LSP47: Affirming Ministries and the Curious Case from Mark

Here in Canada, many church congregations are asking themselves whether they want to become an Affirming Ministry, which, in the words of the United Church of Canada, means "ministries [that] declare, in words and actions, that God loves and accepts people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender." This is an important step on the journey of transforming the church from its roots in righteousness to its blossoming in God's love. But, as with any long journey where a lot of people are asked to walk together in the same direction, more or less, there are major disagreements and a whole host of new questions. Are we sure Affirmation is the right path? If God wants us to do this, why hasn't God left us a map? Why can't it be simple? Why can't it be clear cut?  What about Jesus?  Did he say anything about Affirmation?  Would he say anything about Affirmation?
 
For many congregations, the question of Affirming Ministries is a difficult and confusing issue.  Individuals must wrestle with complex questions about who we are as unique human beings, who we are as members of families,communities, churches, and who we are as children of God. Sometimes, in these discussions, our deepest beliefs emerge, and we can find ourselves alternately pleased and dismayed at our own inner reactions. All on the same day!

At a time such as this, I think it can be helpful to consider what Jesus said to us about a different but equally important matter.  It's sort of a "peripheral vision" technique.  When we stare and stare right at the middle of the Affirming Ministry question, sometimes all we can see is the main black and white issue.  But if we let ourselves see with our peripheral vision, too, where things are kind of blurry, but also much wider in scope, then sometimes we can see the bigger picture a bit more clearly.  I think this is something Jesus did, something he tried to teach others to do.  He tried to help others see God not only in the central issues but also in everything around us.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Mark's portrayal of Jesus as a physician scholar who was way ahead of his time in his understanding of what causes illness.

We forget, sitting in our comfortable, modern homes with access to a full range of modern diagnostic tools and medical interventions, that once upon a time -- during the time when Jesus lived, in fact -- the prevailing model for understanding neurological and psychiatric conditions was demonology.  Demons were thought to cause medical disorders such as epilepsy.

Not everyone believed this, of course.  Certain schools of philosophy and science had long been working on the idea of healing as a form of science.  But, for the most part, diseases were blamed on divine causes.  People went to priests, magicians, oracles, and holy men to find out which god or demi-god had been offended and what steps had to be taken to settle the debt and make things right again with the divine.  This was big business, and a lot of money was made by those who claimed to be gatekeepers for healing and exorcism.

The Gospel of Mark includes several fascinating stories that mention demons and spirits.  Even today, people tend to interpret these passages in Mark as proof that Jesus followed the lead of others in believing that demons were the cause of neurological disorders.

I won't go into all the background reasons for why I think this interpretation of Mark cuts out some of the very best and most helpful insights into Jesus' teachings, but I'd like to draw your attention to the curious passage in Mark 9:14-29 about the healing of the epileptic child.

It's quite a strange story to include in the middle of a religious narrative.  It's also a bit of muddle to us today.  If you read it carefully, it seems as if the author isn't sure how to describe what happens when a distraught parent brings his epileptic son to Jesus for healing.  The descriptions seem part medical science -- "whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down; and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid", which is medically accurate -- and part religious invocation -- "he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, 'you spirit that keeps this boy from speaking and hearing, I command you, come out of him, and never enter him again.'"

To our ears, it sounds as if Jesus believes there's a demon inside the boy that can be exorcised.  But when you read the passage in its original Greek, you see some shades of meaning that aren't obvious to our English-speaking ears.  For starters, the usual Greek words for "demon" aren't used in the story of the epileptic boy.  Each time the spirit is described, the Greek word is a cognate of pneuma.  And pneuma is one of those tricky words in Greek that can mean a lot of different things, including breath, wind, spirit, disposition (as in personal characteristics) -- and sometimes a spirit with evil tendencies, though not always.  I think it's quite possible that Mark was using the word pneuma to describe a "force" that's real and tangible inside the head, even if we can't see it with our physical eyes -- the way breath and wind are strong forces that can't be seen directly with our eyes but are very real and measurable nonetheless.

It's Jesus' understanding of this real but unseen force inside the head (what we know today are abnormal cortical events causing seizures) that leads him to treat the boy and his family in ways that would have been unthinkable for most religious scholars of the time, whether Jewish or Hellenistic or Mithraic.  It's Jesus' understanding of the boy's condition as a scientific matter that leads him to ask the same kinds of questions a doctor would ask today: "What are his symptoms? When did they first start? How can we treat this right here and right now?"

Detail of "Christ Washing His Disciples' Feet" by Jacopo Tintoretto, about 1545-1555, on display at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Photo credit JAT 2018.

 We tend not to notice what Jesus doesn't say to the boy and his family.  Jesus never judges them.  He never says to them, "What did you do to deserve this?  How did you offend God?  How did your parents and your parents' parents offend God?  What sacrifices have you offered at the Temple to remedy your offenses?  What have you done to restore your purity?"

Jesus asks none of these questions.  He says only that it's a matter of faith and prayer.  And after he treats the boy as a person, and asks the right medical questions, and performs some sort of healing treatment (though we're not sure what), and stays with the boy as he convulses to the point of appearing dead to everyone in the crowd, Jesus does the most remarkable thing of all.

