Crosswalk America

Helter Skelter

@Duck and Decanter

 

For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.

Hosea 6:6, NIV

 

All week I have been thinking about my last post, Problems with being Christian which was about loving the enemies of my country. Loving my enemies is not the only Christian ethic I have problems with following. For me the idea of loving my enemies is closely bound to that of having compassion - mercy. Matthew has Jesus quote Hosea 6.6 twice in addition to stating that the merciful will receive mercy. And then there is the parable of the debtor that does not show mercy – and is rebuked for it.

 As with the enemies of my country I am unsure how to apply this to the enemies of society. There is for example Susan Atkins aka Sadie Mae Glutz. She was refused parole again – for the 13^th time. Susan is serving a life sentence for killing Sharon Tate in August of 1969. She did so because (in her words) “believed Charles Manson was Jesus”. She has since (according to reports) found the real Jesus. The crime was horrendous, Susan was for a long time unrepentant, and she has related how she showed Sharon Tate no mercy. Are those enough reasons not to show her mercy? She has only one leg, the other is paralyzed and she is also dying of brain cancer. She surely is not going to repeat her crime. What difference would it make to release her – other than she would not need guards to watch her die.

 Sharon Tate’s sister thinks it would make a difference.

 

I will pray for her soul when she draws her last breath.

Debra Tate, the sister of Sharon Tate, as reported in Manson follower Susan Atkins denied parole for 13th-and perhaps last time in the LA Times

 I cannot imagine that Susan is the same person that she was as a 21 year old follower of Charles Manson forty years ago. Neither can I imagine how it is to hold all that hate and anger for someone for that length of time. But maybe I would feel the same if it had been a member of my family that had been so brutally killed.

 Unlike Susan, Michael Eubanks of Huston Texas was shown mercy. He too killed someone - - when he was young (20) for drugs and money. He hit a man with a sledge hammer and then strangled him. He was paroled from a Texas this past July after spending 30 years behind bars for the killing.

 I found it strange that Michael was granted parole in a state not noted for mercy while liberal California rejected one in which compassion is so obviously lacking. According to the article, Prison release is the first surprise of many, in the last 14 years 2000 lifers (for capital murder) have been eligible for parole in Texas. Three percent of those have been granted parole. Larry Teague (the man Michael slew) was an apartment maintenance man and his relatives did not attend the trial.

 Susan Atkins had many supporters testifying about why she should be granted parole but the feelings of the family prevailed. I wonder if Michael Eubanks would have been granted parole if the sister of his victim still carried as much hate as Sharon Tate’s. But maybe that isn’t the difference. Sharon Tate and the others that died at the hands of Manson’s followers were better connected socially. And there is another difference. The former district Attorney, Carol Vance, who helped prosecute Michael, did not write a book about the murder. Instead he teaches one of the Christian exit courses that Michael took before he left prison. Everyone, except me, has read Helter Skelter.

 I wonder if reading the book would change how I feel.

Problems with being Christian

@Duck and Decanter

 

I have always been bothered by some of the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the gospels. One of the most difficult is the one about how we are to treat our enemies. It seems to run counter to our very nature. At least my nature. I am a lot more in tune with the Old Testament law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Sometimes an eye or tooth is not enough to satisfy my anger or my hate. An encounter with the words “Love you enemies!” always leaves me with questions. Was Jesus referring to personal enemies only? Should enemies that harm my country be included? Yesterday was 9/11. We paused to remember all the victims of that day and curse those who caused the death of so many. It seems to me that the cursing runs counter to “loving” my enemies. Still I don’t know that I am willing (or able) to forgive and “love” those responsible. The ones that executed the plan are dead which tempers my judgment a bit. My desires for retribution are apparently shared by many. There was another example of long ago terrorism in the news recently with the theme of forgiveness and compassion.

Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi was released from a Scottish prison last month and that set off a firestorm of protest in the US and in the UK - you can read about it here or here. Abdel was convicted of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 which exploded over Lockerbie Scotland in 1988. He continues to proclaim his innocence. He also (reportedly) is in the terminal stages of prostate cancer. That was the ostensible reason for his release. What the true facts are has been obscured by politics, charges and counter charges. I am not really upset about Abdel’s release. I did sort of wonder about the hero’s reception that he received when his plane landed in Tripoli. I am not sure how I would feel if I were a family member of one of those that died either in the plane or on the ground in Lockerbie.

I do know how I feel about the release of Abdurrahman al Shubati from Guantanamo. He was sent to Guantanamo in the war on terror. Four months ago he was ordered released by a federal judge for lack of any evidence. He is still there, still in a cell. I don’t like the idea of a military prison in Guantanamo for civilians under any circumstances. It was a terrible idea to establish a prison on Cuban soil (Guantanamo is only leased from Cuba and is a US Navy base) and not on US soil. It was done specifically to lessen oversight by anyone other than the government which is flawed to start with. Another flaw was imprisoning people there with little or no evidence. And that is why the lack of oversight is important. Keeping someone ordered released by a federal judge is not only immoral but counter to everything our constitution stands for. But this post is about forgiveness, compassion and loving your enemies. Where is that in this story? It is the way Abdurrahman’s relatives relate to his (pro-bono) lawyer.

     They tear up and get very emotional and they make these expressions of gratitude that are almost     embarrassing.

Gracious, compassionate human being, Sister Betsy Haws as reported by The Salt Lake City Tribune in Guantanamo: Salt Lake lawyer adjusts to 'alternate legal reality.'

 I assume a couple of things that the article does not give details about. One is that Betsy Haws is Mormon (she went to Brigham Young University) and that the ones being grateful are Moslems (they are Yemini). The article does make clear that they harbor no resentment for Betsy regardless of our government’s actions. Or because she is (presumably) a Christian.

I wonder if the true facts of Abdel’s case will ever be known. Was he responsible for the bombing? Was he released for compassionate reasons or was it a political deal with Libya?

How I Got Here

by: Merrill

@ 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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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