Cults: Grace and the Law in Lent

I have spent the past 18 years of my life considering how grace and the law work in faith communities.  This interest springs directly from my mother's influence in my life as she would take us off to the Lutheran church for a long time.  Grace was a big deal to Martin Luther.  It shouldn't be a surprise to many people that my favorite Pauline letters are Romans and Galatians.  For the most part, my experience in faith communities has some incredibly high points of grace and consistent, while combined with very low points of, legalistic oppression.

In my Christian Counseling class in my undergraduate Religious Studies degree at ENMU, I became fascinated with the interior workings of Christian communities as I continued to find extremes rather than moderation; while at the same time, the open GLBT leaders in the academic community were being targeted for violence in the name of God on our campus.  A student was arrested.  Her name was ________.  She had been either found guilty, or she was the scapegoat.  Either way, the police had documents that cited "The Hand of God" as the culprit for the posters that were placed around targeting the academic community.

After some research, I learned that "The Hand of God" was a religious group on a cult watch list that operated on the high planes of NM and West Texas.  They actually existed, so there was a real cause for concern.  During this point in time in my undergraduate education, I watched our GLBT leaders have several different responses to this threat.  Some locked themselves in their homes armed for self-defense; some hid in undisclosed locations; a group of us (including me) were taken to a professor's house for a conversation about these kinds of threats, dinner, and star gazing; and some simply ignored the threats.

I encountered an amount of stress that I had never encountered before.  Matthew Shepherd, if memory serves correctly, had been murdered the summer before all of this happened.  There I was: a young GLBT Episcopalian in a small town waiting for the next one to happen.  What we were taught when we were all taken into the country for dinner and conversation under the stars will stay with me until I die.  It was very simple.  There were no parades, no permission needed for the conversation, and no pomp and circumstance necessary.  We were told very simply, "This is beyond your control, and so is God's love for all of us.  That's why we are here together."  In my earnest undergraduate years as I yearned for a grassroots movement in my life so we too could pray with one another and love who we loved, I realized one of the most important things I've ever learned: grace was real.  

There wasn't a great controlling mechanism for the universe or humanity.  No one was there to stop us from praying, conversing, or loving one another.  There was no great "one true way" as we had all been taught in our denominations.  They are all man made.  Denominations and inter-faith groups and all of their rules exist to make money in one way or another.  At some point, I need to agree that they are important as I have spent countless hours studying about religion, scripture, and the like as I can also be employed through those denominations.  The more knowledgeable I become, the more leery I am of those claiming to be "doing good" in the name of God especially when they have great statistics and facts to back up how good they really are.

As I approach the end of my graduate religious studies degree, I am brought back to the reality of grace.  Most people want it, and most don't know how to give it.  I have been blessed to know several people whom have been gracious to me.  I know grace because it has been given to me.  Ash Wednesday was a few days ago.  Today is the first Sunday in Lent.

I love Lent.  I love it because at one point it made my devotional life the norm for others in the church.  For years, I prayed the Stations of the Cross every Friday along with Spiritual Direction and Confession.  It's how I survived graduate school the first time.  I had a focal point every Friday to meet with my parish priest to contend with my spiritual life and guide it out of the mess it was in.  It was the norm for me.  It anchored me at that point in time.  Now, having been told to leave the church and to join one of several suggested cults by a bishop under the guise of "reconciliation with the church," I can look at my life and know that those whom have been trained to find those problems will be excluded.  They don't want me there because I am trained to see the problems.  Those whom point the finger of "too sick to be here," "not normal," or even state "that's now how I was raised" are actually the sicker people.  They don't want to be found to be sicker than the rest of us.

Everything is in how we use power.  So today because so many of my friends are involved in faith communities, I give this checklist.  It is not the best one I have seen, but it fairly good.  The main point is that everything is in how people use power.  Is someone included in everything, but then all of a sudden that person is the "outreach project?"  There's a real emotionally manipulative problem when that happens.  If someone tries to hold a leader accountable for what that person has actually done and can't even through the civil authorities, then there's a definite issue.  If you quit a faith community, then will you be shunned?  Will your membership at a church be stripped away if you don't wear what people want?  Do they demand to tell you how to raise your kids or what you can say to theirs?  Do they interfere with your employment?  Cults exist even when they are inside of denominations and other faith communities.

Do people actually forgive?  So they demand perfect of others, but not themselves.  God loves everyone with or without our permission for His existence.  I suggest that during this Lent, while the faith communities that we are all involved in are focusing on what the individual is willing to give up, that we consider whether or not we are willing to choose for ourselves or continue to be a part of the problems.  How much control should the church, temple, faith community, prayer group, or synagogue really have in our individual lives?       

Finally, is God leading your life, or are you giving your thoughts over to the control of another?