Jesus, a Jew, doesn't step away from the body, the body from whom the spirit or pneuma appears to have departed.  Jesus doesn't step away from the corpse to protect his own ritual purity (which would have been considered religiously appropriate at that time and in that place).  Instead, he moves even closer to the boy, taking him by the hand, lifting him up till he's able to stand, and (we infer) returning him to his father's care.

For Jesus, no one was unworthy of God's love and healing, despite what those around him said.  In first century Palestine, with its blend of Hellenistic and Jewish cultural norms, an epileptic child would have been considered a blemish, a punishment, a valid reason to revoke some or all of the family's "honour and status" and treat them as unworthy, little better than the dogs who eat the crumbs from under the table.  Today, we'd never dream of doing this.  But in Jesus' time, it was the norm to marginalize whole families simply because one member was sick and needed proper treatment.

It's interesting to note that although Jesus goes around the Galilee and the Decapolis to assess and treat many kinds of illnesses and neurological disorders, he's never once shown by Mark as trying to heal or "fix" somebody's sexual orientation.  It's pretty clear Jesus is keen on monogamy.  It's also pretty clear Jesus is keen on people not committing adultery.  But monogamy and adultery are altogether different issues from sexual orientation, and if we rejected everyone from the church who's ever broken faith with Jesus' teachings on adultery, I dare say the church would have snuffed itself out like a dying candle long, long ago.

Jesus does give us a hint about how the epileptic child is healed.  He says to his apostles in Mark 9:23 that "all things can be done for the one who believes" and then, in Mark 10:27, he adds some more information, saying, "'For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible."  Jesus was a man of science, but he also believed in miracles.

It isn't up to us, as Christians, to reject the very children whom God loves.  Jesus' healing of the epileptic child tells us that even when we don't understand, as human beings, the unique challenges and talents given to each child and adult around us, God understands.  God loves what we don't see.  God accepts what we try not to see, what we try not to speak of or hear.  When we're ready, though, God shows us how to speak of and hear Divine Love, as the epileptic child began to speak and hear once he and his family accepted they were worthy of God's love and healing.  God stands by, ever ready to help, when we find the courage to take the same steps on the path of understanding and inclusion that Jesus once had to take.

God loves us all, each and every one.

God bless.

LSP17: "Why Didn't God Just Show Up in Front of Me?"

A few years ago, I had a conversation with a man I'll call Joe. Joe was very angry about the question of God and suffering (the theodicy question). Some of Joe's anger came from his experience as a gay man who was forced to deal with emotional and spiritual abuse from homophobic Christians who believe God rejects homosexuality. 

 

I continue to marvel at this carving of a heron feeding its chick. How did the artist envisage such beauty when he or she picked up a simple, 3-foot log and began to shape it into an image of abundant Life? Each time I've moved over the past couple of decades, I've lived in trepidation that one of the delicate wooden legs would snap. But sometimes it's the slenderest of connections that holds us up. Photo credit JAT 2021.

 

Joe asked questions that many other people are asking about God. He demanded to know where God had been while he was suffering. He asked why God hadn't just shown up in front of him to give him clear answers about his sexuality and faith. He asked why he had to figure everything out on his own without any help from anyone at all.

This is what I wrote in reply:

What I'm hearing is a lot of anger that God didn't just show up in front of you to tell you it was ok to be gay.

So I'm wondering . . . have you thought about what it would have been like at a practical, realistic level if God actually had shown up to talk to you? Have you thought about the fact that such a miraculous occurrence would have made your life much worse, not much better?

As a mystic, I live on a daily basis with phenomena that seem normal and very practical and scientific to me, but even for me some things would be too much. Too much for my very human, very 3D brain to process. The brain has limits. The brain expects a certain measure of consistency and predictability from the world around it. This is how the healthy brain copes with all the emotions and perceptions and memories and learning processes we cram into it.

Okay. So think about this for a minute. You're sitting in your bedroom and you're praying to God about the painful situation you're in vis-a-vis your family and your sexuality, and suddenly you look up to see an angel of God standing beside the door. You can see the angel's face and hands and wings and glowing robes. Next you hear the angel speak. The angel says, "Fear not, for you are gay. I have come to tell you that God loves you because you are gay. Now go into the world and preach what I have taught you."

So you go downstairs and you tell your family what you saw and heard, and they call a psychiatrist friend of theirs and have you involuntarily assessed, and the psychiatrist gives you a tentative diagnosis of schizophrenia.

So far, you're not better off.

This isn't the worst part, though. The worst part is the self-doubt generated within your own brain about your experience. You start ruminating on it. You go over and over the experience. Did you really see an angel? Who was he? Or was "he" a "she"? Why didn't the angel stay longer? Why didn't he say more? What did he mean when he said you should go out and preach what he taught you? What did he actually teach you?

Did you really just imagine it? Did you have an hallucination? A psychotic break? (Maybe you did!!! -- omigosh, you've gone crazy, and now you'll never have a life or a partner or a job ever again!!!) Can you trust yourself now? Can you trust anyone now?

