In Search of Our Myth

January 25, 2015
Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, Pastor

"Joseph Campbell said all the problems that we are experiencing - economic disparity, ecological meltdown, crime, alienation, atomization, war, starvation - are the result of us having no communal myth.  A story that unites us, defines us, in relationship to ourselves, other people, and nature.  Campbell says the myths that we do have are antiquated and irrelevant 'desert myths.'"    Russell Brand

In truth, I hardly know her, though she has a key to my house for five years and she comes over every two weeks to do the housekeeping that I don't want to do myself.  I ran by the house this week to make a quick change of clothes into a shirt and tie that did not have bits of my lunch on them and there on the kitchen counter were the broken pieces of an old hand painted china plate.  She was very embarrassed and offered, "Can I replace it."

"No," I said, "it had been a gift from an elderly aunt, something she had given to me just before she died about 30 years ago.  I'm not the kind of guy who would choose to hang a piece of painted china on my wall, regardless of its value or artistry.  I'm gay friendly but not actually a member of the club.

I assured her not to worry about it.  Accidents happen.  It's no big deal.  But when I got home that night, she had left her paycheck behind with a heart-felt note of apology.  I will get the money to her, of course.  I am certain that she does not clean other people's houses for the entertainment value of it.

What has captured my attention about this little exchange is this person I hardly know has such a clear set of values, that she is so earnest to take more responsibility for her actions than anyone could reasonably expect.

They have not made much of it for a couple of centuries now but Catholics used to talk about deeds of "Supererogation" which literally means going above and beyond what is required but it carried the implication of trying to be even better than God expects you to be.  I mention it now because there are so few opportunities to meaningfully say supererogation in polite conversation.

In a world where the Catholic hierarchy has moved pedophile priests and my own former denomination, The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) hid pedophile denominational leaders by moving them from state to state to evade criminal prosecution.... Where elected officials in this ostensibly Christian nation will torture prisoners, turn the mentally ill out onto the streets to die from exposure to the winter weather, and invade nations on false pretenses, where people you have supported in their times of greatest need will betray you for nothing more than the power they feel in being able to hurt you.... Comes a stranger with more evidence of character than is often found in congress, cathedrals or even in your backyard at a family barbeque.

I'm currently preparing to go on my first real speaking tour and I have the good fortune to be doing that in Scotland and England.  I asked my Scottish host to suggest some readings that would help me to understand my audience in Glasgow.  He sent me several articles about the recent vote around Scottish independence and wrapped that up with a suggestion that I read a recent book by the British author, Russell Brand, entitled, Revolution.


I regularly have lunch with our good friend, Dr. Charles Hedrick, and this past week, when he asked me, as he usually does, "What are you reading these days?" I felt obligated to name several other things and avoid mentioning Brand's book because, Brand is a well known alcoholic, drug addicted, womanizing, famous, millionaire movie star, and I wasn't sure that I should offer that particular bit of information.

But, I have to admit, I've really liked Brand's book and have been shocked to discover how much I have in common with him.... Other than the alcoholic, drug addicted, womanizing, famous, millionaire movie star, part.

Brand became a famous and wealthy person on the strength of his stories about his exploits as a spoiled and self-serving addict but this book is about his recovery in the AA movement, his discovery of a largely rational and social justice based spirituality.  He is no intellectual but he has become an avid reader and he has been willing to analyze his personal faults in a very public way.

Like a lot of us, he found it increasingly necessary to dismiss the creedal religions that lost all credibility for us in the face of the reality both of science and of the undeniable human suffering caused by irrational religion and governments controlled by the super-wealthy.

In sobriety he has found the gratitude we so often hear expressed by former addicts who find the bliss of sobriety and a life lived oriented to reality.  But, again, like many of us, he has found it difficult to give an account of his new found spiritual enthusiasm to his peers who have found religion to be all too easy, and dare I say, necessary to abandon.

I suspect that we are likely to be the only church on earth where a Russell Brand quote is the wisdom lesson for the day but this comment he made about Joseph Campbell seems to really speak to our current challenge.  The stories that come to us from wandering Palestinian shepherds and barely settled agricultural societies of first century Judah no longer have the power we have tried to give them by claiming that God wrote them.

Campbell's observation that we need new communal myths to guide us into relevant moral living seems to be right on to me.  I have been inclined to think that we can replace those with modern biographies... the recent release of the movie, "Selma," seems like a good example.  The problem, however, with lifting any modern leader into that role is that we also have access to information about their faults.

