"Left Behind" - Is this creep-show catastrophe biblical?

by Elizabeth Palmberg SojoMail 7-19-2006

At press time, more than 60 million copies have been sold of a mediocre yet extremely popular fiction that, under the cover of an improbable adventure plot, peddles an ideologically driven, wildly unbiblical theology.

I'm talking, of course, about the Left Behind series of books. (Da Vinci what? Never read it). Actually, while The Da Vinci Code is also reported to have sold 60 million copies, for Left Behind the 60 million is an umbrella figure covering Left Behind, its 11 sequels and three prequels, another series of 40 kids' books, and several more series of novels, plus associated audiobooks, graphic novels, devotionals, and, of course, the upcoming video game. So, while its reach may not be as wide as Dan Brown's, its fans are invested deeply enough to buy book after book.

Here, I've chosen to focus on the third film, Left Behind: World at War, because it was released in churches (the first two films had tanked at the box office). A reported 3,000 congregations, including a number of megachurches, elected to screen the film last October, often billing it as an evangelistic opportunity. But it's not an entirely gospel message that this film gave its viewers, churched and unchurched – and it's not just a spiritual kind of warfare that it urges upon the faithful. For those of you who missed the films, here's a brief recap: the first movie, Left Behind, starts off with God smiting down the Russian military when it inexplicably attacks Israel, which is, also inexplicably, off its military guard. The plot moves on briskly to the titular so-called rapture event (a theologically fringe interpretation of 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 which turns a Pauline reassurance to believers into a creep-show catastrophe, with driverless cars crashing and distraught non-raptured people choosing suicide). The global disappearance of the saved precipitates soul-searching and eventual conversion on the part of airline pilot-cum-rapture widower Rayford Steele, his daughter Chloe, pastor Bruce Barnes, and star reporter Buck Williams.

Meanwhile, the Antichrist appears as a man named Nicolae Carpathia, a blondish Romanian with a Russian accent straight out of Rocky IV. Repeatedly promising global disarmament, peace, and an end to extreme poverty, and feigning great humility and commitment to dialogue, he moves to take over the world, starting, bizarrely, with the U.N. For someone with powers of mind control, he chooses a circuitous path to power: he promises to rebuild the Jerusalem temple, so an Israeli scientist will give him a fertilizer that makes deserts bloom, so he can turn 10 huge "worthless" tracts of land which his two mentors have purchased into 10 rich kingdoms (if I read the briefly shown map correctly, pretty much all of Zimbabwe and the Amazon basin were part of these easily purchased, um, deserts). At the climax of the first film, he gives each kingdom's ruler a seat on the Security Council, shoots his mentors dead in front of the new monarchs, and uses his mind control powers to convince everyone (except the recently converted Buck) that it was a murder-suicide.

In the sequel, Left Behind: Tribulation Force, Rayford and Buck, who have joined forces with Bruce and Chloe to fight Carpathia, accept prestigious jobs from the Antichrist in order to spy on him. It's a week after the rapture, and Carpathia has already persuaded the planet to accept a one-world currency and "call[ed] on every nation to disarm, to put aside all their racial, social, political, and the deadliest of all, their religious differences." This peacemaking stance is merely a ruse to get nations to turn over remaining weapons to the U.N., and to jump start Carpathia's new one-world religion. The Antichrist also arranges a global press conference for an Israeli rabbi who has just finished a study on the identity of the Messiah. However, with a little espionage from our heroes and a helping of divine intervention, the rabbi is converted and proclaims on air that Jesus, rather than Carpathia, is the Messiah.

By the third film (Left Behind: World at War), the U.N. (now "Global Community") is a fascist state whose storm troopers shoot Bible-runners on sight. When well-intentioned, patriotic militias move against the Antichrist, he uses the fight as cover to "attack America," publicly mouthing the rhetoric of peace while privately giving orders via teleconference to Russian and Chinese (and U.S.) military officers. U.S. President Gerald Fitzhugh, who believed the peace line, mourns with the White House in flames, "What have I done? … I gave Nicolae everything he needed to kill thousands, millions of people." Mr. LaHaye, the Cold War called. It wants its paranoia back.

