@ Duck and Decanter

I have a CD set, Masters 1949-1976, of music by Tennessee Ernie Ford. Last week when I was playing it I was reminded of my theology when I was a teenager. The song that brought it to mind was That’s all. The lyrics pretty much sums up my theology of those days. I am a United Methodist now but started out in my religious life rather more evangelical. Sometimes refer to myself as a “recovering fundamentalist”. I have in turns been an ‘independent’ Baptist, Lutheran, Southern Baptist, Pentecostal, Episcopalian and finally a Methodist. I was 12 when “I gave my life to Jesus” in the lingo of my first church. From the list of churches I have attended you might be fooled into thinking that I was deeply religious and spent most of my time contemplating spiritual matters. Or you might think that I changed denominations and churches out of deeply held beliefs. Nothing could be further from actuality.

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I went to Goodyear Heights Community church in Akron Ohio because my mother wanted me and my brother out of the house for a week. The church had a summer camp that a neighbor knew about. There were many churches closer to where I lived including the Lutheran one in which I was later married. And that is how I became a Lutheran. The Pentecostal and Episcopalian phases were equally life driven. All through the many churches (there were several from each denomination) I kept the basic fundamentalism that I learned as a preteen. It wasn’t that I didn’t think about God and faith; I did. It was just that I couldn’t see anything other than the basic ‘truths’ I had heard when I first started attending a church. I also never heard anything in the churches I went to that contradicted what I had been told was the teachings of the bible or of God. And of course I never really thought about any of it in relation to the real world.

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It is almost as if I was schizophrenic. When I was in school learning about evolution, the age of the earth or any other subject that contradicted what I believed was the inerrant word of God I placed that data in the real world part of my brain. What I heard on Sunday went into the church side. Occasionally, I did have questions when the two parts were in disagreement but under the pressures of hormones at first and then the need to support a growing family I managed to stuff the tensions. That lasted until the early 1990s. Then life bumped up against my fundamentalist beliefs. Strangely enough it was my beliefs about homosexuality that caused the problem. This was really strange because other than believing that homosexuality was a mortal sin I had no beliefs about it. Nor did I have any real world knowledge because that subject wasn’t taught in any school I ever attended. The only thing life had ever taught me about it was that “queers” wore green on Thursdays. This, despite my high school Trigonometry teacher. He always wore green on Thursdays. He did this specifically to refute that bit of street wisdom. God bless him!

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But when I was in my 50s life came in the form of Gail who I met at work. Gail is a lesbian which in itself wasn’t a problem. I knew a lot of people that I believed were destined for hell. The problems came as I found out that Gail and I were very much alike. We certainly shared a work ethic and as we worked together I found myself liking her. Eventually I came to the conclusion that there was something wrong in my thinking. How could someone that I had so much in common with be destined for eternal punishment? If she was, why wouldn’t I be? It took me a long time to understand that in not believing Gail was evil (or an abomination) had put a crack in my fundamentalist belief system. It was then that I started to think about what I believed.

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I was aided in the thinking part by starting to attend Asbury UMC. How could it not help to have Jeff Proctor-Murphy as a pastor? Having Tex Sample around was another goad for thinking. It would be nice to be able to say that I first went to Asbury because of the theology. I can’t. I went there because it was #10 on the list of United Methodist Churches closest to where I live and I tried it first. But maybe the reason I went back the next Sunday is better. I was so overcome with emotion on seeing all the gay and lesbian couples going to the communion table holding hands that I knew Asbury was THE place. It was a short distance from there to CrossWalk America, the Phoenix Affirmations and walking to Washington DC from Phoenix. All of which is what started me blogging.

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I am completely surprised that I have been doing this for three years now (archived on Asphalt Jesus with all other CrossWalk America posts after 15 September 2009). I have finally figured out why I blog. You may have noticed that I am not the quickest thinker around. Writing a blog forces me to think about what I believe and perhaps more importantly why I believe what I do. The discipline of writing about the connection between the world and my theology forces me to think about that connection. My current theology is pretty simple. The Phoenix Affirmations states it much more eloquently than I can.

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I wonder what my thoughts on the subject would have been if I had enough courage to talk to my trigonometry teacher about homosexuality.

Don’t forget some things do change as per below!