Jesus may have been guilty of some of the racism of his culture but we have little to go on to make that point.  He is protected by two millennia of the fog of memory.  But when you talk about Gandhi, or King, or even such bright lights as Dorothy Day or Mother Theresa, we can also enumerate the ways that they disappointed us.

We have difficulty in appreciating anything that anyone does without also wallowing in their more salacious failings.  This is almost as true of public figures as it is of religious leaders.  Though he has recovered a lot of popularity, history will likely remember Bill Clinton more for his tryst with Monica Lewinsky than his rise from Arkansas poverty to the White House.

We've watched the conservative world trying to find a soft place in Barack Obama where they can stick a dagger in for six years.  Their attempts often seem rather desperate, such as in Mike Huckabee's criticism of the Obama's poor parenting in allowing their daughters to listen to music by Beyonce'.... In spite of the fact that Huckabee's son was found guilty of hanging, torturing and killing a neighbor's dog..... this is not a game of moral finger pointing that he is likely to win in the universe of bad parenting wars.

We have got to be able to praise the decision of 18-year-old John Lewis to kneel in prayer on the Evan Pettus Bridge during the Selma march while Alabama State police mercilessly cracked his skull with their batons.... We have to be able to tell the story of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the Montgomery, AL bus that started the bus boycott that fueled the civil rights movement without trying to go through their garbage to tell ourselves that we don't need to follow their example.

Gossip is used to destroy reputations of leaders to give ourselves a pass on all of our own shortcomings.  We have got to rise above these false diversions so that we can be more concerned about virtue than we are about trying to drag everyone down.  I'm guilty of it too but I can tell you that the 21st century is starved for meaningful myths and examples to guide us, to inspire us, and to motivate us to deeds of kindness, compassion, and liberation.

All the while, we are being fed false heroes.  At the same theaters that are now showing "Selma" larger crowds are going to see "American Sniper,".... A hero tale about a man who evidently killed more than 200 Iraqis.

The self-aggrandizing auto-biography of a soldier who claimed to have beaten up Jesse Ventura in a bar fight which has been proven to be false in a libel suit, and who claimed to have killed two car-jackers in Texas and shot looters during the Katrina aftermath.... None of which was true.... Nor was his claim to have given all of the proceeds of his book to charity.

Clint Eastwood claims that the movie is not political but the twitter feed of those who have seen it would seem to contradict that, as enthusiastic movie goers have reported that they came out wanting to shoot as many Arab Muslims as they could.  If there is a vacuum of real heroes in modern culture, it seems that we will create role models that we really shouldn't follow.

Athletes, movie stars, rock stars, and snipers may be pushed up in the public consciousness because they are famous, or wealthy, or even because they are portrayed as being brave but I come back to this house-keeper who, without much thought, has a reflex reaction to do the right thing, even more than the right thing..... I'll say it again.... To commit an act of supererogation..... you know that you'll want to use that this week....

Largely unchurched Western Europe seems to do a better job of showing compassion to the poor, the mentally ill, and even to those guilty of crimes than in our heavily church populated country.

But it doesn't have to be that way.  My fear is that without spirituality, pure reason can lead human kind into a moral vacuum.  We just have to acknowledge that there are good and bad myths.
There are popular role models who are dangerous and there are others whose virtues are to be praised and imitated.  And there are very unhealthy forms of religion and very helpful and promising forms of faith.  As the famous scholar, Karen Armstrong, has written:
"If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, of self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology."

Let's not leave the future up to chance.  Let's think, and act, following in the pathway that leads to liberation, courageous compassion, non-violent transformation, and into a consistently loving community.

Our progressive faith should free you from bondage to old myths that no longer work in our modern society but that liberation should not lead to either cynicism or rabid individualism.  Together, we really must learn anew how to be the people we always inherently admired for their good deeds and to learn again the way of living that leads us to love one another.

The Word of the Lord was Rare...

Epiphany 2    Jan. 18, 2015
Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor

1 Samuel 3:1-11                    
3Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. 2At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; 3the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. 4Then the Lord called, "Samuel! Samuel!" and he said, "Here I am!" 5and ran to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I did not call; lie down again." So he went and lay down.6The Lord called again, "Samuel!" Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I did not call, my son; lie down again." 7Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. 8The Lord called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. 9Therefore Eli said to Samuel, "Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, 'Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.'" So Samuel went and lay down in his place. 10Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, "Samuel! Samuel!" And Samuel said, "Speak, for your servant is listening."
11Then the Lord said to Samuel, "See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle.