There's a lot more bad plot in World at War, but before I tackle that, let's get a few things straight. The Antichrist in Revelation gets global political authority from Satan (13:2), not, as the Left Behind books and movies suggest over and over, by promising humans peace and nuclear disarmament. In fact, assuming that John's attention didn't just wander in the middle of his Antichrist description, the Antichrist's power is overtly military, while Christians should embrace nonviolence: "If you kill with the sword, with the sword you must be killed. Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints." (Revelation 13:10; see also Matthew 26:52). The world, except for Christians, worships the Antichrist because of his apparently invincible power (13:4, 7-8), not because he offers ostensibly humble words about tolerance – in fact, the Antichrist speaks arrogantly (13:5).

Revelation repeatedly emphasizes the revolutionary idea that conquering, for humans, comes about through patient endurance (1:9, 2:3, 3:10, 13:10, 14:12) and public avowal of faith (2:13, 3:8), including faith unto death (2:10, 6:9, 12:11, 20:4). Given this emphasis on sacrificial trust in God's power, it's disturbing to see the main characters in the Left Behind books and films repeatedly depend on their own strength and wisdom. Our heroes adopt the vaguely military-sounding name "Tribulation Force," and in the film of that name Buck and Rayford both hide their Christianity in order to get jobs working for the Antichrist. Buck doesn't even offer temporary resistance to what his future wife Chloe calls "this whole hanging out with the Devil thing."

Apparently Revelation doesn't tell you all you need to know about the Antichrist, and the need to spy on him is great enough that the means justify the ends: "We need that information to save souls!" pleads Bruce in Tribulation Force when Rayford resists the suggestion that he try to become the Antichrist's personal airplane pilot. Bruce also offers the spiritual arguments that, "These are not ordinary times … if you don't, someone else will."

In other words, the main problem with the Left Behind movies and books is not the biblical literalism they incorrectly lay claim to over and over. The real problem is that Left Behind is a big old plateload of neo-con neo-gnosticism designed to almost completely ignore some of the most clearly stated points of Revelation (and the gospels), in the pursuit of a particular, arguably idolatrous, present-day political mythology.

By the way, it's impossible to keep up a consistent claim to literally interpret Revelation, which repeatedly urges readers to take it figuratively (1:20; 11:4, 8; 13:18; 17:9-18), so LaHaye and Jenkins periodically admit or imply that the four horsemen aren't literal men on horses, that the Antichrist doesn't literally have seven heads, etc. But this illogic isn't the main problem with the Left Behind books or films; in fact, practically the only thing the series gets right is the assertion that God can and will intervene powerfully, including with miracles, in human history.

What the three movies get wrong about history and the present-day world would fill a novel in itself, so I'll hit only a few highlights: It is not true that those who ask for religious tolerance, and the people of the United States generally, will soon cheerfully allow Christians to be branded terrorists and the Bible to be banned as "hate literature." Contrary to the opening scenes of the first movie, Jerusalem is not composed largely of Christian churches and shared Judeo-Christian holy sites. Jews have not been hungering for the past couple millennia to rebuild the temple and re-start animal sacrifices; modern Judaism is a synagogue-based religion.

Hunger is not a problem that needs to be solved by a new scientific fertilizer; world hunger today is a failing of political will, mostly the will of rich countries. (On the plus side, it's nice to see that in the Left Behind movies the president, and both the pre- and post-rapture pastors of the multiethnic church, are African American.) Oh, and if the world's nations did (blessedly) agree to disarm, the U.S. and many others would definitely do the job themselves rather than gullibly hand over the nukes to the U.N., which is at best a moderately effective diplomatic, humanitarian, and statistics-gathering body with an inefficient structure, no military force except for short-term loans from member countries, and a yearly budget less than 4% that of Wal-Mart or British Petroleum. It would make far more sense for the Antichrist to try to seize global power by taking charge of Wal-Mart, which hasn't signed onto multiple international conventions about religious and other human rights. Or, for that matter, the United States, which has the world's strongest military (and, in its worst moments, some similarity to the " Babylon" of Revelation 17-18).