@ Duck and Decanter

It is somewhat ironic that after I wrote last week’s post (but before posting it), Somethings never change, that Rebecca Glenn telephoned me with the news that the CrossWalk America website is fading into the cyberspace. I have mixed emotions about this. It has been some time (June 1^st 2008) since we moved under the TCPC umbrella and so it is time to move on. Against this is all of the posts that I and others have shared. It started on February 12^th 2006 with Walk in the Path of Jesus. That post was Eric Elnes testing the blog. So it is with sadness that I move on.

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The archives will be moving to Asphalt Jesus which can be found here sometime before September 15 2009. The links to the CrossWalk website will no longer work.

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I will be moving to the TCPC blog located here (or www.tcpc.blogs.com/crosswalkamerica/ if you need to cut and paste into your browser window). Until that happens I will continue to post here.

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This is all scheduled to happen by September 15 2009. With any luck it will. I am too old a techie to have complete faith in predictions depending on computers but I have faith that it will someday.

@ Duck and Decanter

The volunteer office I manage is located in an area that has many small businesses in several dozen business parks. Dispersed among the commercial enterprises are a few churches. I know of an Anglican, Baptist and one, Beth Yachad, I had not heard of before driving past its sign. Being ever curious I checked out the web site, bethyachad.org, advertised on the sign. According to the web site Beth Yachad – House of Unity – is a Community of Messianic Synagogues. Huh…They also have an association with the Assemblies of God which makes me believe that they are of a Pentecostal persuasion. So, it is a synagogue – and an Assembly of God church – which welcomes gentiles. Interesting. I have been thinking about attending a service at Beth Yachad ever since I noticed the signs several months ago.

Last month I read an article, Starvation mum on home arrest, in the Straits Times which started me thinking about Beth Yachad in a different context. The article was about the member of an obscure (at least obscure to me) Jewish sect that became the focus of riots in Israel. The sect, Toldot Aaron, is one of several very conservative anti-Zionist sects in Jerusalem. Who knew that there were Jewish sects that were anti-Zionist? In researching the various branches and sects of Judaism I have come to the conclusion that Judaism is as splintered and divided as Christianity is. And always has been. The New Testament records the Sadducees, Pharisees and Zealots with maybe the Herodians thrown in for good measure. From other sources we know of the Essenes. Note: The links I have given here are from the online version of the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1901-1906 and so from a Jewish perspective but not necessarily a modern one. Bart Ehrman often mentions Christianities in the plural with respect to the beginnings of our religion and it is understandable how we started out that way with the example of Judaism as a starting point.

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I always assumed that all Jews supported the Jewish state of Israel but there sects -loosely associated and called Eda Haredit – living in Israel that believe that a secular Jewish state is heretical and evil incarnate. Knowing of and recognizing the divergence of Jewish sects, in the past as well as in the present, enables me to understand the arguments that took place in the synagogues during New Testament times. Apparently they are still going on.

We believe in Messiah Yeshua’s life, his miracles yesterday and today. His vicarious and sacrificial death as our atonement [my emphasis added], His bodily resurrection, His personal future return for His followers, both living and dead, and His future establishment of His kingdom on Earth. Isaiah 53:8; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Isaiah 9:6-7; 1 Corinthians 11:26; Zechariah 12:6-10; Zechariah 14:16-21

From We believe section of www.bethyachad.org

…, I have explained that contrary to the missionary claim that blood sacrifice is the only method of atonement [my emphasis added] in the Bible, there are three methods of atonement [my emphasis added] clearly defined in the Jewish scriptures: the sin sacrifice, repentance, and charity. Moreover, the sin sacrifice (known in the Jewish scriptures as korban chatat) did not atone for all types of sin, but rather, only for man’s most insignificant iniquity: unintentional sins. The sin sacrifice was inadequate to atone for a transgression committed intentionally.

Rabbi Tovia Singer, Could Jesus’ Death Atone For Any Kind of Sin?, Outreach Judaism website

Rabbi Singer also quotes the Tanakh –what we Christians call the Old Testament. Notably, Leviticus 17:11, Numbers 15:27-31, Hosea 3:4-5, Hosea 14:2-3, I Kings 8:46-50. Outreach Judaism, where I found Rabbi Singer, is “Judaism’s response to Christian Missionaries”.

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I find the disagreement on atonement historically interesting but I believe that other issues are more pressing at present. The Assemblies of God believe that homosexuality is a sin (here); I wondered what Rabbi Singer’s position is on that issue. I asked him that question and submitted it through the Outreach Judaism website. This was his answer:

Male homosexuality is a mortal sin.

With love of Zion,

Tovia

Isn’t it nice that they can agree on some things?