Though the world has become quite diverse and there has been an explosion of movies, music, and books; for most of human history there has been a certain shared core of songs and stories that you only have to hear the first few notes, the first few words, and it reminds you immediately of the whole.

If I say, "Four score and seven years ago....." your mind will automatically return to the Gettysburg address.  If you are a child of the seventies as I am, you only have to hear the first two notes to the Star Wars theme and the image of a gigantic white Imperial cruiser is framed against the blackness of space in your mind.

For those of us who grew up in church, there are a lot of passages and stories from the Bible that affect us the same way.

I know that this generation is not as steeped in Biblical readings as were preceding generations but I have to tell you, as a preacher, I'm still there.

Most of us at least consult a very ancient cycle of readings from the Bible that assigns an Old Testament lesson, a Psalm, a Gospel lesson and a reading from the epistles for every Sunday of the year.  I don't always follow the lectionary and even when I do, I usually only use one of the assigned passages here in church, but I read them all, every week.

The cycle repeats itself every three years, so, at this point in my life, I am half way through an even dozen times of preaching my way through the lectionary.  After having written a dozen sermons on this text we have today about the boy Samuel, sleeping in the temple, I only have to read the first sentence to remember the words of the passage the way that you would remember the lyrics to the songs on the very first album you ever bought, the one you played over and over and over again when you were a kid.

And don't worry, I won't tell anyone that your first vinyl LP was the Partridge Family Album.

For most of the past several centuries, it wasn't just preachers, it was everyone who, when they heard the opening lines of this story:  "The word of the Lord was rare in those days".... Everyone would immediately lip the next phrase, "visions were not wide spread."

When I was young, I made the mistake of reading these stories as if there were photographs in an old family album.... Little snippets of our faith history.... This is what Samuel looked like when he was young.... This was his first grade picture, and here he is at senior prom, wearing that silly suit with wide lapels and sporting a polka-dot bow tie.

I read the Bible that way back then, as if learning the history of the heroes of the faith would somehow make me a better Christian.  But, of course, they were never meant to be read that way.  They were always stories that were supposed to mean something new every time they were read.

When you hear a love song on the radio, do you immediately imagine the woman that the musician is singing about or do you think about the woman that you love?  See, you never imagined singing that song to the artist's girlfriend, you dream about singing it to the one for whom your own heart longs.

That's how you read the Bible.... That's how the stories come to life.  Sure, there is a specific setting to this little story.... A very young man has been given to the priesthood as a servant.  Samuel was sort of a houseboy for Eli.  He put oil in the lamps, carried the groceries, swept the floor.

And in this sort of Cinderella story, Samuel doesn't have a bedroom.... He is just sleeping in the sanctuary of the church.  You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see the metaphor in that..... he is in the church.... Sleeping.  And then, the story says, the Lord God Almighty calls out to him.  I don't know what the voice of the Lord God Almighty would sound like but I want to believe that if the Lord God Almighty were calling my name that I would recognize the voice.

But in this story, repeatedly, Samuel doesn't recognize God's voice... and he just keeps going back to sleep.  There is the metaphor... there is the symbolism.... People thought that the word of the Lord was rare, that visions were not wide spread... but the church was asleep.

This isn't a story about Samuel.... And it isn't a story about catching a nap during the sermon.  It is about a community so dead to the word of the Lord that they are in a coma.

We know about that kind of cultural deafness, don't we?  We make progress in many arenas of life.... The Supreme Court is finally going to hear a case that will allow them to make same sex marriages legal in all 50 states.... 20 years after I performed my first same sex wedding, illegally.... But no one ever accused the Supreme Court of getting things figured out very quickly.... The 9 justices can sleep comfortably through generations and so, we know what it means to say:

The word of the Lord was rare in those days.

Would you humor me a bit and repeat this verse with me?  When I say, "The word of the Lord was rare in those days." Would you say, "visions were not widespread."

You may not remember many of the scripture passages you hear read here but I would really like for you to let this one sink in.  I am afraid that our culture is asleep and this story is one we should remember.

Because, you know, here in Missouri, I have been writing columns and leading demonstrations against predatory lending for almost two decades.  Our state is either the worst in the union or we're in second place for abusing our poor and vulnerable.  Payday Loan businesses can charge nearly 2000% interest on small loans, literally taking food off of the tables of the poor, causing them to be evicted from their homes and having their cars repossessed.  Every state around us has put a stop to these practices years ago but our legislature refuses to do so.