But the Left Behind films are not about discerning the actual signs of the times; they're about a extreme right-wing political script shaped over the last few decades. Concern for one's neighbor is just a blind to impose the ultimate, repressive, godless big government on the globe. In this New Testament-turned-upside-down, any talk of peacemaking ("Peace is imperative. We must help our neighbors, forget our differences") is a dangerous ruse, not a blessing. Same goes for concern for the poor; the only people in the Left Behind movies who voice any concern for them are the Antichrist and one of his equally evil backers. (Carpathia fleetingly appears on TV in front of a tent-dwelling African family, intoning "How can we find peace when people are starving?") In fact, the movies give the impression that there aren't any poor people - at least none worth more than four seconds of screen time.

But wait, there are a few new millennium additions to the paranoid political script. In World at War, middle-class U.S. Christians are victimized by terrorism because of their faith (the Antichrist has biological weapons sprayed onto Bibles). This allows for some dramatic moments of martyrdom, as a couple main characters spend World at War delirious with fever at an underground church-cum-infirmary, and one dies before they figure out that communion wine is the "antidote." But this plot does a disservice both to the actual Christians suffering for their faith elsewhere in the world, and to people who are trying to understand real-life terrorism. Terrorism is never justifiable, but if we are to stop it, it might help to understand that its perpetrators are angry not about Christian piety, but about the stationing of U.S. troops on Saudi soil, the invasion of Iraq, and Western disinterest in the plight of Palestinians.

When President Fitzhugh finally starts to get wise to the Antichrist in World at War, the Iraq war references come thick and fast. When he gets wind of the imminent "attack on America," the president joins forces with allies Egypt and Britain, who propose moving "on [the Antichrist's] power center in New Babylon … Tactical strikes first, followed by a quick ground push." But before agreeing to the plan, Fitzhugh argues (as White House spokesman Ari Fleischer suggested before the Iraq war)that assassination is a better option: "We've got to take Nicolae [dramatic pause] out. If we kill him, we've avoided world war." But wait, there's more! To make sure he can trust Buck, the president interrogates him at gunpoint – after he has him abducted from the street and put in an empty cement room with a black bag over his head. But once Buck admits his allegiance to Christ (rather than Carpathia), the bag comes off – no hard feelings! Just needed to get that essential information. The maddening thing is that, for all of their paranoia about those who mention peace, the Left Behind movies several times temporarily get the point that we need to depend on the Prince of Peace rather than our own conventional weapons. This is most striking in the third film. President Fitzhugh's attempt to personally assassinate the Antichrist fails; bulletproof, Carpathia magically destroys his would-be assassin's missile-summoning transponder before throwing Fitzhugh out of a skyscraper window. Meanwhile, U.S. militias' attack on the Global Community has been rebuffed, and the U.S.-British-Egyptian attack foiled, just as the Christian main characters knew they would be. The president, whose life has been miraculously preserved, wanders back to the partially destroyed White House.

At this point, God summons Buck to meet the president and lead him to Christ. Each of the Left Behind movies has at least one scene where someone repents and accepts Jesus as Lord of his or her life; these scenes provide what little actual information about the gospel is contained in the three films. In addition to accepting forgiveness for his sins, the converted president realizes, as he will later tell the Antichrist, that, whereas Fitzhugh had thought that "the only way to defeat you [is] with weapons, with the military," in fact "the answer was right there in front of us. Jesus Christ. The only way to beat you, in this life or the next, is to accept him." Heartbreakingly, World at War gets this point only in a bizarre, 1984-esque doublethink way. Right after leading the president to Christ, Buck does not offer him any instruction on being part of the Body of Christ, studying the gospel, or finding a church community for further fellowship. Instead, Buck nonchalantly asks the president, "What are you going to do now?"

