Pence and Kaine Struggle with Faith, Power

Nathan Aaberg —  October 12, 2016 — Leave a comment

One of the greatest temptations for a Christian is to give up one’s integrity as a Christian in the service or pursuit of power.

Sad to say, we saw two Christians do just during the vice presidential debate last week.

And the irony could not be deeper because both Indiana Governor Mike Pence and Virginia Senator Tim Kaine gave eloquent expressions of how their Christian faiths have formed their lives and character.

While Kaine incessantly interrupted Pence at every possible moment with criticisms of Donald Trump, Pence actually had no defense for Donald Trump’s character or behavior.

For all of Pence’s calm, reasoned, and sincere statements, you can’t read the Bible without coming to the conclusion that Donald Trump epitomizes an incredibly long list of attributes that are the exact opposite of those Christians are called to have. They are fruit of a heart turned away from a humble relationship with God.

To support a person like Trump in something minor would be problematic but to faithfully and energetically partner with a person like Trump who desires to be the leader of the United States is a whole different matter. I can only explain Pence’s decision this way – like any of us, he has his weaknesses and one of his is a commitment to the success and power of the Republican Party and its interests that enables him to rationalize his full partnership with Trump. I believe there is also a hypnotic quality to Trump’s comfort and confidence with power to which Pence and many others around the country unconsciously respond.

It would have said much more about Pence’s faith and about Christianity itself, however, if he had declined the invitation just as Daniel declined to bend his knee to the power of Nebuchadnezzar.

The worst thing is that the more Pence wears his Christian faith on his sleeve as he campaigns with Donald Trump, the more he taints Christianity for people who are not believers. If a Christian can ally himself with Trump and all that he stands for, then why would any rational person want to become a Christian? What exactly does the Christian faith stand for?

Kaine has some issues, too.

He has accepted the nomination with Hillary Clinton who cannot help herself from lying,untruths, and half truths. She also has a troubled relationship with power that can be seen in her history, her policies, and her tight Wall Street connections. While her issues may not be on the level of Trump and she’s clearly far more professional in her service and civic-minded in her policies, her failings are still serious.

Then there was Kaine’s response to Pence’s comments about partial-birth abortion.

For most of the debate Kaine used clear and concrete language, especially when criticizing Donald Trump. But you could hear the rhetorical shift when he began speaking about abortion.

Here is an excerpt of what he said:

“This is pretty important. Before Roe v. Wade, states could pass criminal laws to do just that, to punish women if they made the choice to terminate a pregnancy. I think you should live your moral values. But the last thing, the very last thing that government should do is have laws that would punish women who make reproductive choices.”

Do you hear the sudden shift to rationalization through abstraction?

“Terminate” is a Latin word that suggests something you do with a contract in its cool, antiseptic, abstract tone. “Pregnancy,” also Latin in origin, is pleasantly and rationally removed from the reality of what the word refers to – a developing human living inside the mother’s body in a world of intimacy, warmth, and shared fluids. When you use words like “terminate” and “pregnancy,” the actual violence of an abortion sounds so clinical and reasonable. Like the removal of a wart.

And there’s some rhetorical chicanery going on. The term “reproductive choices” is a contradiction. When there is an embryo/baby in the womb, reproduction is already an accomplished fact. Abortion has nothing to do with reproduction. Life, both human and nonhuman, is not a choice. It’s something we must seek to live with and make nuanced choices about.

Kaine should have had the guts to speak plainly.

In this context, reading Windows to the Womb by David Chamberlain is a revelation. Chamberlain shares findings of recent science that reveal how rapidly babies develop in the womb and how much evidence there is for their emotion and engagement with their environment

window-to-the-womb-image

Audible crying can be detected in the womb as early as 21 to 24 weeks gestational age. Evidence indicates babies in the womb can hear things outside of the mother’s body as early as 14 weeks. Spontaneous movements by the embryos, as opposed to reflexive movements, are happening before ten weeks.

This passage about the movements of young embryos was particularly paradigm-shifiting for me:

“Observers saw little embryos stretching in exactly the way people of other ages stretch – always at a slow speed, beginning with the head moving backward followed by trunk arching and arms lifting! One reclining ten-week fetus, legs semiflexed and body quite still for a few minutes, brought hands up and placed them behind the head as if relaxing in a hammock. Can you imagine these gestures with a sign of satisfaction following the explosive growth and mastery of new movements?”

