Period. In this world today we absolutely have the resources, the money and the means to ensure that every single person on this planet is properly fed, clothed and sheltered. Every single one, without exception. The problem is that those of us in a position to help—the wealthy countries, and all the individuals who live in them, such as you and I—lack the collective will to fix the problem. We’re often too wrapped up in our own lives to look this sort of death and evil in the eye and commit to fighting it in a collective effort. We’re content to let it have it’s way elsewhere in the world, just as long as it stays out of our backyard, just as long as it stays out of sight in some country that’s too far away to worry about.

As Christians, what price will we pay for turning our backs? We'll be judged for ignoring these types of problems, you know. Christ tells us this in no uncertain terms in Matthew 25:37-40: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me… Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

When will people stop blaming God for allowing so many atrocities and start accepting the responsibility not only for fixing them, but for allowing them to develop in the first place? Surely we cannot fix all the world’s problems, but we cannot throw up our hands in despair, either. We often pray for God to help these people, and we forget that as God’s ambassadors on Earth, we are His hands...we are the answer to our own prayers!

When do we start asking the rights questions? When do we start accepting responsibility and start taking action?

We’ll have to answer these questions someday. What will your answer be?

I'll close with these verses from Isaiah 58:6–11. Please keep them in mind as you decide your course of action.

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.
Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: “Here am I.
If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
And if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.”
The LORD will guide you always;
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail.

Africa is a continent on fire, and we are the waters that must put out the flames.

ANN COULTER'S GOD: The Hypocrisy of Militant Christianity

This past spring I watched with troubled fascination an appearance by Ann Coulter on The 700 Club. Her segment was hosted by Pat Robertson’s son, Gordon, who basically gave her a soapbox to espouse her views without being challenged in any way. Based upon some of her very un-Christian utterances over the years, I was hoping that Robertson would bring up a few of her comments and ask her how she could reconcile her Christian faith with some of the nastier comments she’d made. Unfortunately, this moment never materialized.

Ms. Coulter, as many know, is famous for such controversial comments as:

"The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man's dominion over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet—it's yours. That's our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars—that's the Biblical view."

This next comment, made on September 12, 2001 and referring to the terrorists' act of the previous day, sounds like something an Islamic extremist would say, simply by changing 'Christianity' to 'Islam':

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building."

"If you don't hate Clinton and the people who labored to keep him in office, you don't love your country."

And here’s an odd thing for her to say, since she doesn’t seem to operate by this "incidental tenet":

"Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity—as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of 'kill everyone who doesn't smell bad and doesn't answer to the name Mohammed'."

And of course, as an Episcopalian, my personal favorite:

“The Episcopals don't demand much in the way of actual religious belief. They have girl priests, gay priests, gay bishops, gay marriages—it's much like The New York Times editorial board. They acknowledge the Ten Commandments—or "Moses' talking points"—but hasten to add that they're not exactly "carved in stone."

I can only suppose that Robertson’s reluctance to question her inflammatory comments stems from the fact that his own father once made a similar comment about Episcopalians, stating: "You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist." (Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, January 14, 1991).

So why is Ann Coulter, who claims to be a Christian, so militant in her beliefs? And yes, militant is the right word here. The dictionary defines the adjective militant as "combative and aggressive in support of a political or social cause." This description clearly fits Ms. Coulter’s modus operandi. Before I go much farther, I should point out that on the whole, Ann Coulter is very bright, well-educated and articulate. When you read what she has to say, quite a bit of it is based upon a sound core idea. It’s just that she feels compelled to surround these good ideas with cheap shots and nastiness that go far beyond the point she’s trying to make. Does she just do it to sell books? I’m sure that’s a huge part of it, but she’s also stated for the record that she firmly believes everything she says, and that’s what should concern people who call themselves Christian yet enjoy the commentary of Ann Coulter.

Let’s look at her comment about being nice to people, which she calls "one of the incidental tenets of Christianity." Incidental? Last time I checked, that was the primary message, and it entails much more than just "being nice." In fact, Christ calls it part of the two most important commandments in Matthew 22:37-40, when He tells the Pharisees: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

Nowhere in that statement can I find anything that suggests Christ’s words are to be regarded as an "incidental" tenet of the faith. In fact, what He has done is to take the Old Testament Law of Moses, and refined it into two commandments that, if followed truthfully, can help us to live up to the commandments and laws of the Old Testament, laws that only He is capable of fulfilling. To say that being nice to people is an "incidental tenet” of Christianity is to ignore the importance of Christ’s statement, which makes it crystal clear that all the Old Testament laws are refined and superseded by these two new commandments. And that brings me to her derogatory and untrue comments about Episcopalians.

