On Pastors Losing Faith

I read with interest a story today in The Huffington Post about pastors who lose their faith and become atheists.

It was intriguing, but not surprising.

The article (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/01/clergy-lost-faith-family-jobs_n_1465953.html#es_share_ended) featured a Methodist pastor, Rev. Teresa MacBain, who “came out” as an atheist at an event sponsored by The Clergy Project, which exists for pastors who, like MacBain, have lost their faith. The Clergy Project is an online support group, and pastors, apparently go to the site and express their thoughts and issues as concerns their faith – or lack thereof.

When these pastors “come out,” the article said, they suffer; members of their congregation experience a range of emotion, from anger to a sense of having been betrayed. Few, it seems, are able to sympathize with their former spiritual leaders.

The article made me wonder if part of the reason pastors (and others) lose faith is because we do not understand it. We thrive on words from the Christian gospels, which say, “Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.” We have been taught, I am afraid, to interpret that phrase in very human, materialistic terms, when what it actually pertains to is a person asking for, looking for and knocking on the door of – God. If we ask for God, look for God and knock on the door of our own doubts and concerns, we will find God.

We haven’t been taught that, however, and so when we ask for things – like, for example, that a beloved child or spouse not die and he or she dies anyway – we become disillusioned. We read about the miracles which seemingly happened in seconds in the Bible, and when we don’t see that in our own lives, we begin to doubt. Less than moral and ethical televangelists realize that people are struggling on this issue, and perform instantaneous miracles on television – feeding into our spirits and beliefs which are theologically wrong – and they make an economic killing.

We pastors see so much that bothers us: bad things happening to really good people; children dying too young; people succumbing to illness, physical and/or emotional, and despite our best prayers, no good seems to come to the suffering.

Because we have a sense that God exists to do our bidding, we become angry and disenchanted. We begin to believe that God is not good, nor is God fair. The book of Job resonates with us, his questions become ours, and if we are not grounded in something other than the capacity and veracity of human analytic capability, we become lost, and some of us lose God.

Surely there are reasons. Elie Wiesel’s Night describes the tortuous journey of a religious Jew who experienced the horror of the Holocaust and his tortuous faith journey as well. Writes Wiesel: “Have we ever considered the consequences of a less visible, less striking abomination, yet the worst of all, for those of who have faith: the death of God in the soul of a child who suddenly faces absolute evil? …Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.” (p. xix)

Wiesel writes, “I was the accuser; God the accused. My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man…” A little later, he writes, “And I, who believe that God is love, what answer was there to give my young interlocutor whose dark eyes still held the reflection of the angelic sadness that had appeared one day on the face of a hanged child? Did I explain to him that what had been a stumbling block had become a cornerstone for mine? All is grace. If the Almighty is the Almighty, the last word for each of us belongs to him.” (p. xxi)

Well, the last word belonging to and coming from God is what apparently sets so many of us in faith crises. We need for God to answer in a way pleasing to our liking; we need for our God to be a God that sets the crooked places straight and make rough places smooth. God does not do that, and it upsets our capacity to believe.

It occurs to me that we are not taught an honest religion. We are taught to pretend that all is good when all in fact is far from good. InNight,Wiesel describes an angry moment, one of many he had, I am sure, where he asks, “What are You, my God? How do you compare me to this stricken mass gathered to affirm to You their faith, their anger, their defiance? What does Your grandeur mean, Master of the Universe, in the fact of all this cowardice,this decay, and this misery? Why do you go on troubling these poor people’s wounded minds, their ailing bodies?” (p. 66)

Indeed, haven’t many people of many groups uttered such despair and disillusionment with God? Lie Wiesel, we feel “great voids” opening within us, deep voids which cut to the core of what we have always believed. Our God does not behave; this God allows people to suffer for nothing; this God allows the wicked to prosper and the expense of the poor and downtrodden.

And yet, this God allows some victories to come from the most abject suffering. It was children, young children and young adults, who broke the back of Jim Crow in Birmingham, Alabama. Little children allowed themselves to be bitten by dogs, and beaten down by fire hoses even as government, as in the case of the Holocaust, remained silent, and so did, it seemed to many …so did God remain silent. When the Holocaust was over, the world decided it had been silent too long when it came to discrimination toward Jewish people; when the demonstrations in the South were over, African-Americans were one step closer to being treated as human beings.