I want to be clear. I am not saying there are not situations in which abortion is tragically justifiable.

Abortion can, like capital punishment, be the purposeful and nuanced use of power to do something that is normally abhorrent because there is a larger societal good at stake. Are there be situations where the tragic necessity of ending a baby’s life in the womb might be the relatively least awful thing to do? Yes. But the tragedy and awfulness of what must be done should not be ignored or evaded.

But absolute freedom to have an abortion at almost any phase of fetal development has become an issue where the Democrats have been seduced by the sirens of freedom and power.

In fact, both Republicans and Democrats have incoherent, contradictory positions around the question of abortion when you look at the larger framework of their thinking. Democrats have a long tradition of speaking up for the oppressed and those exploited by those with power. But when it comes to the baby in the womb who is the ultimate example of powerlessness and vulnerability, they suddenly embrace the Republican rhetoric of freedom and individual choice as absolutes.

Republicans, on other hand, passionately advocate for freedom, choice, property rights, and the power of corporations to do what prospers them without the hindrance of regulation. They do so, at their most extreme, no matter how profound and violent the impact of freedom, power, and corporate rights on the vulnerable, including the unborn, local communities, and the living things of which God has made us shepherds.

And yet the Republican Party selectively finds concern for the powerless and vulnerable when it comes to a baby in the womb and selectively wants to deny freedom and property rights to the people within which the babies exist – women.

I believe the world hungers for coherence, integrity, and goodness. This is why the choice between Trump and Clinton is so galling. This is why Pence and Kaine were also disappointing. As ambassadors for their Christian faiths they should be able to speak and act with whole truth, consistent love, and wise caution about power.

My sense is that people are ultimately hungry for a whole faith that will truly transform their hearts so that every fruit they bear is good and full of light. People are looking hard, too, for a whole faith whose followers hold onto it with integrity and coherence even when doing so puts them at odds with the powers and principalities of this world.

Why aren’t there more Christians whose lives point to the way that offers all that?

 

permalink

Where are the Stories?

Nathan Aaberg —  September 30, 2016 — Leave a comment

I just had a powerful literary experience.

I listened to James Lee Burke’s The Tin Roof Blowdown read by Will Patton.

This crime/mystery novel is set in New Orleans before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina and features Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Detective Dave Robicheaux and a cast of many other unique characters.

james-lee-burke-the-tin-roof-blowdown

It is harsh, brutal, and shattering. There were days when I could only listen to about 30 seconds and then had to wait until the next day to listen to a bit more because some of the scenes were so life-like in their rawness and so full of potential for tragic violence.

Yet, the story, especially with Will Patton’s skillful reading, is simultaneously eloquent, poetic, and richly layered. It is filled with wonderful evocations of the beauty of New Orleans’ bayous and live oaks. And there is a deft Christian sensibility to it as well.

Through the book, the tragedy of the impact of Hurrican Katrina on New Orleans, particularly on the most vulnerable, went from being abstractions that I had carefully inventoried away in back shelves of my mind to tangible, heartfelt wounds painfully etched in my imagination through details and characters and subplots of the story.

Where are the stories like this of our destruction of God’s world and the communities that depend on it?

Where are the stories of Christians perpetrating this?

Where are the stories of Christians trying to heal and shepherd God’s living world?

I want to read those kinds of stories. I realize I want to write them.

Would they make a difference?

permalink

Food and the Whole Faith Church: Thinking Through the Practicalities (Part 1)

Nathan Aaberg —  September 28, 2016 — Leave a comment

It’s relatively easy to create a vision for something new at the 30,000-foot level. Working out some of the practical details is a whole different matter.

For that reason, I want to follow up on my piece in mid-August – Food and the Whole Faith Church – with some thoughts about how a whole faith church would actually implement one of the essential characteristics of a whole faith church presented in that post:

A defining feature of a whole faith church will be that this community of believers will be fully committed to demonstrating the proper and attentive relationship between humanity and Creation in its common meals, including communion.