I happen to be an Episcopalian, and I know firsthand from practicing my faith that it’s very Christ-centered and focuses heavily on the Gospels for a very important reason: the Gospels, which quote Christ extensively, are the Word of God made flesh in the person of Christ. Here we have God walking among us, assuming our nature, and telling us that the Mosaic Laws can only be fulfilled in Him, and that when we measure ourselves by these laws, we’re often prone to judging others for not getting them right. Therefore, we receive salvation through grace alone, and not through works or any attempts to strictly follow the O.T. Laws.

Has Ms. Coulter lived up to all 613 of the Old Testament Laws, or “Moses’s talking points,” as she sarcastically calls them? I’m certain she hasn’t. I doubt that she’s even been able to keep many of the Ten Commandments. Has she ever worked on a Sunday? If she has, she’s broken a major commandment. Has she ever borne false witness? Just read her comments above, and decide for yourself. Has she always treated her parents with utmost respect? If she hasn’t, she’s broken another major commandment. Has she ever just had to have something, like a new pair of shoes, a car, a dress...and then went out and bought it even though she didn’t need it? If she has, she’s coveted, and she’s broken another major commandment. Has she ever been involved in a physical relationship outside of marriage? If she has, then she’s broken another major commandment, because any physical relationship outside of the bonds of marriage is considered adultery. Has she ever enjoyed lobster or shrimp? If she has, she’s committed an “abomination” in the eyes of God, and broken another Old Testament law.

I could go on, but you get the point. And that’s the problem with so much of some Christians’ militant mixing of faith and politics. It’s hypocritical to adopt a political stance against anything on the basis of religious laws while ignoring your own infractions of them. In essence, quite a few prominent and public Christians have become somewhat like the Pharisees. Remember them? They received Christ’s scorn for holding themselves up as righteous examples while looking down their noses at those who didn't live up to the Law, those who couldn't seem to "get it right." The fact of the matter is that we all get it wrong (myself included), so much of the time. It doesn’t matter whether you’re liberal or conservative, we’re all sinners and we need to humbly concede this critical point. Because of it, we're denied the right to judge others. Ms. Coulter seems to believe she’s above this distinction, and lives a very public and professional life that strongly conflicts with her personal claim to be a devout follower of Christ.

And as for her comments about Episcopalians, they certainly don’t apply to the large majority of Episcopalians, who are devout and take their faith quite seriously. In fact, I doubt she could site any sources for her comments as I've never heard of any prominent Episcopalian commenting that the Ten Commandments were merely suggestions. It’s uninformed and unfounded comments like these, tinged with a very real nastiness, that have turned off many Christians to her books. I find it sad, however, that many are still so supportive of someone who publicly attacks others, treats them in a very un-Christlike manner while claiming to believe everything she says, and therefore feels not the slightest need to humble herself or ask forgiveness for her many public transgressions against other children of God, be they liberal, conservative...or heaven forbid, of a different faith than her own.

THE NATURE OF WAR: The heart is deceitful above all things

One of my very favorite Bible verses is found in Jeremiah 17:9, which reads: "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" I think the reason I find it so compelling is because it addresses a core issue that always hits a sore spot with most Christians; the fact that we are so certain of the evil intent of others, but rarely question our own actions or the actions of those on our side of an issue. As the old saying goes, "The easiest person to fool is always yourself." The war in Iraq, one of the fronts for the so-called “War on Terror,” illustrates this point perfectly.

I’m often accused by a few friends as being too liberal, and it catches me off guard every time. I certainly don’t consider myself a liberal, yet neither do I consider myself a conservative. My primary interest on every governmental action or policy boils down to what I feel makes the most sense to the greatest number of people, and my secondary interest is to ask whom these policies will hurt. I have never voted a straight party ticket in my life, and doubt I ever will. I simply don’t see any consistent ethics with either political party, and therefore vote for the candidates who most closely adhere to my spiritual, social and political beliefs.

More than anything else, I try hard to follow a consistent set of ethics in my support for any action or policy. In a nutshell, I believe that we must treat others as we wish to be treated, and not repay evil with evil. I believe that even though I may not agree with others, I have to allow them the freedom to make their own choices on personal matters—even if I feel that they’ll make a blunder, and even while knowing that their choices will very often conflict with my own. But I also believe that to participate in a fair and effective democracy, we all must be willing to take off our blinders, step back a few feet, and examine an issue honestly and fairly.