A bill is introduced in every legislative session to cap interest rates at something reasonable and that legislation has never made it to the floor for a vote.... Is no one paying attention?  Is the governor asleep?  Is the legislature asleep?  This is a monumental problem with a very simple answer.... So simple that they have already figured it out in Kentucky, Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa and Illinois.... This is not organic chemistry or a complicated calculus problem... this is easy.  And yet there has been no progress.  I'm thinking:

The word of the Lord is rare in those days.......

But money in politics has not just affected Missouri.  On the national scene ever since the Citizen's United decision removed any upper limit to campaign donations, billions of dollars in corporate donations have flooded into political campaigns.  The small donations of private citizens have become totally irrelevant in the face of the hundreds of millions donated by corporations.

And it is a good investment too.  Recent studies show that their billions in donations are becoming trillions in government contracts.
For every dollar a corporation donates to a political campaign, they get back, on average, more than $700 in government grants, tax breaks and contracts.

What could be more obvious than that it is unethical for politicians to take donations from the very corporations that they are elected to regulate?  But they don't regulate them....and the current congress only wants to deregulate farther.  It seems to me:

That the word of the Lord was rare in those days......

Just over two years ago, when Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook Elementary and killed twenty children and six adults, there was finally enough shock in our nation to make sane gun control legislation inevitable.

But the NRA shamed the public for trying to make such a tragic event a political lightening rod.  They told us, "now is not the time....." and of course, weeks pass, memories fade.  I don't know what the number is now.... Last summer there had been more than 70 more shootings in schools since Sandy Hook... nearly 200 more children dead.... We don't talk about gun control much anymore.... Because

The word of the Lord was rare in those days......

The story in I Samuel, with real tongue in cheek humor, begins sort of mockingly.... Saying that the word of the Lord was rare but then repeatedly showing that no one recognized the voice of God.  But it ends almost with a threat.

Look at the last verse of the periscope, verse, 11:
"See, I am about to do something.... That will make everyone's ears [hurt]"

Again, I'm not talking this literally as if there were going to be some disembodied voice that shouts down from heaven.  What makes our ears hurt is not just when we are told something that we don't want to hear.... It is when we are told something that we know is true that we don't want to hear.

We know that poverty is violence.  We know that hunger, homelessness, joblessness, the gutting of pensions and the funding of higher education is inexcusable in a wealthy nation.... We just don't want to hear it because once you acknowledge that truth, it becomes more difficult to resist change.

Newsweek published a banner headline this week reporting that the Dali Lama had stated that he is a Marxist when it comes to economics.  Americans have swarmed to events where the Dali Lama was speaking for two decades but they never seem to hear what he is saying.  He has been talking about economic injustice for years... he has repeatedly said that he was a Marxist... but every time it comes up, people act surprised because they were not listening the last dozen times he said it.

The Pope Francis has condemned unfettered capitalism as being the "new tyranny" of our time.  Of course, the Wall Street Journal and the London Telegraph immediately bemoaned the fact that the Pope doesn't understand economics....the marketplace loves religion when it teaches the poor to be obedient, honest, hardworking, and to be willing to accept their piece of the pie only in the sky in the by and by, but when the Pope says that the system is rigged to exploit the poor and serve the rich, they can only shake their heads and say, "Isn't it sad that there are no great spiritual leaders in our day?"

I think that the word of the Lord is not rare.  It is, however, true that most of the public finds it easier to sleep than it is to listen, to be informed, to network with other concerned people and to take collective action.

The minority can only oppress the majority as long as the majority is willing to fight with one another.  The very wealthy want Christians to be afraid of Muslims, for Muslims to blame Jews for their poverty, for poor blacks and poor whites to arm themselves for neighborhood anarchy while both poor blacks and poor whites are in servitude to banks and corporations that place no more value on them than another piece of scrap wood to throw on the fire.

I would remind you that in Buddhist tradition, it is said that when people would ask the Buddha if he were a god, or the son of a god, he would reply simply, "I am awake."

In response to the dire issues facing the world, I hear a lot of people saying that they just stopped reading the paper... that they are turning off the news.... That they are insulating themselves from what makes them unhappy..... so falling asleep is now a spiritual path?

Bad news.... The stuff that makes your ears hurt.... That is not the goal but it is a first step... to wake up, to be aware, to refuse to believe the propaganda, to reject indifference and to stop judging the people who are on the side of solutions as if every thinking liberal in the world was just too awesome to tolerate anyone who differs from them even slightly.