This means that the food of the whole faith church will come as much as is practically possible from farms where the land, water, and animals of God’s earth are stewarded in ways that God would find fitting of a good, loving shepherd and from farm enterprises which support a good quality of life for the farmers and their communities.

Here are 10 principles I would offer as a starting point.

1. Form a Food and Faith Committee: Because of the complexity of the world of food and farming, the church will need dedicated and concentrated attention to continually learn about the topic, tackle difficult dimensions of application, and help the church’s approach to food evolve and mature over time. The committee should, ideally, be made up of 10 people or less for effectiveness and cohesiveness. These people should be widely recognized as thoughtful, compassionate, and yet practical people. Ideally, there would be at least one person on the committee who had farming experience or who has easy access to farmers of all kinds. The committee should visit farms on a regular basis. It should also regularly share what it has learned with the congregation.

2. The holier and more communally important the meal, the more attention should be given to how the food was farmed and made: The first order of priority would be to delve deep into the sourcing of wine (or grape juice) as well as the bread for holy communion. Following shortly after would be attention to other church-wide communal meals that the church enjoys together and that the church is the lead organizer and purchaser of. Eventually, attention would move down to smaller group meals the church organized.

3. Guidelines and plans for the food the whole faith church will choose and provide will be made a year at a time (at least): Based on a recommendation from the Food and Faith Committee, the whole church should agree to the practical details to be implemented for a particular year period (or more) before that period begins. In other words, the guidelines and plans for how food matters will be managed will be set for decently long period of time. Stability and predictability help people adjust to new habits.

4. The reasons why the church is being careful and deliberate in its food choices should be frequently explained and remembered: This could come in the form of sermons, special events, and sometimes simply a few words spoken during a service.

5. Whether meat is served and from what kind of farm-to-slaughter-to-market supply chain any meat that is served came from should receive particularly close attention: The raising of animals is an area where the worship of mammon and efficiency have overwhelmed kind and thoughtful shepherding ethics in particularly awful ways. Meat that has come from animals that have been systematically treated in ways that are cruel and don’t allow the animals to exhibit their natural behaviors should simply not be served. But there are varying degrees of humane and Creation-friendly livestock raising practices to be looked into. Tasty vegetarian options should always be provided to accommodate people whose compassion for animals is so great that any taking of animal life is an ethical problem for them.

6. On a regular basis, the church should share information about the farmers and their practices of farming for foods the church has committed to using: It would be ideal to bring farmers, especially Christian farmers, to the church (or the church to the farmers) as part of this effort.

7. The primary filter for choosing food sources for food the church will eat together will be the fruits of the spirit listed in Galatians 5:22-23: A whole faith church will ask of food it is considering eating to what degree the farming methods reflect love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control applied to God’s soil, water, animals, wildlife, and local, rural communities. Yet, the whole faith church will also recognize the practicalities and struggles of applying God’s values in any sphere of life in this fallen world.

8. The whole faith church will make a special effort to treat all farmers with respect in words and deeds and to offer tangible help to local farmers who want to farm with the fruits of the spirit: How would you feel if your local church scrutinized the ethics and morality of every decision you made in your job as a teacher or accountant or salesperson or IT consultant? Not very comfortable. Probably defensive. That’s how many farmers feel who have been working within the conventional food system for decades and whose family’s livelihood and culture are based on that system. The whole faith church needs to be loving and respectful to all farmers even as the whole faith church seeks to live out Christian values as they relate to farming and food in truth and love. The whole faith church should also seek out ways to help any farmer who desires to move in a significant way toward farming with stewardship and affection for God’s earth as a prominent goal.

9. Within the general principles laid about above, each local whole faith church will naturally have some latitude and freedom: Perfection will not be possible, and the intention is not to create food Puritans.

10. The whole faith church will frequently celebrate food as a provision of God, God’s beautiful earth, and God’s creative, gifted people: The efforts the whole faith church invests in making the common food of the church more in keeping with the values of God should be complemented by warm and lively celebration of the blessing of food in prayer, music, storytelling, and other creative ways.

