Thinking about where we are

I have three other posts in my head about the parable of the sheep and the goats, as a whole, before spending some time on the individual needs and meeting them. I wasn't sure what order to put them in, but my hard drive appears to have died. While I am typing on an expired laptop with no access to documents, the obvious answer is to write up the short one. (And pray for a speedy resolution to the hard drive issue.)

I have been thinking about the way things have come together. I have spent most of this year carefully studying the Savior's life and thinking about how to emulate it as a weak and fallible mortal. That seemed like the right thing to do. 

Before that, I spent most of the previous year carefully studying the Constitution, and how we think about that. It also seemed like the right thing to do at the time, though it wasn't expected. The end part that focused on un-ratified amendments? I had no idea that was coming, but it was valuable. It mattered. 

So now, if I find that the thing that I most need to delve into is how we meet the needs of others, and it looks at both individuals and governmental and societal structures, that may be what I have been laying the foundation for all along without realizing it. 

It appears to be something that is needed, and more necessary than I could have imagined when I was starting, but I didn't know I was starting.

This may be more important for me than for anyone else, because I really like being able to tell the end from the beginning. I hate having so many important things unclear. I have still been able to look back many times and see the hand of God guiding me. That is important.

Listen for that voice. Watch for that hand. If you can get an idea of the destination along the way that is great, and it may help you follow better, but sometimes there are things that it is okay not to know, and to just trust. You have to be able to discern good influences from bad influences, but we can do that.

I believe we are all capable of doing much good and feeling much joy through that, but we have to be open to it.

Two barely remembered things, part 2

"Marching ill-becomes a saint."

That's what I think I remember. Or marching is not becoming of a saint. It ill-behooves a saint. Something like that.

Searching on this phrase is even more futile, because no matter what configuration you put them in, when "marching" and "saints" are both part of it, you get the song, "When the saints go marching in."

I asked one friend, and she initially understood it as "Marching - even if you are ill - (or maybe until it makes you ill) is very becoming of a saint." I don't know if I have ever had any kind of church teacher who would say that.

I don't march that often anyway. I have marched once this year. I do have concerns about it.

I have concerns that when you get a bunch of people together, some people will start being stupid and destructive, which for many observers ends up overshadowing the message.That goes back to the front window on Eugene City Hall being broken out at the end of a march protesting the Rodney King verdict, which no Eugene city officials had any part in (as far as I know).

I also have concerns that it needs to be part of a larger effort. During the Civil Rights movement of the 60s, there were marches and protests and sit-ins, but they were also combined with boycotts and other forms of economic pressure, with clear demands being made.

(For what it's worth, they also practiced an incredible amount of discipline, work-shopping and drilling on how to respond to different situations. Militancy isn't always about guns.)

I have those concerns, but I also remember the mental boost and the sense of community that came with the March for Equality and Justice, and I know many people felt that way about the Women's March.

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2017/01/my-first-march.html

I remember that a massive Boston Protest led to the cancellation of at least 67 rallies supporting white supremacy:

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/8/23/headlines/white_nationalists_right_wing_groups_cancel_67_planned_rallies

I can't necessarily tell you the best way forward, especially as we are moving toward a world where anyone who will see the need of protest will be too tired to march and too poor to exert any kind of economic pressure.

I still feel very clearly that what that teacher was saying was wrong. The people who reject your protest because it is loud or inconvenient or feels scary to them are the same people that will tell you that taking a knee is too disruptive, generally speaking.

And I think that for someone who was a teacher of mind back then, the protests they would have seen would have been for the equality of Black people, and of women, and that farm workers have a right to reasonable pay and treatment. Those causes should resonate with people trying to follow Christ, regardless of denomination.

Instead, we often seem to be most interested in maintaining the status quo. Often that is a situation that is tenable for us, but not for others, and instead of caring about that we get mad at those who make us uncomfortable.

