God actually is quite Great: Annalena Tonelli

Every now and then as I peruse the internet, especially as I read comments on news sites, I'll come upon a remark like this one, that's both heart-breaking and incredibly frustrating:

When a Christian actually does something nice for someone, I'll check into their god.

This attitude isn't really hard to find online. Every time I meet it, part of me wants to say "are you serious? Have you ever heard of Mother Teresa? Martin Luther King Jr.? Who brainwashed you?"

This is probably not the most helpful response, and in many cases it would be completely out of line. There are a lot of genuinely hurting people out there--hurt by Christians, some of them hurt by me.

These 'God is actually quite Great' posts are, in part, a word to these people: the hurt ones and the cynical, ignorant ones alike.

Annalena Tonelli is a woman you would respect. A Christian woman.

In 1969, Annalena Tonelli left her native Italy to teach in a high school in Kenya. Once there, she was drawn to working with Somalian Muslim refugees who eked out a livelihood in the Kenyan desert. Tonelli came to realize that many of her students and their families were afflicted by tuberculosis, and so she returned to Europe for medical studies. After this, she would spend the rest of her life serving in Africa.
Tonelli continued to work in Kenya with nomadic Somali refugees suffering from TB for over a decade. This ended abruptly in 1984 when she was arrested by a military tribunal after she criticized the persecution of a group of desert nomads; she defended these people for the sake of Jesus Christ, she informed the authorities. Tonelli was expelled from Kenya, and so she took her work to Somalia itself.

Historian Dana Robert provides a nice account of her work in Somalia:

In 1996 Tonelli raised money from her friends to open a 200-bed tuberculosis hospital in Borama, a town in the northwest corner of Somaliland, a remote region in Somalia. The hospital was so successful that the World Health Organization named it a "TB center of excellence," and Tonelli was able to attract support from UNICEF, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and from Caritas, the international Catholic charitable organization. Traveling out from the hospital into surrounding villages, she founded out-patient clinics that treated people for tuberculosis and other diseases. Twice a year Tonelli sponsored visits by eye doctors from Germany, who restored sight to 4,000 people. She opened a school for the deaf, handicapped, and orphaned. Somalis with HIV-AIDS also started traveling to Borama hospital for care.

Tonelli was also known for her opposition to the universal Somali practice of female genital mutilation.
This beautiful life of service to needy Somalians ended on October 5, 2003, when Annalena Tonelli was shot in the head by a man who had been harassing her for a job driving a hospital vehicle. Her murder was decried by dozens of Muslim religious leaders and protested by thousands of the Somalis she loved and lived amongst in Borama.

While a number of Western periodicals reported on the death of this "humanitarian aid worker" without any mention of her devout Roman Catholic faith, Tonelli explicitly named the motivations for her decades of service. When in 2003, despite her desire to go unnoticed, Tonelli was awarded the Nansen Refugee Award by the UNHCR, she explained: "I left Italy determined to 'proclaim the Gospel with my life'... This is what motivates me deep down, along with an invincible passion for the suffering and downtrodden, over and above questions of race, culture or creed." (You can read her full remarks here.)

There are a lot of incredible stories like hers out there. I wish that those individuals who claim they've never heard of a Christian 'doing something nice' would let these stories shape their perspectives more than the angry and hyperbolic rumblings of someone like the late Christopher Hitchens. Christians--individually and institutionally--have been responsible for some terrible things, yes, but they have also worked towards some truly beautiful ends. Other moments from Christian history--say, the Crusades--may be more notorious, but the vision of the gospel that we see in the life of someone like Annalena Tonelli is more true. In these moments we see the most faithful manifestations of Christian belief, the clearest pictures of what this way of Jesus is really about.

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This post is adapted from Dana Robert's wonderful treatment of Annalena Tonelli's life in Christian Mission: How Christianity Became a World Religion, chapter 5.

