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Money and church – a dangerous combination.

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I really don’t want money to be involved with a church. I don’t want people to feel guilt about having to tithe and I don’t want the government to get involved.

The government has nothing to do with church. If there is no money involved then it is simpler all around. Forget the idea of registering a church as a nonprofit. A church isn’t a business and shouldn’t be run like one. It is a group of people, united in a common goal to serve God and humankind.

Tithes make people feel excluded. They are guilt inducing. Have I paid enough? Is it ten percent of my net or of my gross? The poor person knows that he hasn’t paid anywhere near the amount that the rich person has, so he feels that he is not an equal member.

To expect people to pay to go to church is to exclude some people. It certainly will shame some of them. It will make some people feel like modern day lepers.

To have the alms basin pass through the pews right before communion is even more excluding. If you pay, you can play. If you put some money in the plate then you get to meet Jesus. I suspect that most people don’t see it that way. But you notice the alms basin isn’t passed at the beginning of the service, or at the end. It is right in the middle, right before communion. This is the worst time ever.

I get it. People would bring their offerings to the Temple. They would bring an ox or two doves or some grain, depending on the degree of the sin that they had committed. The bigger the sin, the bigger the offering. Since we don’t deal in animal sacrifice any more, we use money. It is a lot more portable.

Also, the modern idea of offerings is to make us mindful of the idea that everything we have comes from God. Everything. If we hold on to it like it is all ours then we start to think that we are responsible for our fortune, and by fortune I mean not only money but luck. When we give some of our money back to God we are acknowledging that it isn’t ours. It wasn’t really ever ours to start off with.

But I just don’t like the idea of money mixed up with church. Jesus never collected money for his services. Jesus never carried money.

The disciples rarely carried money either. When he sent them out to preach he told them to not take any money (or much of anything else) with them.

Jesus says in Luke 10:4,
“4 Don’t carry a money-bag, traveling bag, or sandals; don’t greet anyone along the road.”

We are told to not worry about money or material possessions.

Jesus says in Luke 12:27,
“Look at the lilies and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are.”

Now, of course people have to have stuff to survive. They need food and clothing and shelter. But we aren’t supposed to worry about it.

When they got to a certain town, they had to pay the temple tax. Jesus tells Peter to go fish. Jesus tells Peter to use the talent he has, that he is good at and trust that God will provide. And God does provide in an amazing way.

In Matthew 17:24-27 we read this amazing story.
24 After Jesus and his disciples arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma temple tax came to Peter and asked, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax?” 25 “Yes, he does,” he replied. When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. “What do you think, Simon?” he asked. “From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes—from their own children or from others?” 26 “From others,” Peter answered. “Then the children are exempt,” Jesus said to him. 27 “But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.”

But churches need money too, right? Of course they do, if you think of church as being a building. Of course they do if you think of that building being staffed by paid ministers.

But this isn’t the model that Jesus gives us.

In Luke 12:33-34, Jesus says,
33″Sell your possessions and give to charity; make yourselves money belts which do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near nor moth destroys. 34″For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

In Matthew 6:19, Jesus says,
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.”

We’ve started to think of the buildings as church, and forgotten that the Church is the people. The Body of Christ is made up not of bricks but of bodies. Every one of us is a living, breathing cell in the Body of Christ.

When we forget this, we start to worship the building and not even notice the Body.

Jesus never built a building. If you go to the Holy Land, you can’t take a tour of the First church of Jesus. Jesus never ordained anybody. Jesus never consecrated a place or a person. Jesus said that everything and everyone was of God. So why are we doing otherwise?

We shouldn’t spend our time and our money building up a church made of bricks and stones. We should spend our time and our money building up a Church made of people. If we spend our time and our money on education, on health, on arts, on healing people inside and out, we will have a stronger Body. We’ll have a stronger world.

If we wake people up to their true potential then this Body will be very strong indeed.

Magic marker, indeed!

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There are several children’s books that feature a child who draws with a pencil (or marker, or crayon) and things magically appear from what they draw. They are all enjoyable. Here are some that I’ve particularly liked.
AUTHOR Gilliland, Judith Heide.
TITLE Not in the house, Newton! / Judith Heide Gilliland ; illustrated
by Elizabeth Sayles.
NOTE Everything Newton draws with his magic red crayon becomes real,
and heeding his mother’s admonition he flies the airplane he
draws right out the window.
AUTHOR Johnson, Crockett, 1906-1975.
TITLE Harold and the purple crayon / by Crockett Johnson.
NOTE Harold goes for an adventurous walk in the moonlight with his
purple crayon.