The only way that the darkness can prevail is if people of good will fail to love one another and work together and that is why I refuse to give up.

Fundamentalism, Terrorism, and Rationalism

January 11, 2015
Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor

Psalm 72:1-7, 12-14
1 Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king's son.
2 May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice.
3 May the mountains yield prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness.
4 May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor.
5 May he live while the sun endures, and as long as the moon, throughout all generations.
6 May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth.
7 In his days may righteousness flourish and peace abound, until the moon is no more.
12 For he delivers the needy when they call, the poor and those who have no helper.
13 He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy.
14 From oppression and violence he redeems their life; and precious is their blood in his sight.

Strolling along the downtown streets of our fair city during a First Friday Artwalk, I stepped in one of the more edgy galleries and I found myself almost immediately offended, which, for those of you who know me, is no small accomplishment for an art gallery.

In their packaged novelty area, they had for sale a small rubber Jesus toy, one of those stretchy, malleable dolls that was clearly intended to simply make fun of Jesus.  I'm no fundamentalist and I have about the lowest Christology of anyone in the ministry but an intentional effort at insulting the likeness of Jesus seemed to be a very low class and entirely unnecessary attempt at insulting people who do esteem Jesus as a religious figure.

I was reminded of the Chinese poet whom I heard years ago reading a poem about how she felt the first time she saw a bottle of our cheap American aftershave, Jade East, bottled in a green glass container made to look like the Buddha.  You may remember it.  You literally screwed off Buddha's head to pour out the contents.

It is not difficult to imagine how shocked we would be if we walked down the toiletries isle of Walgreens and saw some Asian brand of aftershave being sold in bottles that looked like a crucifix that you had to screw off the thorn crowned head of Jesus to dispense the cheap cologne.

This week the issue of religious intolerance, satirical religious cartoons, and terrorism has been on all of our minds.  Ever since 9-11, any violent crime committed by someone who claims to have been motivated by their religion, specifically, their Islamic faith, has been news.

I want to take a few minutes with you today to try to put these horrible, frightening, and undeniably evil events into a rational, honest, perspective.

First of all, we have to acknowledge that the content of our corporate news, on TV, radio and in print, does not fairly represent what actually happened in the course of any day.

Quietly, without much fanfare or media attention, an estimated 6000 people in Missouri have died because our legislature, for purely partisan reasons, refused to participate in Medicaid expansion.  This was an entirely predictable outcome and it was entirely preventable.  The victims of this narrow-minded political decision were just as innocent as the people killed in Paris this week, and they were our neighbors, and there were 200 times as many of them.

Is it better to die by the hand of an Islamic terrorist in a Kosher grocery store or by being denied health care by your allegedly Christian state representatives?

You may have a preference but from my perspective, the body count is significant.  And when you mention the body count, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that we still have more than 30,000 gun deaths every year in America, virtually none of which are at the hands of Islamic terrorists.  You are about a million times more likely to be killed by one of your gun-toting neighbors in the NRA than you are by a member of Isil.  This kind of domestic terrorism is so popular that the media and our elected officials are afraid to talk about it but if we are being honest, when it comes to terrorism, there is no place quite like the good ol USA.

This week, most news outlets stopped running commercials while they gave full-time coverage to the dual standoffs in France, ginning up the fear of millions of Americans who were glued to their TV sets.  All the while our local hospitals are full to overflowing in a flu epidemic that is hardly mentioned and will, inevitably, take many more lives than all forms of terrorism.  The flu has always been more dangerous than Islamic Fundamentalism so rather than being scared all of the time, if you really want to make yourself more safe you should cover your mouth when you cough, wash your hands regularly and use hand sanitizer after we shake hands during the Passing of the Peace.

People who claim to be Muslim who commit violent crimes are always identified in the media as being Islamic.  However, when Tim McVeigh bombed the Murrow Federal Building in Oklahoma City, he was not identified as being a "Second Amendment enthusiast."  When Scott Roeder shot the Kansas abortion doctor, Robert Tiller, he was not identified as a Catholic terrorist.

We know better than to assume that Scott Roeder represents Catholicism or that Tim McVeigh represents gun enthusiasts.

Islamic terrorists do not represent Islam.  Thousands of French Muslims joined with other Parisians in demonstrations immediately following these horrible murders.  At Friday prayers at mosques in Paris, devout Muslim's carried signs that read "Not in my name."

