Where is God When it Hurts?

I do not know where God is when humans suffer, and I don’t think Christians do, either.  I have no great answers for a question of this depth, and I will offer you no platitudes.  If you have been hurt and wonder where God was, let me offer this: I am so sorry you were hurt.  If you were here with me, I would hold you and let you vent your pain.  You are a good person, and you deserved better.  And rather than just offering my apologies, let me offer a possible solution. I believe if there is a God, then He/She lives inside of us.  If people are not experiencing God, maybe it is because we are not letting God out.   Maybe while my parishioners were being abused, God was next door “minding her own business.”  Maybe while a child was starving in Africa, God was eating in a five star restaurant at $250/plate and driving off in his 150,000 dollar sports car.  Maybe while a child was being beaten by his father, we never noticed because we were too busy sitting in church trying to please God rather than serving God’s children.

Why Global Climate Change Deniers Are Wrong

Okay, I am going to do my best to explain why the majority of scientists believe man is responsible for the current warming of the Earth (CAGW), and why it is not just a "natural cycle of warming" which the Earth is going through. Just a warning, this post may end up fairly long.

Scientists have the ability to take ice core samples of the polar ice caps. These ice core samples can tell scientists vast amounts of information about the Earth's climate dating back hundreds of thousands of years (to those people who think the Earth is only some seven thousand years old, sorry). Here is a description taken from a NASA Earth Observatory article of how ice core sampling works. This info. comes from the following link http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features

/Paleoclimatology_IceCores/

"Throughout each year, layers of snow fall over the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. Each layer of snow is different in chemistry and texture, summer snow differing from winter snow. Summer brings 24 hours of sunlight to the polar regions, and the top layer of the snow changes in texture-not melting exactly, but changing enough to be different from the snow it covers. The season turns cold and dark again, and more snow falls, forming the next layers of snow. Each layer gives scientists a treasure trove of information about the climate each year. Like marine sediment cores, an ice core provides a vertical timeline of past climates stored in ice sheets and mountain glaciers."

These ice core samples have been able to tell us information about the climate of the Earth dating back 110,000 yrs in Greenland and 750,000 yrs in Antarctica.

These core samples tell scientists the levels of greenhouse gases which were present in the atmosphere by the quantity of those gases which were trapped into the layers of ice through the years. Here is a quote from the same article of how the process works:

"As valuable as the temperature record may be, the real treasure buried in the ice is a record of the atmosphere's characteristics. When snow forms, it crystallizes around tiny particles in the atmosphere, which fall to the ground with the snow. The type and amount of trapped particles, such as dust, volcanic ash, smoke, or pollen, tell scientists about the climate and environmental conditions when the snow formed. As the snow settles on the ice, air fills the space between the ice crystals. When the snow gets packed down by subsequent layers, the space between the crystals is eventually sealed off, trapping a small sample of the atmosphere in newly formed ice. These bubbles tell scientists what gases were in the atmosphere, and based on the bubble's location in the ice core, what the climate was at the time it was sealed. Records of methane levels, for example, indicate how much of the Earth wetlands covered because the abundance of life in wetlands gives rise to anaerobic bacteria that release methane as they decompose organic material. Scientists can also use the ice cores to correlate the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere with climate change-a measurement that has emphasized the role of carbon dioxide in global warming."

These ice samples do point to times where the earth has naturally warmed and cooled, but levels of greenhouse gases are now higher than during any other period of warming for which we have record. Dating back 420,000 thousand years the highest levels of CO2 which scientists have found in the ice samples was 300 ppm (http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/vostok.html). In 1958 our CO2 levels were at 315 ppm already higher than Earths normal warming periods. In 2000 the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere were at 370ppm 23% higher than we have experienced in any of the natural warming trends we have already experienced in the past 420,000 years. Our current levels of CO2 are basically 400 ppm (already 110 ppm and 33% higher than normal warming periods). By 2058 our levels if we do not reduce our greenhouse emissions will be somewhere between 446ppm (48.67% higher than natural warming trends) and and 492 ppm (64% higher than Earth's natural warming trends).

So, what is the difference between this warming trend and previous ones. Why are CO2 levels astronomically higher than they have normally been in the past? Humans.