5 things Christians need to stop saying about homosexuality (and 1 thing we need to say)

On May 8th, North Carolina will vote on a proposed amendment to the state constitution concerning marriage and civil unions. I'm not convinced most people really know what the amendment they'll be voting on is about (go here for more on this), but at any rate the debate has heated up on bumper stickers and yard signs across the state, and questions about human sexuality are back in the public eye.

As you might expect, in the midst of this conversation Christians are saying all sorts of things about how we ought to think about and interact with our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. I'm writing this post because, basically, I think almost everything Christians--conservative or liberal--say about homosexuality is misguided and entirely unhelpful. This is a volatile situation, and we need to be so careful, lest we further injure and ostracize those for whom this isn't just some issue for intellectual and theological speculation but something as near and dear as your sex drive or your hopes for a companion to spend your life with.

Below are five of the most common or most harmful things that I hear as I listen. I realize people have strong opinions in this debate. I'm not writing this for the sake of argument. Many of the claims being made most frequently are just confused and damaging, and if I expect anyone to make sure they are speaking soundly and charitably, it's the Christians. That's why I'm writing. If you want to argue with me on some point or another, that's fine. But first, hear me out.

5. "According to Leviticus..." This sounds simple enough, but it has to be said: use Leviticus consistently, or don't use it at all. I don't just mean 'don't condemn homosexuality if you eat shrimp (Lev 11:10-12)', though that's not a bad point. I mean, if you're going to affirm Lev 20:13a--that two men having sexual intercourse is an abomination--then you have to affirm 20:13b as well: "they shall surely be put to death..." You can't have it both ways. If you simply pick and choose here and don't give any thought to why you're doing that, there's nothing to protect you from the charge of hypocrisy.
Furthermore, if you're reading the text closely, you might be a little surprised by what you find. As Jacob Milgrom, the greatest authority on Leviticus in the last century, writes:

Does the Bible Prohibit Homosexuality? Of course it does (18:22; 20:13), but the prohibition is severely limited. First, it is addressed only to Israel, not to other nations. Second, compliance with this law is a condition for residing in the Holy Land, but is irrelevant outside it (see the closing exhortation, 18:24-30). Third, it is limited to men; lesbianism is not prohibited. Thus it is incorrect to apply this prohibition on a universal scale. [Leviticus: A Book of Ritual and Ethics, 196]

If you want to cite a biblical injunction against homosexual intercourse, go to Romans 1:18-2:11 or 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. Leviticus and the 'abomination' language there need to exit the conversation.

4. "It's just like slavery." No, actually, it's not. This is a popular point to raise, but it's a false analogy on several levels. Most obviously, approval and disapproval are just not the same kind of thing; the two issues are addressed in very different ways. But more than that, the New Testament's supposed condonation of slavery is only implicit: an issue like a general emancipation of slaves simply is not addressed directly at any point (which is a far cry from the repeated, direct denunciations of homosexual intercourse). For the most part, the New Testament offers an unspoken acceptance of ancient forms of slavery, insofar as it stipulates right behavior for both slaves and slave-owners without calling for the abolition of the institution (see, for instance, Eph 6:5-9). And whereas the denunciations of Romans 1 are supported by a theological framework, nowhere do the discussions of slavery offer a theological justification for the practice--only a rationale for the particular attitudes and actions expected from the Christians affected by it.
Nor is the New Testament quite so accepting of slavery as many would lead you to believe; in 1 Timothy 1:9-11 the life of the "slave trader" is explicitly denounced as contrary to the gospel. Paul also offers a mild encouragement to slaves seeking freedom (1 Cor 7:20-24), and this is clearly moderated by his conviction that "the time is short" (vv. 29-31). In contrast to this, the biblical witness regarding homoerotic activity (that's such a cold phrase, but it carries the precision I need) is univocal.