And the president responds, "Though I can't kill Nicolae, I might be able to slow him down … If I could take out his command center, I'd finally be able to do something." (Note the equation of doing something with military action, rather than with patient endurance). And then the president marches right back into the Antichrist's office (God miraculously blinds the guards to his approach), makes that speech about Jesus being better than weapons - and uses another missile transponder. Which works this time, destroying not Carpathia (who emerges unscathed from the flames during the final credits), but the top half of the skyscraper, along with the president and who knows how many other people. Because accepting Jesus makes your weapons work better, apparently. I wanted to cry.

So, for the readers, viewers, and writers of Left Behind in all its forms, here are a few good words: Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the peacemakers. Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father in heaven. Take care of the poor at your gates. Be faithful until death, and God will give you the crown of life. And lay off the Gospel According to Dr. Strangelove, OK?

Elizabeth Palmberg is assistant editor of Sojourners.

The Body of Christ in Lebanon

by Jim Wallis

Like many of you, I have been glued to CNN and other cable news
channels and feeling my heart broken by the vivid scenes of war's
devastation and human suffering in the Middle East. We mourn this
violence and, habitually, pray for peace. But what does that mean?
What is the context and why is this happening?

Let me first say that I affirm Israel's existence and its right to
live in peace and security. Let me also say that I believe Hezbollah
has provoked this current crisis. Since the Israeli withdrawal from
Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah has built a stockpile of thousands of
rockets, continued attacks on Israel, and then, recently, kidnapped
two Israeli soldiers.

So we start by condemning kidnapping and Hezbollah's attacks on
Israeli civilians. Hezbollah is a militant organization and movement
that uses terrorism, i.e., it deliberately carries out lethal violence
against innocent civilians. And no matter what the grievances or
injustices, deliberate violence against civilians must be universally
and unequivocally condemned as what a group of Palestinian
intellectuals after 9/11 called a "short path to hell." Killing
innocent civilians (often families and children) is evil and must be
steadfastly opposed, and in response to such ugly violence we must
draw a clear line in the sand. Further, Hezbollah is an organization
that does not recognize Israel's right to exist and has vowed to
destroy it. So let's be clear, by kidnapping Israeli soldiers and
attacking Israeli cities with rocket attacks aimed directly at
civilians, Hezbollah provoked this latest war.

Jan Egeland, the U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian
affairs, who has been critical of Israel's "disproportionate"
response, has also assailed Hezbollah's tactics: "Consistently, from
the Hezbollah heartland, my message was that Hezbollah must stop this cowardly blending ... among women and children."

Hezbollah's rocket attacks into northern Israel have killed 19
civilians and injured hundreds more. But the disproportionate Israeli
air strikes in Lebanon, with their horrible death toll among civilians
with nothing to do with Hezbollah must also be condemned. The latest estimate is more than 400 Lebanese civilians killed, with the needless destruction of the country's infrastructure, which took 15 years to rebuild after the devastating civil war. Israel has gone after
Hezbollah, but is destroying Lebanon and, don't forget, its fledgling
democracy. And let there be no double standards when it comes to how we label "terrorist" acts. When a nation state, such as Israel,
carries out military policies which it knows will kill many civilians,
including the use of cluster bombs, and deliberately targets civilian
infrastructures and areas, does not the label also apply?

This week, Ze'ev Maoz, an Israeli professor, wrote in the Israeli
newspaper Haaretz: "This war is not a just war. Israel is using
excessive force without distinguishing between civilian population
and enemy ..." Another Haaretz columnist, Gideon Levy, wrote, "This war must be stopped now and immediately. From the start it was
unnecessary, even if its excuse was justified, and now is the time to
end it. Every day raises its price for no reason, taking a toll in
blood that gives Israel nothing tangible in return."

