Wickedness

Photo by Jenny Graham, OSF
The Merchant of Venice, Anthony Heald and Jonathan Haugen

Can I share something with you? Today I read something that really ticked me off. It was posted as a high school girl's status update.

Corinthians 6:14~Don't team up with those who are unbelievers. How can goodness be a partner with wickedness? How can light live with darkness?

Give me a friggin' break.

I am so tired of some Christians' attitudes that they are better than anyone who is not a Christian. (Not to mention those who think they are better Christians than other Christians.) This particular phrasing the young woman employed has been used in many other places; a google search yielded over 600 hits.

We recently spent a glorious week down in Ashland (insert genuflection here) at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, seeing plays and attending discussions with actors and dramaturgs. I'll share more about the details in future posts, but I want to mention something specific here: my family's response to The Merchant of Venice. It was a brilliant production of a troubling play. Spoiler alert: Shylock, a Jewish moneylender in Venice, is forced to convert to Christianity in order to retain his property. Both kids were outraged at this turn of events. And they found it totally believable, given the intolerant, holier-than-thou attitudes of so many of their Christian peers.

I read a great piece about Anthony Heald, the actor who portrays Shylock. The first Jewish actor in the 75 year history of OSF to perform the role, Heald wrestled with many issues. I love his analysis:

"I think the biggest mistake is to present all the Christians as bigots and Shylock as noble. What that does is leave the suggestion that even noble Jews are capable of vicious acts. No -- Jewish people with psychological flaws, like Christians with psychological flaws, are capable of vicious acts."

Photo by Jamie Francis/The Oregonian

Oregon Shakespeare Festival actor Anthony Heald has found a rewarding home in Ashland, where he's become a key member of the talented company. Director Bill Rauch describes him as "a brilliant craftsperson" and a "seeker of the truth" through his art. ~caption from Marty Hughley's Oregonian article

I'd encourage Christians to really consider these words:

Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means,
warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer
as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us,
do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.
If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility?
Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his
sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge.
The villainy you teach me, I will execute,
and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
(Act III, scene I)

Right on, Will.

I am sick of sanctimonious schmucks.

Sounds of Silence

Image from SodaHead

Warning: Some of this may be offensive to some readers. For example, the incredible misspellings in a quoted Facebook status. Or maybe even the notion that someone can be so young and so bigoted. Read at your discretion.

So...here goes.

I have been extremely unsettled since I read a young man's status post on Facebook the other day. He wrote - no, wait. Let me share an interesting post (yes, it is related; I am not going off on a tangent) I read at Militant Ginger: Why do Christians hate Gay People?

Don't feel like clicking the link and reading the whole piece? Okay, slacker, I'll give you a good quote from it:

While certain Christians were instrumental in securing Civil Rights for African-Americans, the core support for racial segregation across the United States came from the majority of 'decent,' normal, Church-going Americans. The same people who are now protesting against gay marriage.

In fact, the scriptural arguments were quite similar, too - with the 'mark of Cain' often being interpreted as dark skin, thereby offering scriptural evidence to support the assumption that black people were spiritually inferior to whites.

Such scriptural interpretations were clearly just cynical attempts to hide racism and bigotry behind the legitimacy of religion. I honestly don't see how the Christian position on homosexuality is any different today.

The recent case of Constance McKinnen's prom (Don't know what I'm talking about? Have you been living in a cave?) illustrated a depressing demonstration of hateful homophobia by Christian churchgoers. Go over to Wisenheimer for a funny take on this story. No, really, go over there now and read it. I will wait.

That Courtenay has a way with words, doesn't she? Yes, this is related to what I began telling you about. It's not a tangent, I swear.

Okay, now back to the Facebook kid. He was writing in response to the Day of Silence on April 16th. Don't know what that's about? Don't feel bad; I didn't either. Here's how the group sponsoring it describes their mission:

The Day of Silence, a project of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), is a student-led day of action when concerned students take some form of a vow of silence to bring attention to the name-calling, bullying and harassment -- in effect, the silencing -- experienced by LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) students and their allies.

Sounds like a pretty damned good idea to me. I thought of my friend Mrs. Chili, and the posts she's done about the young men who were driven to suicide by such bullying. This is a worthy effort on behalf of a group who deserve better treatment. In the tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., it was a good old fashioned non-violent protest. It was greeted by these compassionate words in this child's Facebook status:

Not participating in the Day Of Silence tomorrow. Honestly, there are bigger problems to rally for. 4,000 Children die every hour from starvation and I see no Day of Silence for THEM. Thousands of Christians and their families are tourtured, imprissoned, and killed every year and nobody says a word. But if gay couples aren't allowed to marry? OH NO!!! Lobby!!! Boycott!!! Rally!!!

I told you were were some serious misspellings. There is also a depressing lack of tolerance for his fellow man. What made it even more depressing to me was seeing that ten of his peers, including a girl I know, had clicked the "like" button. It shook me up to think that this girl agreed with such a bigoted view.

Kids, we need to respect each other. We can rally for more than one thing. We can help feed children and protect Christians from the lions and let gay folks get married. Of course, I'd argue that we should probably have fewer children so that there are not so many hungry mouths in the first place. But that's sort of a tangent. The point is that Christians should stop hating on gay people.

For some reason, I'm reminded of the poem "First they came" by Pastor Martin Niemoller. Often quoted, it describes the dangers of political apathy in response to fear and hatred which soon escalates out of control.

"THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

THEN THEY CAME for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.

THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up."

My son heightened my sense of anxiety about this current of hatred in our country when he talked this evening at dinner. He mentioned things he'd read in the news about the rise of militia groups and the threat of civil unrest in this country.

But that's all fodder for another post. I'm worn out right now (as you've probably already surmised by the rambling incoherency of this post) by the thought of young people I have met who are bullying those who are unlike them. From the things I've read about Jesus, I don't think he'd cotton much to their actions. I'm headed to bed now, with visions of a Ricky Ricardo-like Jesus greeting them some day beside St. Peter at the pearly gates "Kids, you got a lotta 'splaining to do! What part of " but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" did you not understand?