If I’ve learned anything in my life it’s that planning is important but being able to adjust one’s plans and ideas when they make contact with reality is just as critical. I hope you find these ten points thought-provoking and helpful. I’d welcome your comments and feedback. 

permalink

Food for Thought from Joel Salatin

Nathan Aaberg —  August 30, 2016 — Leave a comment

You need to know about Joel Salatin and his new book The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs. If you aren’t already familiar with Joel, here’s how the book jacket describes him:

“Joel Salatin is a third generation farmer who works with his family on their farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.  The Salatin Polyface Farm is internationally known for innovative pastured livestock and services more than 5,000 families, 10 retail outlets and 50 restaurants through on-farm sales and metropolitan buying clubs.”

That’s the farming side of Joel. Joel was, in fact, the featured sustainable farmer in Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma which has helped shape a new consciousness of what of our food system is and what it should be.

Here’s how the website of his new book’s publisher describes him and the message of his tenth book:

“Joel Salatin is perhaps the nation’s best known farmer, whose environmentally friendly, sustainable Polyface Farms has been featured in Food, Inc. and Time magazine. Now in his first book written for a faith audience, Salatin offers a deeply personal argument for earth stewardship, and calls for fellow Christians to join him in looking to the Bible for a foodscape in line with spiritual truth. Salatin urges Christians to rethink America’s allegiance to cheap corporate food that destroys creation in its production, impoverishes third world countries, and supports oligarchical interests. He wonders why Christians ignore and even revel in unhealthy eating habits and factory farming that runs counter to God’s design. With scripture and Biblical stories, Salatin presents an alternative and shows readers that in appreciating the pigness of pigs, we celebrate the Glory of God.”

The shortest and best way to think about Joel is in his own terms. He calls himself a Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer.

He’s someone you should know. He’s a Christian changing God’s world for the better.

Pigness-Cover jpg

The following are a sampling of his words from his book. You’ll be struck by his unique voice and earthy, faith-centered perspective on food and our food system.

When we’re more interested in dysfunctional Hollywood celebrity culture or the Little League program than we are about what is going to become flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, we voluntarily place ourselves into the corporate food agenda. That agenda is decidedly nutrient deficient, price inappropriate, and anti-community based. It promotes centralization, customer ignorance, and a mechanical view of life.

Things that the religious right would abhor if they were promoted by churches are embraced warmly in the food system. While preachers rail against bringing junk into our homes via TV, the Internet, and pornographic literature, few bat an eye at a home stashed with high fructose corn syrup, potato chips, and Pop-Tarts, indeed, some even suggest that the cheaper we eat, the more money we’ll have to put in the offering plate. And to top it off, they denigrate anyone who would suggest part of caring for children is caring about what they eat. (pp. 80-81)

And..

The problem is we Christians do not trust God’s plan. We don’t. Oh, we trust it when it comes to matters of spirituality. But we think God’s plan is broken – along with mainstream scientists of our day – when it comes to physical things. The result is that we Christians marching off to sanctity-of-life rallies send our kids off to college to get a good enough education to go work for a multinational corporation dedicated to adulterating God’s creation.

I would suggest that a God-honoring farm is one that shows strength rather than weakness. It’s one that has no veterinary bills. It’s one that has healthy plants and animals. It’s one that produces food that develops healthier people. This is not a health-and-wealth message.  It is ultimately a humility-and-dependence message. God’s designs work. (p. 68)

And..

The whole idea of pornography, which of course the Christian community universally condemns, is instant and expedient gratification of a sacred act sanctified by marriage. Where is the Christian who dares to identify the pornographic food system that revels in death-inducing, sickness-encouraging, and creation-destroying orgies of self-indulgence? Strong language? Have you walked into a confinement factory chicken house lately? How about a confinement hog factory? Just like pornography disrespects and cheapens God-given and -sanctioned specialness in sex, factory-farmed hog houses disrespect and cheapen the God-sculpted specialness of pigs. (p. 133)

 

permalink

Food and the Whole Faith Church

Nathan Aaberg —  August 20, 2016 — Leave a comment

As I wrote earlier, Christians will not consistently care and act as if God’s Creation mattered, unless churches weave a whole faith into their worship, theology, and culture. I’ve set myself a goal of figuring out what that weaving would look like in what I call the “whole faith church.” This is another post in that series.