3. "It's a choice." I'm not sure how anyone who has actually taken the time to listen to someone who's struggled with his sexual identity could ever say this. If it were a choice, there are a lot of people who have gone through some very dark times who would have unchosen it. Maybe these Christians aren't listening to them.
But this claim demands more than an anecdotal reaction. Let's consider some facts. To my mind, one of the most important pieces of evidence here is twin studies, where sets of identical and fraternal twins are considered. If there is a genetic component to sexual orientation then the correspondence between two twins' orientations should be higher for identical twin than fraternal twins, because genetically identical twins are basically, well, identical. And, at least with males, this is the case in practically every major study. There are some ambiguities yet to be worked through, but, as one researcher summarizes: "the studies generally support a genetic contribution to male sexual orientation, [although] the magnitude of the potential contribution varies widely." Obviously, homosexuality is not a purely biological phenomenon--there are a host of social, psychological, and emotional issues that can come into play--but clearly there is a biological element, and it won't do anyone any good to deny it. Things are more complicated than you'd like to think, Mr. 'It's a choice', and you have to find a way to acknowledge that and adapt.
I doubt even those individuals who claim to have left their old sexual orientation behind will tell you they just made a different choice; they'll probably tell you Jesus delivered them.

2. "They were created this way." I've heard some intelligent, well-educated Christians express this sentiment, and it rankles me. Yes, as I just said, I do whole-heartedly affirm the biological nature of homosexual attraction. But creation and birth are not the same. Humanity was created in the image of God (Gen 1:26-27); every single human being is born into the sin of Adam (Rom 5:12-19). We are restored to our created nature only in Christ--we are new creations (2 Cor 5:17), being renewed and putting on the new self, created again after the image of God (Eph 4:22-24; Col 3:9-10); we are conformed to the likeness of Jesus (Rom 8:29), who is the image of God (Col 1:15). God's work of new creation is all about the restoration of a broken world and broken creatures that are not what they should be. If you believe in original sin (granted, some do not), you simply cannot collapse the distinction between being created and being born. None of us are what we were made to be. 

1. "There won't be any gays in heaven." This is one of the most disturbing things I've ever heard. There is absolutely nothing in the Bible to suggest that anyone, simply by virtue of being attracted to someone of the same sex, will be excluded from salvation. And the presumption--who would dare speak as if they were the Judge of the living and the dead? If the New Testament tells us anything about who will be in the Kingdom and who will be out, it's that you can't predict it. Tax collectors and prostitutes enter the Kingdom before the religious leaders (Matt 21:31). In Matthew 25 both the righteous and the unrighteous are caught off guard as judgment is passed (25:31-46). And those who cast out demons in Jesus' name, prophesy, and do many mighty works will no doubt be a little taken aback when the Lord says "depart from me" (Matt 7:21-23). 'Judge not' (Matt 7:1; Luke 6:37; 1 Cor 4:5)--and we are specifically called not to judge those outside the Church (1 Cor 5:9-13). These ignorant, terrifying words are contrary not only to the spirit of the scriptures, but to the letter as well.

Of course, there are some Christians who are out there doing the real business of loving their neighbors--gay, straight, whatever--and are saying some good things while they're at it. Andrew Marin is one of them. His fantastic little book, Love is an Orientation: Elevating the Conversation with the Gay Community, is peppered with thoughtful words that arise from years of ministry with individuals in the GLBTQ community in Chicago who are wary of Christianity. Read the book. Here I'll just leave us with one word from Marin:

    The Christian community is by and large well intentioned in its interactions with gays and lesbians. We have a tendency, however, to keep making the same mistakes, which end up causing severe harm and reinforce an already negative perception of who we are and what we believe.

    Christians must be the first to apologize, and admit that we have wronged people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender. 

One thing Christians need to start saying is "I'm sorry."

C. S. Lewis says: Why study theology?

The last section of C. S. Lewis's classic Mere Christianity is a sort of first, hesitant step towards that intimidating word: theology. Lewis was told his readers didn't want theology--give them something practical!--but he would have none of this. If we want to think and talk about God, he reasoned, we probably want to think and talk about God well.

I agree. I suppose this post is for those of you who might come to the wardrobe, see that I'm off on some theological rabbit trail, and hurry off as quick as you can, back to facebook, to another blog on your favorites, to the email--anywhere to avoid theology. It's important. We need to think through these things.

But why?