AUTHOR McCarty, Peter.
TITLE Jeremy draws a monster / Peter McCarty.
NOTE A young boy who spends most of his time alone in his bedroom
makes new friends after the monster in his drawing becomes a
monstrous nuisance.

AUTHOR Collins, Ross.
TITLE Doodleday / by Ross Collins.
NOTE Despite his mother’s warning, young Harvey draws on Doodleday,
but when his drawings come to life in frightening ways, only
his mother can help.

“Dog Loves Drawing” by Louise Yates

“The Pencil” by Allan Ahlberg and Bruce Ingman

Aaron Becker’s series – Journey, Quest, and Return

Words

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I kept using the word “crazy” to define myself when I was with my spiritual director. She knows my history with bipolar disorder. She knows I hear from God. She, unlike my former minister, doesn’t freak out when I say that. She doesn’t like it however when I say I’m crazy. She thinks my difference is a gift. She thinks that God made me this way on purpose, that it isn’t an accident and it isn’t a handicap.

She asked me recently to ask Jesus what words he would use to describe me. When I did, instantly I got back these two words:

Anointed. Chosen.

My reaction to this? That again? You have to be talking to someone else. Nobody is going to believe me.

Then I think of Moses, arguing with God. He didn’t want it either. He kept trying to get out of it. Moses was one guy, untrained, with a speech impediment. God told him to go in front of the most powerful person in the world at the time and ask him to free thousands of people. God was asking him to liberate people from a tyrant.

With no army.
With no diplomatic skills.
With nothing, except the word of God.

God called to Moses from a burning bush. He didn’t send an angel. This was a bush on fire, yet it wasn’t being consumed by the fire. Sounds like a hallucination.

It all sounds crazy, right? Yet it happened. Why can’t something like that happen now? Why wouldn’t it? If we believe in an active and living God, then we have to believe that God still talks to people.

Why does God call amateurs? Why not call the experts? If God keeps working through the amateurs, why become an expert? What is the point of becoming ordained? If “God doesn’t call the equipped, he equips the called” as is frequently said, then it means the call is more important than the preparation.

God made the waves part for the Israelites to escape from the Egyptians. God made water come from a rock when they were thirsty. God made bread for them too.

Blessed are you God, who makes bread come from the earth. This Jewish prayer said at every meal where bread is served. It is a reminder of the manna from heaven. It is a reminder that God provides for us all the time. We didn’t buy or bake that bread. God gave us the ability to buy it or bake it. God made the grain grow from the earth. Sure, somebody planted it. But God made it happen.

If by my faith I am healed as Jesus says throughout the Gospels to people, then I want to believe that God has called me. I want to believe that I’m not making this up. I want to believe that the voice I hear is God’s voice. I want to believe that it is real.

Jesus tells us in Matthew 4:4 that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from God.

Now, Jesus is the bread of life, and the Word.

When my spiritual director tells me I am amazing and special, I think that she tells that to everyone she directs.

Sure I’m special. And different and unique. I stress that to everybody how special they are and that they should celebrate their uniqueness. And then I have a very hard time fully believing it myself.

Perhaps my hesitancy is part of it all. Perhaps God needs me to be certain of my call. It has taken me a lot to tell ministers of the call I first heard when I was 12. It took me a lot of self convincing before I even told a minister. I had to convince myself first. There were a lot of walls that had to be overcome in my own heart first.

Why not believe that Jesus has made a home in my heart? Why not believe that I am called to build a new church?

What is the danger of believing this?

Embarrassing the church. Leading people away from the truth. Having them be mislead. Like David Koresh. Like Jim Jones.

Going so far that I am discredited, that the message is not heard.

But, then I think, if the message is from God, it will get out. If it really is of God, it will happen.

I ask to not get in the way, and to be the way. It is both at the same time. God made me the way he made me because he needs me this way.

My diagnosis means I am mindful and careful. It means I ask for guidance and for oversight. It means also that I self limit. This is good and bad.

I’m still upset that the place I asked for training and oversight didn’t know how to handle me. But then again if I am to do something new, I can’t follow an old pattern.

New wine, old wineskin, and all that.

Ego

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The world goes out of its way to bring you down. Don’t join them.

Many people will show modesty. They will refuse to say that they are good at what they do for fear of being seen as arrogant.

I take it another way. God made you special. For you to downgrade or diminish something that you are good at is to talk badly about God.

Be proud of who you are. Let your light shine.

When someone tries to bring you down, they are really just jealous of you. They think they have to bring your down to raise themselves up. There is also a good chance that this is how they were talked to as a child. Their parents taught them that this is how you talk to people. They taught them to only see the bad. They taught them that they were bad.