Book Excerpt: Part 2

I watched as government funding dried up under the Bush regime.  When I had started at the Homeless Church, Bill Clinton had been in office, and there had been much more money for social programs.  I could call drug rehab programs and get people into them without any problem, even if they had no type of insurance.  By the time W. had been in office for a year, all of those programs had begun to dry up.  Social service agencies began cutting case management positions, and more and more mentally disabled people began to fall through the cracks.  Our mentally disabled membership among the homeless grew exponentially; in our city alone, 95% of case managers working for MHMR (Mentally Handicapped and Mentally Retarded) were laid off in a month’s time.  Bush had said that the money was going to filter through faith-based initiatives, but I worked for a faith-based initiative, and we and others like us found all that assistance money impossible to get.  I was becoming disgusted with the Republican party and fundamentalist Christians’ blind support of the Republican party.

How could people, who claimed to be followers of Jesus, be as cold and calloused as to ignore the needs of the poor around them?  How could we be so greedy that we would keep putting the Republicans into power just because they were going to save us  a little bit of money in taxes (or a lot in taxes if you were wealthy) at the expense of the poor?  I did not understand the church’s blind faith in the Republican Party.  But . . . there was still that damned abortion issue.  I still did not like abortion; in fact, I hated it, but I could not in all good conscious NOT vote for John Kerry just because he was pro-choice.  I saw my dear friends suffering from metaphorical abortions every day, and no one was stepping up to help them.  I didn’t feel comfortable not voting because I knew I needed to make a statement about the treatment of the poor with my vote, but I also didn’t want to vote for a pro-choice candidate.  A vote for John Kerry felt too much like I was personally killing unborn children.  I didn’t know what to do.

As I was lying in bed one night pondering all of these things, a thought invaded my meditations.  “How many abortions did George Bush stop in his years in office?”  It was a light bulb question for me. George Bush hadn’t overturned Roe V. Wade.  I was sure just as many unborn children had died under George W. Bush’s watch as under Bill Clinton’s.  In fact, none of the Republican candidates, who had been vaulted into office on the premise of stopping abortion, had done much of anything to stop abortion.  Honestly, by cutting funding to programs that handed out contraceptives to the poor and teenagers, these men had almost certainly caused more abortions!  I started to feel like the religious right had been duped for years.  We had elected Republican after Republican basically because of one issue—abortion—and the Republicans had done nothing about that issue.  I realized it was highly unlikely that the Republicans would ever overturn Roe V. Wade because then they would lose the one card that kept the religious right voting for them.  We had been deceived.  I had been deceived.

I am a pro-life person; by that statement I mean I am for all life.  I think there is nothing more sacred on this planet than life.  Under the George W. Bush administration not only had no unborn babies been saved, but other adult life had been treated with utter disregard.  How many innocent American soldiers died under the Bush administration?  How many innocent Iraqis died in a war, which we should never have begun?  How many people could have been fed with the billions of dollars that our government spent on killing?  If the religious right wanted to make the world a safer place, then why not help the people in the Middle East, who were so hurt and angry?  We should have dropped food and aid . . . not bombs.  All these thoughts flooded my mind as I lay in bed that night, and I knew the decision had been made.  I was going to vote for John Kerry.  I was voting as much against the Republicans as I was for the Democrats.

The day I voted for John Kerry I felt like I was probably going to Hell.  I spoke to a few of my Christian friends and family about what I was going to do, and they all freaked out.  They acted like I was crawling into bed with the Devil, himself, by voting for John Kerry.  After a few terrible responses to my new political ideas, I just kept my thoughts quiet (hiding is generally the best policy when one finds oneself a dissenter to the Church’s views—just ask all the martyrs).  I was actually afraid I might lose my job if enough people found out.  I had been pressured to be a Republican by the Christian powers-that-be.  I had been taught that to vote for anyone outside the Republican Party was to vote against God.  I don’t think this teaching is right or Godly.   I believe evangelists, who use their pulpits to push one candidate over another, make people feel like they will be voting against God if they vote anything other than Republican; such pastors are simply abusing their power.  They are using fear to control people. 

I am not saying that if you really want to follow Jesus that you have to vote Democratic in the next election (although I almost certainly will).  I am not arguing that to be Republican is to be evil.  What I do want people to do is to think for themselves before they “get into bed” with any political party.  I don’t think it is right for the church to push any candidate as God’s candidate because doing so makes people feel like if they don’t vote Republican, then they are sinning against God.  In truth, I think Jesus would probably have some pretty big problems with both of the major political parties.  I’m sure Jesus would not have been pleased with Bill Clinton cheating on his wife (because of how he treated his wife).  But I am equally sure that he would not be pleased with the Bush administration repaying evil for evil (because of all the innocent lives lost).  The Republican Party is a flawed party with many ungodly beliefs, but the Democratic Party is as well.