The news media rarely makes more than a symbolic effort at putting these crimes into any kind of rational perspective and we absolutely must be smarter than that.  But rational perspective demands that we also be carefully honest.

Terrorism committed in the name of Islam is not reflective of the majority of Muslims.  It is not a healthy form of religion.  But, admittedly, it is way too common.  And even though only a tiny fraction of Muslims are party to religious violence, way too many of what may be called "main stream" Muslims, are far too sympathetic with these violent crimes.

Even the Imam of what has been derisively named the "Ground Zero Mosque," Imam Abdul Rauf, a religious leader widely heralded as a moderate voice of reason, displayed an uncomfortable degree of sympathy for the terrorists who stormed the offices of Charlie Hebdo.  On the set of MSNBC, he likened the derogatory cartoons of Mohamed to shouting "fire" in a crowded theater.

His point was that there are rational limits to freedom of speech but his analogy was a false equivalent.  Charlie Hebdo is an equal opportunity offender.  I have also felt offense at some of their cartoons.

Similarly, I thought that the movie, "The Interview," was offensive. A movie about assassinating a head of state, even a really bad, ridiculous dictator head of state, is in bad tastes and probably shouldn't have been made.  But once that ridiculous dictator attempted to keep it from being shown, he went too far.

Imam Abdul Rauf was not asking for equal treatment for Muslims in the west, he was asking for special treatment and that he does not deserve.  I detest Seth Rogan movies because they are stupid and offensive in their vulgarity but I downloaded "The Interview" to cast my $6 vote in favor of freedom of speech.

I don't find the cartoons published by Charlie Hebdo to be very funny. In fact, I would generally say that they are unnecessarily offensive and shouldn't be published but that is a far cry from saying that they can't be published and it is a million miles away from approving of violence in response to their vulgar publication.

I enjoy satire.  I indulge myself in forms of humor that probably ought to be outside of the confines of my profession but I'm just not very sensitive about comedy.  But if I enjoy the way that cartoonists, or South Park, or stand up comedians make fun of conservative politicians, or conservative religions, then I need to keep a stiff upper lip when it is my ox that is being gored.

The Muslim world, if they do not want to remain isolated in Islamic nations, is going to have to evolve.  Bill Maher has been calling we liberals out about how much deference we have shown to the Muslim world.

Maher is a comedian, albeit, an uncommonly intelligent entertainer, but he is not a religious scholar.  A lot of what he has said about all religions is more rooted in personal prejudice than it is in information but when he points out that sympathy for terrorists is not confined to the fringe elements of Islam, he is shining a light on an important though uncomfortable truth.

Far too many Muslims in mosques that are not limited to Saudi Arabia and Yemen but are also found in Germany, England, France and in the United States are sympathetic if not sometimes enthusiastic about Islamic terrorists.  I am willing to concede that point to Bill Maher.

And I am unwilling to lay the blame for the provocation of Muslim communities that have not assimilated and have not been economically successful in Europe and in the United States squarely on the doorstep of prejudiced Europeans or Americans.  You don't hear Asian immigrants complaining about a lack of opportunity even in places where they have suffered from discrimination.
Where I differ from many pundits and from my beloved Bill Maher is just this:  These terrorists were not radicalized by culturally insulting cartoonists or movies.  They were radicalized by two centuries of colonialization, economic exploitation and virtual slavery, and by two crazy illegal wars of invasion and occupation by western military powers in the Middle East.

Terrorism is the military response of the poor to the oppression of well-armed, uniformed occupation forces from rich nations.  When two mentally ill and very provoked men shoot up a magazine office it is of the same cloth as the murder of innocents who are described clinically as "collateral damage" when our drones kill a suspected terrorist while also killing children playing in the street and women hanging out laundry behind the house where we believed the terrorist was plotting diabolical plans.

You may think that dying as collateral damage from a drone fired missile is to be preferred to being blown up by a suicide bomber but I can guarantee you that the deceased innocent victims cannot tell the difference.  If we want less terrorism in the west then we need to stop terrorizing the Middle East.

And finally, no rational review of this topic could be complete without also making the frank observation that even though the Christopher Hitchens sorts can be quite annoying about their anti-religious views, no atheist adherents have ever tried to kill anyone for not agreeing with them.

It is not sick atheism that provokes terrorism.  It is sick religion.  And at that juncture every one in this room and everyone who joins us on line must be a part of the solution.
Religion is, in all frank honesty, often the repository, fertilizer and genesis of insanity.  We cannot pretend that magical thinking and superstitions are morally neutral.  Once your thinking is disengaged from reality then your conclusions can become absolutely crazy.