This is a teachable moment.

You have a chance of re-educating them. You can respond gently, with love, that you are not the dirt they think you are. They haven’t seen your flowers yet.

If you let someone treat you like dirt, you’ll start to believe it too.

Don’t let somebody knock you down, even if that somebody is yourself.

Translation

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When I pray, it sometimes feels like I have to translate.

Sometimes I feel that when I reach out to the beyond it all comes back so fast that I have a hard time keeping up. Communing with the infinite requires an interface.

I feel like I have to translate what I experience into something I can share. I don’t do it right all the time. Sometimes I completely miss the mark and the images or words that I get are all jumbled.

Maybe it isn’t about sharing it or ever getting it perfect. Maybe it can’t ever be fully brought down. Maybe I’ll always lose something in the translation.

Maybe the point is to just show the way and tell others that there is more to just this world than what we see. May be the goal is just to be a conductor and not a guide. I’m here not really to help you get there, but to know that there exists. I’m not here to take you to my secret hiding place, because it isn’t secret.

You are just seeing a different corner of it.

The fact that I had to go in the back door doesn’t matter. You had to go in the window. Another had to go in the dog door. Another had to cut a hole in the roof.

But we all got there.

My way in isn’t the only way, or the best way. Sometimes it isn’t even the best way for me. However, the more I do it, the better it gets.

Can I get an Amen?

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I just read a news report about a pastor in Arizona who says that women shouldn’t even say “Amen” in church. He’s using the words of Paul in the first book of Corinthians to justify this.

In 1 Cor. 14:34-35, Paul says “…34 the women should be silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but should be submissive, as the law also says. 35 And if they want to learn something, they should ask their own husbands at home, for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church meeting.”

Once again, we see an example of someone who is a Paulian and not a Christian. Once again we see a pastor who isn’t spreading the Gospel. Once again we read a news report about someone who is making it hard to identify as Christian.

We have to distinguish between the words of Paul and the words of Jesus if we say we are Christians. Paul’s words are diluted. Jesus’ words are distilled. Jesus’ words are the very essence of love. Paul’s, not so much. Paul’s words are filtered through a very human person, a product of his time. Jesus’ words are filtered through someone whose words transcend time itself.

We don’t worship Paul. So why do people take his words as the Gospel, or as truth?

Jesus came to bring heaven to earth, not to bring us hell.

All bad reports about bad pastors just obscure the stories about the good ones. It is bad witness. We are fed trash by the news agencies and mislead. Why can’t “news” be good news instead of all bad? I feel like I’m constantly having to do damage control.

I will not defend Christianity. But I will defend Christ. The two aren’t the same at all. They were meant to be, and for some people they are. For some people who live the Word and have Jesus in their hearts, the two are the same. But for many, they aren’t.

Jesus says – 21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. (Matthew 7:21-23)

Jesus says – 15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? 17 Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Therefore by their fruits you will know them. (Matthew 7:15-20)

Jesus says – “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3 You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. 5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. 6 If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. 7 If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. 8 By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples. (John 15:1-8)

Jesus is love. We have to be too. If what someone who says they are Christian does isn’t loving, then they aren’t connected to the source of love, which is Jesus. Just because they say they are Christian doesn’t mean they are. Look at what they do.

ID badges? We don’t need no stinking badges!

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I don’t get why people won’t get their ID changed. I see people who have the wrong address on their license all the time when I’m signing people up for their library cards.

ID without proper information on it isn’t ID. If you are in an accident and are badly hurt, how are the police going to notify your family? How does this ID help the shopkeeper verify the information on your check, or the librarian get into the correct account?

The worst example I’ve seen was when a lady had moved and gotten married. That had all happened three years prior and she hadn’t gotten anything changed. The only things that were right on her ID were her first name and her birth date. How is this identification?

In Tennessee, you have to notify the DMV within ten days of moving. You don’t have to get it changed on your license, but it makes it easier all around if you do. The fee ranges from 8 to 16 dollars to get a new license with your new address on it. Making time to do it is a little tricky, because the hours for the offices are the same as the hours most people work, but then again so are doctor’s offices and people seem to manage to make time to go there. It is also possible to do it online, so there really is no excuse not to do it.

One lady recently said “But I just moved here in November” It is March. This is fairly common. I’ve noticed that when people say “But I just…” then some not-really-good excuse is going to happen for why they think they are above the rules. “But I just…” really means “But I just think that I’m special and I don’t have to do this.”

People will say that they are waiting for their license to expire before they take care of it. If your license is going to expire within that calendar year you can do both at the same time. Either way – you still have to do it. The law doesn’t care about your convenience.