In my opinion, God is not for or against either party.  I think God is for all people, both Democrat and Republican. People should not vote for any party just because James Dobson, Pat Robertson, or Franklin Graham tells us we should.  We should vote for the party that best suits our individual beliefs on the most issues.  No party will perfectly do so, but one candidate or party will closer meet the issues that are important to you than the other.  When you find out which party or candidate suits you best, then you should go out and vote in good conscience, knowing that God loves you desperately and that you live within a flawed human system where no candidate is truly God’s candidate.

As a side note, my views on abortion have now changed somewhat, as well.  I still do not like the practice on the whole, but neither do I believe that abortion should be made illegal, either.  There are just too many times in my mind when abortion would be the lesser of two evils.  I don’t believe that any rape victim or incest survivor should be forced to carry a child to term just because the religious right wants them to.  If they choose to carry the child to term, great!  But I can’t imagine how impossibly difficult it would be to have to carry a constant reminder for nine months of the horrors you had suffered.  To force anyone to do that is just cruel and lacking in any compassion.  There are other situations where I think that abortion might be a better option, as well.

When I worked at the Homeless Church, I got to know several drug-addicted street prostitutes.  One of these girls, whom I will call April, got pregnant five times in the course of my years as pastor of the Homeless Church.  April’s drug of choice was crack cocaine, and April was also mentally retarded.  Every time April got pregnant, she swore she was going to stop walking the streets and stop using the crack, and every time she failed.  Her children were all born severely disabled and addicted to crack cocaine.  Every single one of them was taken away from her, as well, by social services.  When I left the church, I heard April was pregnant again.  If April had come to me asking for help with an abortion for that poor child, I probably would have driven her to the clinic myself and figured out a way to pay for the procedure.  I think it would have been more evil to bring that child into the world severely damaged and addicted to crack cocaine than to have the child aborted.  It would have broken my heart, but I would have done it.

It is easy to sit in your four bedroom house with five TV’s and four cars and say that abortion

is always wrong, but life is not always as black and white as that.   It may be easy to sit in a 

comfy pastoral chair and proclaim that a vote for anyone other than a Republican is a vote

against God, but once again I think the issue of who we need to vote for is much more

complex than that.  The poor taught me the world is not black and white, but a very colorful 

and hard to understand place, and I thank them for that.  While a black and white world

might be easier to navigate, it would not be nearly as beautiful and amazing.  So thank you,

Teddy, April, and all my other precious, poor, and homeless friends.  I thought I was going

 to save you, but I think you saved me, instead.

Book Excerpt

Growing up in a fundamentalist church, I was taught that being a Christian was synonymous with being a Republican.  Apparently this marriage began with Reagan, but since I was five when Reagan was elected, I can’t remember a time when Christian and Republican didn’t go hand in hand.   I never really thought about why we “Christians” were “Republicans” until I was in college; being a Republican was just part of who we were.

I never questioned the political status quo.  In fact, I became a card carrying member of the Republican Party.  I even listened to Rush Limbaugh in High School and college.  Everyone I knew was Republican, as well (except my Mom, but she was crazy).  When I went to college, I learned that one issue kept Christians voting Republican, and that issue was abortion.  By the time I became a junior in college, another major issue would be added: the issue of gay rights.  If you were Christian, you had to vote Republican because the Democrats sanctioned the murder of countless numbers of unborn children and wanted to give equal rights to homosexuals.  Occasionally, I heard people say they would consider voting Democrat if it weren’t for the issue of abortion.  “But I just can’t vote for a candidate who supports killing babies,” they’d forlornly explain.  I completely agreed with this statement.

So all through college and the early years of my adult life I staunchly supported the Republican Party.  I continued to listen to Rush Limbaugh; and I didn’t just listen, either.  I actually liked what he was saying and agreed with most of it.  I never questioned any of my political beliefs until I started working at the Homeless Church.  I hadn’t worked long with the homeless, however, before I saw that a lot of my political beliefs were harmful and damaging to the poor.  It is easy to say that the government should not spend so much money assisting the poor when you have never really been poor and never needed Government assistance. 