The fact, though, that so much suffering precedes the smallest victories, with God apparently allowing it, is mind-boggling and faith-shattering. We do not understand this God, not at all.

Just today I shared with a friend that all I have is faith. There are so many things not right in my life, and yet, at the end of the day, all I have to hold onto is my faith in God, a faith that says to me that God hears and God cares.

Anne Frank said that “despite everything, I still believe that people are good at heart.” I believe that, despite everything, God is present and God cares. It keeps me going.

I understand disillusionment; I understand feeling alone, betrayed, not understood. I hate to see good people suffer. I hate it that God will not and does not do the bidding of people. I understand how and why some pastors would become atheist.

But I also understand that faith has kept me alive emotionally; it is what motivational speakers call “positive thinking.” Call it what you want. I call it faith. I have to.

A candid observation …

Silent at Our Own Risk

It amazes and bothers me that we in this country are so reluctant to talk about race and racism.

I spoke this week at an event which I thought would be predominantly white; the sermon was about how we who love God ought to choose God and serve God over racism, sexism, militarism, materialism, homophobia …I didn’t say it, but those things in the list could be, and should be, classified as “sin” since sin is anything that separates us from God.

The audience turned out to be predominantly African-American, and I am more than sure that, while the message resonated with the African-Americans, many of the white people in attendance were probably offended.

Wow.

I know by now that we all see things through different lenses, lenses tinted by our life experiences, but in this, the 21st century, where racism is as ugly and as blatant as it has always been, shouldn’t we be able to try to see through a more common lens so that we can graduate from the halls of racism to a graduate school of peace, understanding, and reconciliation?

In the sermon, I mentioned the feeling of sadness I have as concerns the Trayvon Martin case; I mentioned that I am saddened at the news that at least 40 public schools in urban Philadelphia are scheduled to be closed; I mentioned that it is difficult to listen to people talk about being pro-life when their definition seems only to extend to unborn fetuses and not to children already born, living in horrible situations with horrible education and little to no health care.

I mentioned that the treatment of President Barack Obama has been sickeningly racist, evidence of our still-sick society as concerns race.

I mentioned the horrible chasm that is only widening between the haves and the “have-nots,” relaying disturbing insights about our economic recession that I learned on PBS’s Frontline program, the first part of which aired last week and the second part which will air May 1, Money, Power and Wall Street . In that program. I shuddered as I listened to the narrator share that in the mortgage crisis, some people with sub-prime mortgages paid as much as 42 percent interest.

I was floored…and I said as much. That has to bother somebody, right? It has to at least bother those who say they love and serve God…or so I posited.

My point was that people who say they believe in God in general, and in Jesus specifically, have a moral code that we should follow; we are mandated to take care of “the least of these,” and because doing that involves challenging political systems, we should choose to serve God and what God would mandate, so that we have the strength to challenge social and political systems which will not change without such a challenge. We get tired of pushing against the powers and principalities which push us right back.

We are not, however, allowed to be tired to the point of inaction. That’s what I shared.

I believe in what I preach; I believe that Christians miss the boat when we are silent about systems, belief systems as well as social and political systems, which permit people to be oppressed and treated unjustly. While, according to Reinhold Niebuhr, who wrote Moral Man and Immoral Society, it is understandable that our society (and in fact, any society) is more immoral than the individuals within it, the way I have learned and internalized Christianity is that we are to work on our personal salvation so that ultimately, we can influence yet another person to take the person and presence of Jesus seriously and get him/her to work against oppression, from whatever source it may come.

I am not sure many agree with me. I sat down yesterday I was not sure where the message had fallen. The African-Americans in attendance, and many of the whites, seemed to understand what I was getting at, some whites, I noticed, avoided my gaze.

Recognizing injustice is hard; fighting it is even harder. It is work that makes us come face to face with our feelings and beliefs, and sometimes, that just doesn’t feel good.

One of my colleagues will share with me the “white” reaction to what I shared yesterday.

My prayer is that one day, there won’t be such a division between races in hearing words about realities that still sit with us, like racism. It has had a dominant place in our society for far too long.

A candid observation …

Are Capitalism and Christianity Compatible?

It so happened that as I was reading something this morning about the requirements Jesus asks of those who love and follow him that a thought struck me…and stayed with me.

What Jesus asks of us seems fundamentally incompatible with the principles of capitalism.