And that brings us to the problem of Iraq. I’m often amazed at the number of Christians who profess an unbending support for the war in Iraq, and see it as a classic case of “us against them, good versus evil,” all the while choosing to ignore the United States’ complicity in unsettling the region, igniting more Arab hatred against us, and radicalizing a vast Muslim population which previously may have been apprehensive about the US, but now hates us without reserve. We must also be willing to admit that not a single terrorist action anywhere in the world before or after 9/11 has originated in Iraq or been carried out by Iraqis. In short, the United States hosted a trillion dollar war and any Muslim extremist with an axe to grind showed up to crash the party. They weren’t there to begin with...we drew them there with our presence, and now we’re mired in a mess of our own making, and many tens of thousands have died because of it. When you adopt a true Christian perspective of the war, when you step back, take off the blinders of “God and Country,” and just look at the conflict in terms of lives lost and damage done, how can any sane person still point to the different sides and claim one is good and one is evil? The line of demarcation is now far too muddy to make that distinction.

Consider this frightening fact: The so-called “War Against Terror”—supposedly launched to prevent a repeat of an event like 9/11, in which 3,000 innocent lives were violently snuffed out—has now violently snuffed out hundreds of thousands of innocent lives abroad, and the United States in directly complicit in this escalation of violence. We haven’t combated terror...we’ve created more, and yet our current administration continues to claim that our motives are pure while acknowledging no culpability for the death and destruction that’s followed in our wake.

The attacks of 9/11, which left 3,000 dead, were justified by Osama bin Laden as acceptable casualties of war, and yet as a nation we were horrified by his callousness and evil intent. Yet when we invaded Afghanistan in an effort to capture bin Laden and overthrow the repressive Taliban, the United States killed over 3,700 innocent Afghani civilians in the first several weeks of bombing alone...and yes, we called them acceptable casualties of war, or “collateral damage,” as the Pentagon so delicately refers to these deaths. Are the violent deaths of 3,000 people on American soil somehow more important in God’s eyes than the violent deaths of hundreds of thousands more in other parts of the world, deaths that came about as a direct result of our "retaliation" for 9/11? How can we possibly justify this body count? Are the attacks of 9/11 an act of pure evil, while the subsequent deaths of thousands more Iraqi and Afghani civilians somehow acceptable and noble because they died at our hands? Where’s the logic here? In our effort to prevent more deaths at the hands of terrorists, we've accepted the deaths of countless thousands as an acceptable price to pay. There's a word for this lack of logic: madness.

This madness is compounded by the problem that we have an administration—and its loyal supporters—who think that any disagreement with its "noble" mission is somehow horribly disloyal, unAmerican and somewhat heretical, and it attacks any dissenters by calling them clueless liberals who don't understand what's going on. I reject that label, and so should anyone who finds themself on the recieving end of it. I love my country and want to see it move in the right direction, and therefore I reserve the right as an American to cry foul when I see just cause to do so. I think former US President Teddy Roosevelt said it best in this famous quote:

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."

It's at this point that we need to ask ourselves as Christians: Are we to believe that Christ—who doesn’t merely suggest, but commands—that we never repay evil with evil, somehow got it all wrong, that He didn't know what he was talking about? Or that God doesn’t really understand how things work in the “real" world—you know, the one that He created?

The fact of the matter is that we’re blinded by our own deceitful hearts, and in all my years of pondering this subject, I’ve never read a better secular comment on the subject than a short passage contained in David Hume’s A Treatise on Human Nature, written in 1740 (and also posted at the beginning of this piece). This ageless passage, with the changing of a few names, could easily describe our current administration and military leaders, as well as those of any generation or political affiliation.

It serves to remind me yet again that my first and only allegiance is to my Creator. Yes, I love my country and work to abide by its laws, but I can never support a policy or action (or war) that is so much in conflict with the basic tenets of my faith. The war in Iraq is a deadly and misguided venture that has killed thousands of times the number of people killed in 9/11. Americans, as a nation, have supported the repaying of evil with evil, and we must be willing—particularly those who claim to be followers of Christ—to look the beast in the eye and see our complicity in it. To do any less is to deny the very basis of our Christian faith.