Lewis once encountered a old military man, tough as nails, who had no time for theology. If you've met the real thing, he barked, all the little dogmas and formulas seem ridiculous and unreal. Lewis could appreciate the man's complaint. This fellow probably had really encountered God, and moving from that encounter to the creeds and doctrines of the Church probably felt a bit like walking along the coast and looking out at the Atlantic, and then going in and looking at a map of the ocean. The man was "turning from something real to something less real."
Yet Lewis didn't stop there.

But here comes the point. The map is admittedly only coloured paper, but there are two things you have to remember about it. In the first place, it is based on what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic. In that way it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together. In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. As long as you are content with walk on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America.

God is deeper and more expansive than any ocean. His waves are fiercer. You can't go far thinking and talking about God without getting lost. Unless you have a map. The map helps us navigate. It shows us the way to go and the ways to avoid. Our personal experiences of God and thoughts about him can be powerful, but they aren't always clear. And I think this is no less true of someone's personal reading of the Bible--there are so many tempting paths that open up in the scriptures that you have to finally pass by, but you need guidance to help you see this. You need a map.

Theology isn't mathematics. We aren't hoping to figure out the right formulas for understanding God--once you have them, you just plug in the numbers and calculate the mind and actions of the Almighty.
Theology is exploration, probing the depths of this awesome Wonder before us. We do this with the Bible, as it witnesses to God's work in the world, through Creation, with Israel, in Jesus, and by the Holy Spirit in the Church. But we also do this with our map, with the theology of the Church. It helps us stay the course as we try to find out this deep and mysterious God. If we're going to talk about God well, we're going to need it.

Earth Day

Over the last year I've tried to make posts reflecting on Creation and the Church's relationship to it a priority on the wardrobe. This is a matter that, in some quarters, is entirely overlooked, despite its recurrence throughout the Bible and its particular relevance in our time. (Of course, in other communities people likely attend to care of creation too much, to the detriment of other, crucial concerns.) So with Earth Day coming up this Tuesday, April 24th, I thought I'd offer up a few of these posts again--take some time today to think about God's purposes for His Creation, besides humanity, and how you ought to relate to the world and creatures around you.

Is our faith green? pt. 1

Is our faith green? pt. 2

the environment and justice

Eating Mercifully

Rachel Held Evans is writing about the Bible

Rachel Held Evans has a great ongoing series of posts on scripture over at her blog, called "learning to love the Bible for what it is, not for what we want it to be."
I love this title. It reminds me of C. S. Lewis's helpful insistence on an honest appraisal of the scriptures (which I've written about before): there are certain examples and claims in the Bible itself that we simply have to make room for in any 'doctrine of scripture' we concoct. If we want to love the Bible (or talk about the Bible!) well, we need to be open and reflective about what it is and what it is not.

Evans's strategy to this end is to look at books about the Bible. No complaints from a bookworm like myself, and I think her choices are especially good. She has six posts on Christian Smith's recent book, The Bible Made Impossible:

The problem of biblicism

God Hates Cretans? (and other passages of Scripture we'd rather not talk about)

A very "biblical" blog post

Is there a difference between a 'Christian worldview' and a 'biblical worldview'?

"You think that by Scripture you possess eternal life..."

Taking the Bible seriously means embracing its tension and complexity

And there are three posts so far on N. T. Wright's book Scripture and the Authority of God:

Unpacking the authority of Scripture with N. T. Wright

'Authority,' 'sovereignty,' and other scary words
N. T. Wright, Calvinism, and Scripture

These aren't short posts, there are a lot of them, and you should really start from the beginning--so you might want to just pick a book and follow her posts on it. Any of them will be worth your time though.

Check it out!

He is Risen!

I can't think of a better way to celebrate our Lord's resurrection than by sharing a portion of St. John Chrysostom's beautiful Paschal Homily. Enjoy--and happy Easter!

Let none lament his poverty;
for the universal Kingdom is revealed.
Let none bewail his transgressions;
for the light of forgiveness has risen from the tomb.
Let none fear death;
for death of the Saviour has set us free.