Colin Kaepernick is right about police brutality. His peaceful, respectful protest has drawn a lot of anger at him, and not at police brutality. That is not his fault. How you get enough people to really acknowledge the problem on a level where people actually do something about it is something I don't know. I respect him following his conscience, and I think it will be a long time before my conscience will allow me to stand for the national anthem again. I don't know that it will change anything.

Since I have started writing about the parable of the sheep and goats, the consistent theme is that answers will be highly individual, and that the complexity of issues is one reason for that. It may never make sense for you to march.

That does not excuse the need for listening to what marchers are saying, and paying attention to what is going on in the world, what needs there are, and what you can do to help. Priests and Levites walked by the man who fell among thieves, but are example is supposed to be the Good Samaritan.

Seeking truth, caring for others, finding ways to help -- those are the things that become a saint. Scorn for the attempts of others does not.

Two barely remembered things, part 1

Before I get back to prisons and other areas for service and activism, there are a couple of old thoughts that have been nagging at me. One is really pertinent to the discussion that really just started with thinking about the parable of the sheep and goats. Therefore, I am going to do the other one first.

In both cases they are things that I heard once in a church setting, and I think in a class setting. I think the one for next week was in a Young Women's class, and this one might have been from an Institute class. That puts them as things that I heard as a college student and as a teenager, respectively, so there are reasons that I don't remember the details clearly.

In both cases, I think the person saying it was quoting someone else who would have had more prestige and authority. Remembering names would have helped me find what I was looking for. This is a common failing, as I have heard many people say that they can't remember who said something, but they think it was a general authority, or attribute something to a general authority, but it turns out to have been a youth speaker or fireside speaker. Proper attribution is important, for speakers and listeners.

Anyway, what I think I remember someone saying is that the true sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was inhospitality. Maybe it was a lack of charity. They could go together.  Charity would certainly include hospitality.

I have had other teachers impress upon me the importance of the hospitality in the Middle East. I don't know how far back that goes, like maybe that developed more recently than Lot's story. I don't have a hard time imagining that in an environment with lots of desert space and sand storms that hospitality would become very important, and maybe that would become such a part of the culture that it would carry over into cities where there were more resources. And, even if there are options for taking shelter and buying food, local residents intent on raping newcomers means you can't automatically consider the city to be safer.

Honestly, looking back at the story, it seems preposterous to me that the focus on the story has been that the genders of the rapists and the intended victims was the same, so that's why the cities were destroyed: for being gay! Because rape is about attraction and not power and abuse! I say seems preposterous, but with some of the reactions to the currently unfolding tale of how much sexual abuse and harassment goes on in all industries, we are still largely preposterous. We should work on that.

Before I started writing this, I tried my search one more time, and I did find something:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-patrick-s-cheng-phd/what-was-the-real-sin-of_b_543996.html

It's from 2010, well after what I am thinking of, though certainly some of the same points are made. I think he is way off base with his interpretation of Genesis 7 and Jude 1:7, so I am not turning to Reverend Cheng as a scriptural authority either (though he clearly does study a lot and has some good insights), but there are two other scriptural references, which I appreciate.

In Hebrews 13:2, we are admonished to not neglect hospitality, because thereby some have "entertained angels unaware". That sounds like Abraham and Lot in that story. The people of Sodom were their opposites. They are not mentioned, but it is not hard to see the connection.

More pertinently, in Ezekiel 16:

49 Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.

50 And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good. 

That correlates a lot more with Matthew 25 than anything about sex.

I acknowledge that hardening your heart towards others, pride, and idleness can weaken a commitment to chastity and fidelity, and getting caught up in sex could harden the heart; we don't do what we do in a vacuum. Charity remains preeminent, as the scriptures have reinforced many times.

What I hope stands out most is that your righteousness and your reward are very dependent on your love for others. There is no similar promise for how well we police other people's sex lives. What you do in your sex life is important, but it is not your job to worry about what sex others are having.

There are things we should be aware of and interfere with, like abuse of strangers and rape and harassment, but that is not about consenting adults having sex.

I don't see how we keep getting that wrong.