As I read and study, it seems clearer and clearer that Jesus got in trouble, yes, because he riled church leaders, but more so, or at least equally so, he got in trouble because he got in trouble with government officials.

Jerusalem and the Jewish people were under Roman rule and Roman oppression. The Romans ended up destroying the Jewish temple in 70 AD because the Jews had tried to lead a rebellion against the Romans. While Jesus was alive, he noticed the disparity between rich and poor, the “haves” and “have-nots” and he spoke against that…and in so doing, angered the government.

Jesus was in alignment with Hebrew scripture, which asked the Israelites to take care of the poor, of the widows. Yes, the God of the Hebrew scriptures was angry at the Israelites for breaking covenant and for following false gods…their apostasy seemingly grieved Yahweh enormously. But this same God was furious at the Hebrew children for forgetting their role as His “chosen” ones. In the Book of Isaiah, the very first chapter, the prophet writes, on Yahweh’s behalf, “Stop doing wrong! Learn to do right. Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.”

It is a motif which appears throughout the Hebrew scriptures. In the Book of Deuteronomy, part of The Law, Moses says to the Israelites, on behalf of Yahweh, “Do not take advantage of a hired man who is poor and needy, whether he is a brother Israelite or an alien living in one of your towns. Pay him his wages each day before sunset because he is poor and is counting on it…Do not deprive the alienor the fatherless of justice or take the cloak of widows as a pledge…(24:17) In the 15th chapter of that same book, it reads, “If there is a poor man among your brothers in any of the towns of the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hardh

earted or tight-fisted toward your brother. Rather, be open-handed and freely lend him whatever he needs…”

In the book of Jeremiah, the prophet writes, “He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?” declares the Lord.

Jesus, the reason for Christianity, asks followers to take care of “the least of these,” and says, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasures in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

None of what I just quoted seems to be in alignment with the principles of capitalism. The free market system is such that the acquisition of profit and possessions are the prize, the goal, often at the expense of the poor, who are exploited so that profit margins may be larger.

Indeed, the tension between government and labor seems to be partly because unions ostensibly work to protect the poor and the laborers, who would be mercilessly exploited without such protection. What capitalism aims for the the biggest gain for its buck. That in and of itself is not bad…but I am just not sure that it is in alignment with principles of Christianity.

I wrote a paper which I presented at Oxford University several years ago, saying that there seems to be a real tension for some American Christians between the Bible and the United States Constitution. Both documents are important, but they are used and manipulated in order to accommodate the desires of people at any given time, and for some, the Constitution is a document more worth defending and quoting than is the Bible.

Why? Because where the Bible admonishes followers of God to treat each other fairly and with dignity, the Constitution seems to make it OK to treat others the way one wants…because we have the freedom to do so. The Bible talks about the way God works, giving, for example, the same amount of money to a person who has worked for one hour as to the person who has worked a full day. (Matthew 25) The Constitution, written to define and protect the idea of republicanism, wrote of the “inalienable rights” of people – but those people were primarily property owners, white male property owners, at that.

Capitalism, or the ideas of capitalism, were written into the Constitution, along with the omission of the need to treat all people fairly, including blacks, women, and whomever else might join the new republic. And so, at the outset, it seems that the Constitution was in direct conflict with the Holy Bible.

All that being said, it seems highly unlikely that the division between rich and poor will ever go away, no matter what the Bible says. There is resentment against the poor in this very Christian nation; the “victims” are too often blamed for their predicaments and the fact that this is a “free country” is thrown up in our faces as proof that “anybody” can make it. Hypothetically, that is true, but in reality, that is scarcely the case. And no amount of Christian mouthing off about the unfairness of capitalism is going to change that reality.

If Jesus were to visit this nation, this world, today, I wonder what He would say? So much of the world lives in abject poverty, while the rich squander money and scramble to make even more. The very rich make money and stash it, against Biblical principles, but perfectly in compliance with the working of capitalism. The poor, the downtrodden, the oppressed…are scorned, used, manipulated…and too often, forgotten.

It seems that capitalism is really held more dear to hearts than is Christianity, except in certain instances or as applies to certain issues…like contraception or homosexuality. The Bible is cast aside in its call for fairness, for example, as all-male Congressional committees listen to the conditions of women, or all-white juries serve in trials involving black and brown people.

As I watch and read, it just doesn’t seem that capitalism and Christianity are compatible; they work against each other. There is definitely an issue here. And it’s a serious one.

A candid observation …