Rev. Janine Stock: Care, Meddling, or Cashing In

Today on Facebook, I made a comment about a book from 2008.  It is titled, Made in God's Image.  I am not opposed to these types of books; however, I am leery of them as a scholar, member of the GLBT community, a remnant theology Christian, and as a theistic humanist.  The number one criticism that I have of books like these is: if you are not one of us, then you really have no place telling the world how to tell us how to approach God, life, or other human beings.

The mere idea that a member of the clergy would have the insight to be able to coach or train people how to talk with, pray with, or support a GLBT member of that person's parish or family is repugnant to me.  You would do that the same way as you would do with anyone else.  GLBT parts of the body of Christ are not human beings.  I have been to the Stations of the Cross.  In fact, it used to be one of my favorite devotions.  I don't need it to be rainbowed in order to find my faith.

My faith is not dependent upon my sexuality or gender identity.  I accept that all of me has been created by God and not just parts of me.  God sought me before I knew those words or concepts.  God knit everyone including me in our mother's wombs (Psalm 139).  I was in communion with God just as every other person was before I was born.  I didn't need a prescribed way to pray or think as God came to me as He does with everyone else.

I've never seen something advertised as "Prayer for the Hetero."  Most people are in some way bisexual.  Everyone has a gender identity.  There isn't one person who isn't part of the GLBT community in one way or another.  What matters is how we define that community, and how people try to gain and negate that community?  Lots of people are finding ways to exclude while cashing in for themselves.  It's kitschy to wave a rainbow flag or place one on an altar in order to receive media attention.  It is much different to actually defend those in the church whom are ostracized because of it.  Most people's hearts can be found where they are making money and keeping it for themselves.

To have continued in communion with one another, Rev. Stock, it would have been easy for you to hear a personal experience with it or to understand that not everyone wants to have the world understand them as specialized so much that prayers need to be invented just for them.  Pride goes with money.

It's really simple to remember:  Everybody gotta birthday, and float building is not cheap!

Moving Forward

One of the most valid statements that I have ever made about the American justice system was in a conversation the other day.  When my advocate called to tell me that after the police took about four years to get the file and evidence to the district attorney that there wasn't enough evidence, which there never is enough in cases in when the police are more concerned if the victim is a legal cigarette smoker at 31 yrs old in America, that I got to tell her that I was told that the person was dead.  She said, "we hadn't heard that yet."  If he's dead, then it shouldn't matter except no one can tell me where he's buried.  I am going to find out where he's buried.  I have things to say to this so-called dead man's grave.

One of the things that I have learned is that the police are more frustrated than I am by other police officers who won't do their jobs.  It's really simple.  When people are able to take care of their own internal issues, then they don't wind up having their organizations brought into court.  Usually, things are scapegoated away by those whom would say that people who approach the courts are just after money or fame or whatever.  The courts are no place for fame and are too costly.  Those whom would claim such a thing I think are the ones whom would seek money from the court systems in order to seek money.  The would be "in it to win it."  My question is still:  what game?  

My advocates, fortunately, seemed to be far more hopeful when I said that I had been told that he was dead, but no one knew where the grave was.  What happened to the body?  Three days later, I was sitting in a room studying scripture when someone else asked the very same question about someone else.  Where is the body?  Where are the dead man's bones?  Those questions spring from the very thing that I have created this blog for: the relationship between the law and grace.  The law is there to prosecute those whom would harm others and there to uphold citizenry and decency for others.  Everyone has a basic human rights.  How those rights are protected and who gets protected seems to change in practice to whomever has the most gold and friends.  It is important to remember that grace brings joy.  

It was grace to be able to say that I was told that he was dead to my advocate.  I was grace to hear her voice lift saying that they hadn't been told that.  It was grace to hear another person question where a dead man's body was.  Grace comes everyday in simple yet miraculous forms.  It is important to know that the way we interact with one another isn't a game.  It's life.  I've been asked whether or not it was worth it over and over again.  

Life is well worth it.  To know that I have done every single thing I could do to have actual justice is worth it.  Absolutely!  Whether or not people realize it, my Baptismal Covenant expects it.  It expects that I would seek justice for myself even within the church, seemingly against the clergy, even it I am thrown out (which happened) for doing so.  Living is worth it.  Knowing that I did everything within my power to exercise my rights as an American citizen in a co-called Christian country (which it isn't) is worth it.  To know that at least I did something and didn't sit there indifferent to what was going on is worth it. 

No.  I don't hold up poster boards at protests for GLBT rights....whatever those are.  Human rights are for everyone.  Every person is a person.  Until every person is a person and use the rights we are told that we have, it is unnecessary to have them.  Since we have deemed it necessary to have a judicial system in order to serve humanity, being able to use it is paramount.  

Yes.  It's worth every mile I have walked instead of driven.  It has been worth ever minute of pain, tears, poverty, and hunger I have experienced.  Yes, dear advocate.  He's dead, so where's the body?  

Life is worth it.