The first feature of a whole faith church that I highlighted was, perhaps surprisingly, a church in which membership would mean something. Membership would be the binding together of believers around a central faith in what God offers us and calls us to through Jesus. That faith would be inextricably bound up with a commitment, growing out of transformed hearts, to living out that faith together in concrete, tangible, accountable ways.

In this post I highlight another feature of the whole faith church. It is this:

A defining feature of a whole faith church will be that this community of believers will be fully committed to demonstrating the proper and attentive relationship between humanity and Creation in its common meals, including communion.

This means that the food of the whole faith church will come as much as is practically possible from farms where the land, water, and animals of God’s earth are stewarded in ways that God would find fitting of a good, loving shepherd and from farm enterprises which support a good quality of life for the farmers and their communities.

Because our food system is complicated, the practical application of this principle will be complicated and not always black and white. This will be a long-term odyssey that a whole faith church will need to address with loving kindness. Education and research will be needed. Farms visited. Thoughtful meetings held to discern how to make this work on a day-to-day basis in the local place in which a whole faith church is nested. In upcoming posts, I’ll dive into specific questions about how this feature of a whole faith church would be lived out.

A good starting point, however, for examining any food choice for the whole faith church would be to keep Galatians 5:22-23 in mind. In other words, whole faith churches would ask this fundamental question – does the food we are thinking of purchasing come from a farm which has been operated with as much love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control as is possible?

If you look into it, you’ll probably find that much of the food served in the common meals of a church, especially any meat products being served, does not measure up very well to that criteria.

You do not have to work very hard, for example, to learn that most pigs are raised in ways that are cruel and completely counter to the fruits of the spirit. Reading Pig Tales: An Omnivore’s Quest for Sustainable Meat is a good way to learn more about the natural capacities and intelligence of these animals and how much has been sacrificed to provide cheap pork. The Chicago Tribune ran a series recently on the cruel excesses of the increasing number of pig factory farms in Illinois. What’s more, there are clear links between the indiscriminate use of antibiotics (which promote growth) in pig factory farms here and in China and the rise of strains of bacteria that are resistant to every antibiotic doctors have in their arsenal. This resistance is leading to the misery-filled deaths of adults and children

If you do this research with an open mind and transformed heart, it becomes clear that the factory farming of pigs and their inhumane slaughtering in high-speed facilities is a cruel and unloving thing to do to the animals, workers, neighbors, communities, and waterways of any place. It is clear, too, that a Christian, and especially a church, could not in good faith knowingly choose to purchase and consume the meat of pigs produced from such a system.

That a church would do so is another example of human culture, economy, and convenience overwhelming a church’s commitment to not just believing but actually living as if God existed and that this is His world.

In a church’s life, more than in any other setting, the values of God should prevail.

For a whole faith church, that desire to have God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven will naturally prompt the church to think about food carefully. The idea is not to create a wide array of new rules and regulations. But the whole faith church will make it a habit to treat all of life as if it issued from God and as if it matters to God and as if our hearts should be engaged in all the ways we interact with life around us.

Creating and consuming common meals that are, at their source, in synch with the fruits of the spirit will ultimately be a life-giving habit and discipline for the whole faith church.

One literally life-givinging impact will be that the common meals will be better for the health of those who eat them.

The thoughtfulness that will go into the common meals will also make members of the whole faith church mindful of the value of God’s Creation to God.

The effort to create these meals will connect the church with farmers, like Steve and Marie Deibele of Golden Bear Farm, who are raising cows and pigs in ways consistent with the fruits of the spirit. This will be rewarding for everyone involved.

2016-06-01 18.36.33

Steve Deibele of Golden Bear Farm with his pigs that are raised with great care on pasture.

In following this discipline, members will be reminded, too, of their common hope for a new heaven and new earth where God’s shalom will prevail.

Creating and consuming these common meals will also, and perhaps most importantly, further inspire members to pursue their common mission of reconciling this challenging, complex world to God in every corner of their lives,

To paraphrase an insight from Stephen Webb in his book Good Eating, it will feel right in every way for a church to say grace over food that has some grace in it.

permalink