The loving God who is with you always is not going to set you up for a tragedy like this -- a tragedy that would make your life much worse.

Joe, you ask, "Why did I have to figure out everything on my own?" (Though I confess I'm surprised you show no gratitude towards the on-line friends and the non-Christians and the books you referred to, who've helped you on your journey according to your own testimony).

You had to figure it out for yourself so the knowledge would be yours. So the insight would be yours. So nobody could take it away from you ever again.

This is an honest, truthful, fair path to understanding and transformation. It requires that you "raise the bar" for yourself by taking personal responsibility for your own thoughts, feelings, and self-knowledge rather than relying exclusively on the authority of others. It requires that you use the resources of your own 3-pound universe (that is, your brain). It requires that you look at Creation in new ways you never thought possible.

And it doesn't ask you to learn within a framework of occult magic, as Pauline Christianity and its predecessors have long expected you to do.

So maybe you might want to consider cutting God some slack.

(I know you say you don't believe in a theistic God, but methinks thou dost protest too much.)

Love Jen

Just for the record . . . I personally believe that a person's core sexuality, whether homosexual or heterosexual, is hardwired into his/her DNA as a permanent, natural, and healthy aspect of his/her core identity. It's a non-negotiable part of who we are. To treat another person badly on the basis of DNA-based sex or core sexual orientation is about as far from loving as it's possible to get. I reject all religious teachings that claim "divine justification" for discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

The path of knowing yourself (including knowing and trusting your heart-based sexuality) is a commitment to opening your eyes and your heart to the many everyday clues that surround you all the time. Part of this commitment is a willingness to ask what your fellow human beings can teach you about yourself and about God. Books can teach you. Art can teach you. Scientists can teach you. Families can teach you. Your task is to be part of Creation -- to immerse yourself in all its many narratives -- so you can begin to recognize the colours and shapes and movements and sounds that resonate deep within your heart. A painting that resonates with you is important because you're responding to images your soul finds familiar and comforting. A painting that speaks to you is doing just that -- speaking to you about who you really are. And listening to a painting is a lot less stressful for you and your family than listening to an angel who suddenly pops into your room. This room at the Art Gallery of Ontario features late nineteenth and early twentieth century Canadian artwork. Photo credit JAT 2018.

 

For Further Reflection:

After you begin to master the practice of spiritual gratitude (contemplation and thanks for the positive experiences in life) comes the difficult part of your journey: learning to how to wrestle with the question of suffering and then, after a lot of mistakes, come out smelling like roses.

Nobody wants to do this part. It's just so hard. It's so darned hard that all major world religions have shied away from the question by offering you various escape mechanisms (e.g. salvation; Judgment Day and hell; nirvana; energy balancing; scientism) that sound really good -- and really easy -- by comparison. In Christianity, the apostle Paul thought Jesus' teachings on the theodicy question were so ridiculous and so impossible for regular people to invest in that he (Paul) grafted a Saviour religion onto the root of Jesus' teachings. Paul thought this was a good idea because he didn't share Jesus' faith in the power of individuals to venture into the heart of suffering to seek the Tree of Life.

The Tree of Life, so different from the Tree of Moral Knowledge, is a tree that's covered in all sorts of unwieldy branches and painful sticky patches and bunches of ugly-looking fruits that ripen at puzzling times. It's unpredictable. It can't be harnessed or controlled. It leans away from you when you try to capture it; then, when you've given up in frustration and stop focusing on it, it suddenly drops sweet seeds straight into your heart. There is a paradoxical blend of beauty and terror in this experience.

Despite our unwillingness to voluntarily approach this tree, God and God's angels regularly drop us onto its branches so we'll have the chance to figure out the mystery of Divine Love and Forgiveness for ourselves. This is what happened to Dr. Alexander when God plucked him from his orderly life and showed him the Tree of Life, which is to say the family of loving angels he was introduced to during his near death experience.

The Tree of Life, like the trees we know on Planet Earth, holds within its gnarly structure rings upon rings of memory -- memories of transformation, memories of healing, and memories of love.

At the very core of the Tree of Life lie the memories from our Mother and Father's earliest times together. Here rest the memories of redemption.

It's redemption that we, as human beings, experience each time we choose to face our experiences of suffering and learn from them. We don't escape our suffering; we transform our suffering by using our whole selves -- our hearts, minds, bodies, and courage -- to take what we've learned and help others.

Redemption doesn't happen automatically. You have to want it. You have to choose it. You have to dredge up every ounce of courage you can muster to face the pain. You have to be willing to be changed by a past -- a set of memories -- you can't change. You have to learn to bend, like the Tree of Life -- to bend away from those who want you to forget who you really are. You have to learn to forgive.

None of this is easy, but regular people do it every day in every part of the world despite the lack of encouragement they get from their spiritual and religious leaders.

Redemption (unlike the promise of religious salvation) is a universal practice unbound by gender or race or sexual orientation or clan or religion or culture or history. Anyone can choose it.

Jesus knew this. It's what made him so unpopular among his religious peers.