If we are to preserve the ethics and good works that are the products of a healthy spirituality, then we need to aggressively deny space to the kind of irrational thinking that fosters terrorism in all of its forms...and for the sake of clarity, let me enumerate a representative list:

• Shooting innocent people because they have shown disrespect for your religion
• Blowing up marketplaces, office buildings, or theaters because they symbolically represent your sense of personal oppression
• Invading foreign sovereign states for political or economic gain
• Torturing prisoners
• Keeping people in prison without due process or without being charged with a crime
• Economically or socially oppressing minorities because of their gender, race, sexual orientation, or nation of origin
• Executing prisoners
• Failing to recognize that poverty and ignorance are forms of violence and they cannot be tolerated in the presence of abundance.
• Maintaining a virtually unregulated arsenal of lethal weapons in a nation that has turned a blind eye to tens of thousands of murders every year.

Against these and all other forms of terrorism, let us never allow ourselves to wallow in indifference.

Janus, the God of Doors and Hallways

January 4, 2015
Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor

Henry David Thoreau
"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor."

The first thing we did when we bought this building five years ago was to start an A.A. group.  Our meeting is at 5:30 on Thursdays and this year, of course, both Christmas and New Year's Day fall on Thursday. You might think that our little group would just not meet on those days but nothing could be farther from the truth.

No self-respecting A. A. group ever cancels a meeting.  And if anyone asks about it, the reply is predictable.  Some experienced member of the group will ask the rhetorical question, "When you were drinking, did you ever drink on Christmas Day?"  Even when we had some really bad weather last winter, some new members would call and ask, "Is there still going to be a meeting today?"  And if I knew them well enough to risk it, I would say, "When you were drinking, did you ever drink on days when you were snowed in?"

What I have always loved about the recovery movement is that it is a disarmingly honest, realistic, and fact based approach to spirituality. There are no holidays except for the anniversaries of your last drink, and every day is divided into 24 hours and every hour is divided into 60 minutes and you decide, sometimes moment by moment, that you are going to preserve your sanity and your sobriety for one more minute, one more hour, one more day... though no one in the movement ever says, "I'm never going to drink again...."

They try to keep reality in manageable amounts.... I'm not going to drink this hour.  I'm not going to drink today.  There is a lot of God-talk in the recovery movement but it is a reality based spirituality rooted in personal choice.

In Scott Peck's famous book, The Road Less Traveled, he talks about a patient he had when he was an Army Psychiatrist, based on Okinawa.  The soldier had been referred to him for treatment of alcoholism but in their sessions, the sergeant blamed his drinking on the isolation of the island.  Peck asked him, what do you like to do when you are home in the states.  The sergeant said that he liked to fish.  Peck pointed out that fishing was a popular sport on the island.  The sergeant insisted that he was on duty during the day and Peck again pointed out that there were organized night fishing groups.

Changing tactics, the soldier said that he really liked to read and when Peck pointed out that there was a library on base, his client objected that the library was too far away.  So, in the end, the obvious truth emerges.... There are lots of things to do on Okinawa but what this particular sergeant chose to do was drink.

I never want to minimize the real power of addiction nor do I want to make light of the agony that can be caused by depression or other mental disorders but this much I can confidently say, no one ever gets any better until they take full personal responsibility for their own health and progress.


If you are older than 3 years old, no one makes you angry.  No one makes you depressed.  Sure, people can be real jerks at times.... They can lie, gossip, back stab, steal and assault but any anger or resentment you take away from the exchange is your choice.  Some suffering in life is inevitable but any misery you experience is your own choice.

Like this sergeant on Okinawa, the impulse of the addiction may be real, and powerful, and painful but only he could change the choice that he made.  It wasn't the island, it wasn't the military, it wasn't the people he was stationed with..... he was choosing to cope with life by excessive drinking and when that solution became a bigger problem that the issues he was trying to avoid, no one but him could choose to live differently.

I have to admit that I was mildly insulted a year ago when I had to interview a new doctor.  Like a lot of people who changed insurance under the Affordable Health Care Act, I had to go to the marketplace in search of a new physician.  In our initial meeting, my slender, young doctor brought up the issue of my weight.

I told her about my life long struggle with weight loss and gain.  I told her about exercise plans that I have been on, various diets and medications, some of which work for a time but none of which have ended in long term success.  And like some aged Zen master, she said to me with very flat affect, "Have you ever considered feeling hungry but still choosing not to eat?"