They have their checkbook and bills with them with the current address, but not their ID. So it is readily apparent what is important to them. Cable TV and cell phone service are going to win that battle. They’ve often gotten their car registered too, which is far more tedious.

I told one lady that if she got pulled over with the wrong information on her ID that she might have to go before a judge to get it worked out. She got indignant. She said “But I am a taxpayer!” I said “So is the judge.” This stumped her.

Being a taxpayer doesn’t entitle you to break the law. In fact, if you aren’t paying taxes, you are breaking the law. Being a taxpayer doesn’t mean anything. The rules apply to everybody equally. You aren’t above them because you are a taxpayer. That is insane.

Getting your ID current is just something you have to do as part of being an adult. It isn’t impossible, and it doesn’t take all day. Not doing it causes far more problems. Ideally, there would be self-service kiosks where people could take care of simple things like this in most government offices, like at the county clerk’s office. I know that they are working on that in my county. But, it can still be done online if it is a simple address change from within Tennessee.

It gets more complicated if you moved into Tennessee from another state. You have to provide a little more documentation, but it is all stuff that you should have anyway as an adult. This includes your birth certificate and Social Security card. None of it is a surprise – it is all spelled out on the Tennessee DMV website. I suspect that all states have similar requirements and similarly informative websites. So there really is no excuse for not getting it changed.

But then the chorus of “But I just…” is rising.

Forgiving Fred.

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Fred Phelps has died. He was the leader of the Westboro group. They weren’t Baptist, and they weren’t a church. Not really. They were an organized group of haters. They showed up at military and high publicity funerals to protest gay people, even if the person who died was straight.

Among Jesus’ last words were “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.” Let us forgive Fred and his followers.

We cannot become like Fred Phelps or his followers. If we do, they have won. To hope that he “rots in hell” or to desire to “piss on his grave” is to let his brand of hate to take over.

This is about really knowing the message of Jesus. This is about knowing that the message is about forgiveness and love. It is about showing that same forgiveness and love that is shown to us through Jesus to others

Why would people want to become Christian if the face of Christianity is Fred Phelps and his group? Why would they want to become part of the Body of Christ when it looks like it is only used to attack others?

This Body was created to heal, not hurt. Our hands are meant for feeding and clothing others, not for holding picket signs. Our fingers were not made for pointing.

Imagine if this group had used its resources to mobilize their members to go to flood areas and other natural disasters to help out. They could have used their powers for good. Imagine if they’d used their money and time to teach people how to read or how to eat healthy food

We, as members of the Body of Christ, are held to a higher standard. We must forgive him. To forgive is not to condone.

We must remember that he was not acting alone. When we talk about how bad he was, we have to remember that it wasn’t just one man who showed up with a picket sign.

We talk about how bad Hitler was, but we forget that it was thousands of his followers that did the dirty work. We talk about Osama bin Laden, but we forget he wasn’t the one who was bombing and killing. Both of them were just giving the orders and others were just carrying them out.

If we are filled with hate towards Fred Phelps, we are one of his followers as surely as they were.

The bad thing is that there are plenty of people who call themselves Christian who agree with the Westboro group’s motives, if not their methods. They think that the purpose of Christians is to tell off other people and to have them live by a certain narrow set of rules.

They don’t remember that Jesus, in John 8:7, when he came across a group that was going to stone an adulterers, said “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” Jesus doesn’t condemn her, or anybody else. Neither should we. They don’t remember that Jesus paid for all sins, for everybody, across time, by his death on the cross. We aren’t sinners, none of us. That debt is paid.

We can’t condemn even those who condemn others. Even Fred Phelps and his followers. We have to love them, because they need it the most. We have to show them love. We have to show them how to love by being loving to them.

Forgive them. Be the face of love to them. We must teach them who Jesus really is by being Jesus to them. Jesus is love. Thus, we should be too.

Who is the dummy? – on boundaries.

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Who is the dummy? If Jane asks Bob for ten dollars every day, and Bob gives it to her happily, then there is no problem. If he resents her asking but says nothing, then she isn’t in the wrong, he is. He’s the dummy.

Whatever someone wants from you – time, energy, money, whatever, if it is a burden for you, you must say no.

Consider if someone shows up to your house unexpected. They ask if they can come in. You are tired after a long day and you are about to go to bed. You don’t want to stay up entertaining them. You have to work early tomorrow morning. Do you let them in?

What if they want to stay in your house overnight? Or for a week? Or for a month? Or a year? Or forever?

Where do you draw the line?

At what point do your own needs come into play? If you do not stand up for yourself, who will?