GOD BLESS YOU, MR. VONNEGUT: God, Kurt Vonnegut and the hereafter

I knew he was getting older, and I knew he wasn’t long for this earth. The last time I saw a photo of Kurt Vonnegut—I think it was just last year—I was shocked. He looked old and worn out, like he was ready and willing to go. I saw the face of a tired and resigned old man, and the photo didn’t do him justice. But then it occurred to me that maybe he wanted it to look that way because that’s the way he felt.

I’d been reading KV ever since the early 1970s, when my cousin Cary first handed me a copy of “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater,” and I quickly became a fan for life. I’ve never been entirely sure what it was about his writing that so captured my attention, but I sensed a kindred spirit with a skewed perception of the crazy world we live in, and knew I’d found a writer that I would follow almost anywhere, even to places where other writers wouldn’t think, much less dare, to go. I felt a sense of whimsy when I read his books, yet there was something about his whimsical prose that allowed you to realize that he viewed life as a deadly serious affair, although one that you couldn’t take too seriously if you were going to survive for long. Did that statement even make sense? It did in Vonnegut’s world. He viewed the business of life as a conundrum we all have to deal with while we’re here, so we might as well make the best of it. But what touches my heart the most, at a point in my life now thirty-some odd years removed from my first introduction to KV, is the fact that this whimsical, self-described religious skeptic had a sweet spot for Christ and what he stood for, describing Him as "...that greatest and most humane of human beings."

The most powerful recurring theme in the bulk of Vonnegut’s writing is his constant asking of the question, “Why can’t we all just treat each other with a little common decency?” He never said it had to be love, and even once wrote that he cringed when someone said they loved him because he felt like they’d put a gun to his head and demanded the same response in return. He simply wished, with all his heart, that we’d treat each other better, even if it was only just a little bit better.

Quite a bit was written about him in the week following his death, but one thing that really caught my attention was this piece of writing that originally appeared online in 2004 under the rather broad title “Addicted to Oil and Violence.” In this sprawling piece, Vonnegut is at his cranky, compassionate best, and not at all like the writer who penned his later novels, where he appeared to be writing entirely for his own entertainment, or perhaps to fulfill a book contract. The broad scope of the piece was, of course, about oil and violence, but in typical KV fashion, he took us on a ride through his own thoughts first, entertaining us, teaching us and getting us greased up for the important stuff to follow. In this lead-up, he spoke of Americans and the state of denial we live in, how we claim to be one thing while living something else entirely. When speaking of Christ, he noted that most Christians seem to pay little attention to the teachings of Christ, teachings that are largely inconsistent with what it means to live the American lifestyle. Once again, while addressing the need for more compassion, for the need to just treat each other with a bit more common decency, he says:

"Doesn’t anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools or health insurance for all? How about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes? "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God."

And so on. Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney stuff.

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.

“Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom? “Blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon? Give me a break!"

But he doesn’t stop there. Upping the ante, he goes after the current administration and its ill-advised nation-building adventure into Iraq to tie up what oil is left while America continues to cap and save its own reserves so it can be the last country standing with access to oil.

"We’re spreading democracy, are we? Same way European explorers brought Christianity to the Indians, what we now call “Native Americans?” How ungrateful they were! How ungrateful are the people of Baghdad today. So let’s give another big tax cut to the super-rich. That’ll teach bin Laden a lesson he won’t soon forget. Hail to the Chief.

That chief and his cohorts have as little to do with Democracy as the Europeans had to do with Christianity. We the people have absolutely no say in whatever they choose to do next. In case you haven’t noticed, they’ve already cleaned out the treasury, passing it out to pals in the war and national security rackets, leaving your generation and the next one with a perfectly enormous debt that you’ll be asked to repay.

Nobody let out a peep when they did that to you, because they have disconnected every burglar alarm in the Constitution: The House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the FBI, the free press (which, having been embedded, has forsaken the First Amendment) and We the People.

When you arrived in this world, even when I arrived in this world, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won’t be any more of those. Cold turkey. Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn’t like TV news, is it?

Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on."

Mr. Vonnegut is gone now, and I’ll miss him. He brought a unique voice to my generation and although he couldn’t bring himself to see Christ’s divinity—choosing instead to merely see Him as the most humble and most wise human being who ever lived—I pray that Mr. Vonnegut will meet his maker with humility and grace. And I trust that Mr. Vonnegut’s maker will treat this fine human being lovingly and fairly.

And so it goes...