All of the diet plans that claim it is a matter of less fat, or no sugar, or no carbs, or a magical combination of foods that chemically interact to melt fat are the absurd claims of a drunken soldier whining that there is nothing to do on this island.  Sure, eat less sugar, fewer carbs, eat more natural vegetables and fruit and exercise more, but it still comes down to this.....

You can feel hungry and choose not to eat......anything else that anyone says is just another form of self-denial.  Yes, I am a stress eater.  Yes, I grew up on southern cooking.  Yes, I have a largely sedentary job.  And yet, what you see before you is the sum total of the choices that I personally make, day after day.

And you, my friends, you are the sum total of the choices you made.  If you struggle with depression, or if you find that you are angry a lot, or can't maintain relationships.... None of that will ever change as long as you blame external forces, or if you tell yourself that your happiness depends upon someone else changing, behaving differently, or being something else.

When I worked in mental health, we used a program called Parent Effectiveness Training to help parents to understand their children's sometimes-bad behavior.  The program taught that there were four basic motivations for misbehavior:  Power, Attention, a Display of Inadequacy, or Revenge.  Parents were encouraged, when their children were behaving badly, to ask themselves.... Is my child simply seeking attention?  Are they trying to assert their personal power?  Are they trying to get revenge?  Or, are they trying to convince me that they cannot do something for themselves by pretending to be inadequate in the face of responsibility?

I taught these classes in a mental health center for months before sitting in a very dysfunctional church board meeting and realizing that there were no age limits to these four motivations for bad behavior.  It is more complicated in adults.... Some people spend their adult lives trying to get revenge for what they feel was done to them as a child.

Some people feel that they have never accomplished what they should have in life and so they seek power in the most petty and disappointing ways without ever understanding why they are behaving so irrationally.  Some are convinced that all that they have to do is repeatedly display that they are failures and no one will expect anything of them... they will be taken care of.  And some people just need attention and affirmation that they do not want to earn.... They just want to demand it and if they don't get it, they will pick up their toys and go home.

No one has ever been helped to grow or mature by caving into their childish displays of power, revenge or attention seeking, and you believing that they are inadequate will help no one.  I call each of these an "invitation to crazy town" and the best thing you can do in the face of these behaviors is to refuse to go to crazy town with them.  Anytime that I forget this and find myself in a showdown on Main St. in crazy town, I turn into an ordained version of Louis Black and I get this overpower urge to drive an ice pick right through my eye-ball.

It has been quoted so often that it has become rather trite, but when Gandhi said that "You must be the change you want to see in the world," he was right on target.  The society is, as Plato taught, an individual writ large.

If we want a healthy society that doesn't abuse the poor, always fall back into warfare, while killing the planet, and taking away basic human rights from minorities, then we have to choose to be responsible, informed, thinking, moral people.

The whole business of New Year's resolutions can be like spitting into the wind if you don't take into your very soul the factual realization that you can change who you are through your own conscious choice.

The ancient Romans dedicated the first day of the year to a god about whom no fables, myths, or stories are told and yet the god's two-faced image appeared on many coins and gateways. Janus represented a concept.... The concept of choice, looking backwards or looking forward, choosing one door rather than any other door.

Unlike the other gods about whom elaborate psychological dramas were told, this god guarded only the reminder of your potential to change, to go in another direction, to become the person you choose to be rather than to be defined by what others want to project onto you.

Your life does not have to be defined by neurotic fears, shallow friendships, consumerism, and ego battles.  You get to choose.  I know a hundred people who would love to tell me how to be Roger Ray and some of them just can't help doing it over and over again, but there is one person who shaves Roger Ray's face every morning and the guy who holds a razor to my throat every morning is the one who is finally responsible for who Roger Ray is.

Ladies, you may have to adjust that metaphor for your own purposes but I trust that you know what I mean.  2015 might be a year for huge social changes..... we might actually manage to not invade any foreign nations this year.... We might actually make strides in mass transit, alternative energy, health care and fair wages.... We might beat back some of the worst abuses of the war on drugs and the war on gay families.  We may even get over some of our phobias about immigration but if any of that is going to happen we will have to choose to be people of integrity ourselves.

I know of no more encouraging fact than this, that you can become the person you choose to be through your own conscious choice.  Good luck with that.... I'm cheering for you.... Not that it matters because, if you have been paying attention, you know that my opinion is not what matters.... it really is all in your hands.