I know several people who if they don’t respond to a text message immediately, their friend or relative will start to freak out. They will send another text. They will call. They will contact another person to check up on them. This is their normal behavior.

But the friend or relative isn’t the dummy. They haven’t been told “no” in a way that they understand. Perhaps they haven’t been told “no” at all.
It is up to each of us to establish boundaries of what is OK and what isn’t.

Now, here’s the funny bit – the other person can establish their own boundaries too. There is a lady at work who wears a really strong scented lotion. It triggers my asthma. The smell is so strong that if she has walked through that area, the smell lingers like a cloud.

Years ago I just suffered quietly, harboring my resentment that this horrible smell was affecting me. She didn’t know that it bothered me. So in that case, I was the dummy for not saying anything.

Then I bolstered up my courage and said something to her. She brushed off my concern. Sadly, this is common. People don’t understand asthma. They don’t get that I have to stop breathing for a little bit when I encounter a trigger smell, in order to not overexpose myself to it. If I get too much of it and the asthma attack starts it feels like someone has grabbed my left lung in a vise every time I breathe in. I cannot get in a full breath. It is terrifying.

And it is preventable. If I had my way, a whole lot of perfumes would just stop being produced, because it isn’t just me that is affected. But that is another post for another day.

Because this lady doesn’t work in my area, I’ve not done anything more about it. She doesn’t spend a lot of time around me. If she did, I’d have to talk to a manager about it. I talked to her, and she ignored me. This was months ago.

Then, yesterday, she saw me in the break room and said that she’d just be in there quickly, because she “had heard” that I was allergic to her lotion. She “didn’t want me to throw up.” Throwing up isn’t part of an asthma attack. And she “had heard” it from me – it wasn’t gossip. She was a bit confused all around, but she had decided to just not be around me. I mentioned that she could choose to not wear it, and she said she didn’t like the unscented lotion.

It was a weird compromise, but it was a compromise. If I’d not said anything to her, then I’d be in the wrong – not her. In the best of worlds, she would have understood the depth of harm her overly-scented lotion does to me. I don’t think that is possible considering her statements from yesterday. It is obvious that she misunderstood what I’d said to her before.

It is weird that she somehow “got it” months later, but that isn’t the point. The point is that I had to say something, and she had a choice.

Six categories – story

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Jamilla and Dante’s podcraft was hurtling towards the surface of the planet at an unhealthy rate. Their honeymoon was about to be cut short due to a terminal case of gravity. Little did they know that they had a lot more detective work to do. They simply thought they were about to provide a lot more work for their office.
They had headed to Altair 5 as a cover anyway. Too many other podcrafts had gone down unexpectedly in the past month to be a coincidence. They knew from their many years of working for the office of Judge Jones Malone that sometimes the best way to solve a crime was to become part of it.
They were peacekeepers, both of them, but they were also in love. Dante had noticed Jamilla first. She’d sashayed into Judge Malone’s office that dusty August afternoon, plaspapers in hand, looking for a job as a detective. Her mechanical horse Rusty Nut was tethered up just outside, refueling at the energy trough. Dante thought she sure filled out her crimson chaps well. The fringe swayed in a way that made him look at her a bit longer than he thought he was supposed to.
But there wasn’t time for such memories now. The planet that they had looked forward to spending some quality time on was coming up far faster than they liked, and there wasn’t anybody else on board to help. It was up to them.
And the angels.
In the middle of the cramped podcraft, filled with everything they’d need for a vacation that also was a cover for an investigation, Jamilla put her hands together. She prayed like she always prayed, out loud, unscripted. She prayed to God, the Creator, the Source of all. She prayed to the same God who parted the sea so the Israelites could escape from their enemies. Even though there was no sea this time, the danger was the same. She had no idea what God could do in this situation, but she knew that God could do anything, and hey, it couldn’t hurt to ask.
And the angels came, four hundred of them strong. They came out of nowhere and they surrounded the craft, lifting, buoying it up. Some of them held it on their winged shoulders. Some of them fluttered their wings nearby to keep the ship cool from the reentry. They came, gloriously, triumphantly, majestically.
They were invisible as always to everybody but Jamilla. She could see them from the podcraft’s port window, crowding together. The spaceport tower controllers were oblivious to what was going on. They just thought that the ship had suddenly righted itself. All they knew was that they were going to have a lot less paperwork to fill out now.
————————
(This is what happened when I tried to combine as many categories as I could. I ended up with African American, Mystery, Romance, Christian, Western, and Science Fiction. If you tried to put all those stickers on the spine of one book, you’d never see the author or title. )