He has destroyed death by undergoing death.
He has despoiled hell by descending into hell.
He vexed it even as it tasted of His flesh.
Isaiah foretold this when he cried:
Hell was filled with bitterness when it met Thee face to face below;
filled with bitterness, for it was brought to nothing;
filled with bitterness, for it was mocked;
filled with bitterness, for it was overthrown;
filled with bitterness, for it was put in chains.
Hell received a body, and encountered God. It received earth, and confronted heaven.
O death, where is your sting?
O hell, where is your victory?

Christ is risen! And you, o death, are annihilated!
Christ is risen! And the evil ones are cast down!
Christ is risen! And the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen! And life is liberated!
Christ is risen! And the tomb is emptied of its dead;
for Christ having risen from the dead,
is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be Glory and Power, now and forever, and from all ages to all ages.
Amen!

Eating Mercifully

Last week Emily and I had the chance to go to a film screening and discussion put on by the Humane Society of the United States and two Duke Divinity School professors, where we watched a clip from a short film called "Eating Mercifully" and discussed Christians' calling to live well on this planet with the rest of God's creatures.

The film details the the phenomenon of factory farming, the source of almost all of the meat we consume in this country. Simply put, factory farming is a gruesome practice, where animals are treated as no more than production units. The bit of the film we watched focuses on the conditions pigs suffer in this system: living spaces often only a few inches larger than the animal, while the larger spaces are oppressively overpopulated; violent behavior resulting from the psychological effects of these conditions; a million pigs dying every year in transport. It's a chilling reality which my descriptions can't begin to communicate. (You can view the trailer for "Eating Mercifully" here.)

The ladies from HSUS's Faith Outreach program then made a short and helpful presentation. The issue, they stressed, is not about animals' rights. The animals have no rights, and this is precisely the point. Animals are completely powerless before us, totally at our mercy; how are we going to use that power?

Afterwards, Dr. Stephen Chapman, a professor of Old Testament, and Dr. Norman Wirzba, a professor of theology, offered some really insightful and important comments that I hope we'll all consider long and hard.

Chaps began by describing his surprise as he discovered, over the years, the prominence of animals in scripture. They are in the story of creation and Eden; they are included in God's covenant with Noah (Gen 9:8-17). They're also present at the End--indeed, animals may provide the Old Testament's most important image for God's healing work in our world. They certainly offer the most memorable image--think 'the lion and the lamb' (Isa 11:6-9). Psalm 36:6, he pointed out, keeps us honest here: "you save humans and animals alike, O Lord." God's saving plan is for all of creation--not just humanity, or our souls! This is not just an issue of cruelty to animals, he emphasized: Christians need to be recalled "to what the gospel is really about." God's vision is more expansive than our common, narrow focus on 'getting to heaven when we die'.

Then Dr. Wirzba opened by sketching a quick historical picture of us--21st century Americans--as "the most ignorant eaters the world has ever known." By and large, we have little to no contact with the processes that bring us our meat: we simply go to the store and look for the best pieces at the best prices, and take them home to cook. We're pure consumers. Given this, the horrific realities of factory farming should come as no surprise; as Wirzba put it so well, we have "lost the imaginative capacity to see these animals as anything but a commodity to meet our demand for really cheap food." If animals are simply a commodity, why would we care about anything other than cost and efficiency?

Given this situation, the questions Christians need to ask themselves, Wirzba suggested, are how do you make yourself worthy of another creature's life and death? How can we become more gracious and more grateful eaters?

"Eating Mercifully" is available for free online. The film is 26 minutes and the product of a lot of research and consideration--about how to communicate the importance of these issues to faith communities and about how to expose viewers to the horrors of factory farming without gratuitously-violent visuals. There are also other resources available from the HSUS for those interested in learning more or taking steps towards a life lived more conscientiously with God's creatures. You can check them out online here, and on facebook.

Have you given much thought to where you meat comes from? If the sweep of God's saving work in the world includes the redemption of animals, what changes for you?

What can you do to be a more gracious and grateful eater?