I remember listening to Rush Limbaugh one day after a three-year hiatus, which I only took from Rush because he wasn’t on Christian radio—and I ONLY listened to Christian radio.  This shocking break from my routine took place a few years after I had started working with the homeless.  Rush was talking about the Democrats . . . and their spending  . . . and how they were enabling the poor to stay poor.  Not long into his speech, I realized that he had no clue what he was talking about.  I doubted if he even knew a truly poor person.  I knew lots of homeless and poor people, and some of them were my very best friends.  I knew what their lives were like, and I didn’t know many of them, who wouldn’t work and improve their situation if they could.  Most of them were not lazy people.  In fact, as a whole I’ve never seen a group of people who work harder for less money than the poor and homeless of our country. 

The poor people I worked with didn’t stay poor because the government was helping them; they were stuck in poverty because they didn’t have the skills they needed to be successful in normal society.  Every single one of the homeless and poor I knew had tremendous, often insurmountable obstacles to face in order to make their lives “successful.” I knew they could not overcome these obstacles on their own.

One example of these obstacles is exemplified in the life of a gentleman I had worked with from the very beginning of the homeless ministry.  We’ll call this gentleman Teddy.  You wouldn’t have to be around Teddy for very long to see that something is wrong with him.  The entire left half of his face is scarred and misshapen.  Teddy has no left ear, and the eye on his left side is made of glass.  After I had gotten to know Teddy, he told me his story.   Teddy had once been a successful house painter with a wife and three kids.  One day while he was drinking some beers with friends at an apartment complex, two of his friends began arguing.  The argument escalated until one of the friends left in a huff.  A few minutes later the “huffy” friend returned with a shotgun.  Teddy stepped between the two arguing friends to try and keep somebody from getting shot.  Instead, Teddy took a shotgun blast directly to the left side of his face.

Teddy died three times because of the shotgun blast.  He died once in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, but they shocked him back, and then he died twice more in the operating room.  Miraculously, Teddy managed to survive the ordeal.  What Teddy eventually found out, though, was that the shotgun blast had not only taken half of his face, but it had also taken most his life.  Pieces of the buckshot are still lodged in his brain; it was impossible for the doctors to remove every piece from his brain.  As a result Teddy now has unexpected and uncontrollable seizures.  He can no longer work or even drive a car.  Teddy’s wife eventually left him, taking their children with her. At that point Teddy felt as though he had lost everything.  He had nothing to live for, so he began to abuse alcohol and drugs.  Teddy was hopeless, shot up, and strung out when Tina and I met him.  We helped Teddy a lot.  We were surrogate family for him.  He was able to give up drugs and mostly give up the alcohol, but no matter what we did for Teddy, we could never restore all that had been taken from him. 

Since Teddy was unable to work, he was solely reliant upon social security/disability.  I once asked Teddy how much he was getting from the Government each month because I had heard all these stories about how people on disability were taken care of for the rest of their lives, but Teddy sure seemed to be struggling financially.  I can’t remember the exact figure he told me, but I do know it was in the neighborhood of $750 a month.  I was devastated when I found out how little he was expected to live on; cheap rent in our city was around $500 a month.  I couldn’t imagine how he was keeping a roof over his head at all.  Here all these rich Republican Christians were driving around in their Lexus luxury vehicles complaining about having to give the Government a little more money for people like Teddy.  I was crushed by how cold we Christians had become towards the poor.  I have heard Fundamentalists argue that it isn’t the government’s job to take care of the poor, but I don’t see anybody else stepping up and doing anything about their situation.

Teddy wasn’t the only disabled person at the Homeless Church, either. I would say that 95% of the people I worked with had either a major physical, psychological, or mental handicap.  The poor I knew were not poor because they were lazy and wanted the wealthy to take care of them; they were poor because they were sick, and the wealthy refused to lift a finger to help.  I had heard all these stories growing up of the poor milking the system to get rich so they would not have to work.  What I actually found were disabled people, who couldn’t work, but still had to take day labor jobs because they did not receive enough assistance to make it at the end of each month.  I only ever ran across one couple in my twelve years of working with the poor, who were truly playing the system, and even they were just barely making it.  I felt like I had been deceived by Rush Limbaugh and my Republican mentors in the church.

I faced a true moral dilemma when it came time to vote in the first George W. Bush election.  I had to admit that the majority of my beliefs were actually served better by the Democratic Party, but I could not bring myself to vote for a pro-choice candidate.  To this day I think abortion is a horrific practice.  At the time of the election, gay marriage was also becoming a huge issue, and I didn’t want to support gay rights, either, because I viewed homosexuality as sin and couldn’t vote for sin.  What was I to do?  I decided not to vote at all.  For the next three years I became a conscientious political objector.  I could not in good conscience support any of the candidates, so I did not vote.