The U.S. has provided no real leadership thus far, being unwilling to
embrace the international call for a ceasefire. It has rather been
Israel's major supporter and has expedited the shipment of additional
weapons. I also believe that the U.S. invasion of Iraq has,
inadvertently, contributed to the ascendancy of Iran and radical Islam
in the region. Robert Kuttner, of The American Prospect magazine, who has been a constant critic of the U.S. war in Iraq, recently wrote:
"Bush did not create radical Islamism, but he certainly gave it a
boost. The point is not that the rulers of Iran, the Baghdad suicide
bombers, and the fanatics of Hamas and Hezbollah are misunderstood
good folks who need only a naive olive branch from the west. On the
contrary, these forces menace everything modern and democratic. They must be stopped, not appeased. The issue is the most practical and effective way of containing them." And that is indeed the issue.

Ultimately, the U.S. must take an active role in helping to negotiate
a ceasefire and prisoner release, in the creation and deployment of an
international force on the Israel-Lebanon border, and in aiding in the
enormous humanitarian crisis that has resulted (the World Health
Organization estimates 860,000 people have been displaced.) And, if
the situation is not to spiral out of control in a wider regional war,
the U.S. must also talk to Iran and Syria. The whole idea of diplomacy
is trying to talk to your enemies and not just your friends.

For Christians there are also deeper issues involved regarding faith
and the body of Christ. It's time for American Christians to start
listening to Christians and churches in the Middle East, and Lebanon
would be a good place to start. How many American Christians even know that Lebanon has had, for much of its history, a sizable number of Christians? Current estimates are 1.5 million Christians, or 40% of
the population - which means there are fellow Christians potentially
affected as casualties and refugees by the U.S. backed Israeli
military attacks. It's time to challenge the theology of Christian
Zionism advanced by many of the American Religious Right who are
completely uncritical of Israel's behavior and totally oblivious to
the sufferings (or even the existence) of Arab Christians in the
Middle East. These Arab Christians may not be sympathetic to the
tactics of Hezbollah, but they are certainly not supportive of the
highly disproportionate military responses of Israel which now target
their own families and fellow Arab Christians. Where is the American
church's solidarity with them? In the Middle East battles between
Islamic terrorism and Israeli military attacks, the perspective of
Middle Eastern churches might indeed provide a much needed third
perspective. I recommend an important dialogue in the online version
of Christianity Today with Christian Arabs from the region (at
http://go.sojo.net/ct/67NT6w51VmWE/). It's time to listen to some new voices.

The people of Israel, Lebanon, and Palestine have suffered enough.
It's time for immediate action by the U.S. and the world community to
achieve a situation in which Israel, Lebanon, and Palestine are secure
and viable states living side-by-side in peace.

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Why Liberals Need Conservatives

by Rev. Dr. Rodney Romney (Sermon Preached on July 23, 2006)

The seeds for this sermon were planted two and a half years ago when I read two articles in Christian Century magazine (January 13, 2004) about why liberals need conservatives and why conservatives need liberals. One article was by Barbara Wheeler, president of Auburn Seminary, and the other by Richard J. Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary. They were addressing the issue of homosexuality and how it has divided the Presbyterian Church. They could have been speaking for all denominations, for the issue of homosexuality has eaten away at the heart of the Christian church for the last several decades and caused several churches and denominations to split apart.

While I am indebted to these writers for stirring my thoughts, what I choose to say here grows out of my own pilgrimage, as I have moved from a conservative mind-set to a more liberal viewpoint. Many of you may have already undertaken that journey. If you are like I am, you needed a conservative background in order to help you decide to be a liberal. But does that mean we totally disavow conservatism? Or is there a part of the conservative point of view that we always carry with us?

First, what do we mean by the terms liberal and conservative? Funk and Wagnall's dictionary offers a variety of meanings for each. To be liberal means to possess a free and generous heart, as well as an enlightened mind that is free from narrowness, bigotry, or bondage to authority or creed. Conservative generally means to adhere to the existing order of things and to be opposed to change or progress. In the Christian religion, a conservative is one who accepts the Bible as fundamental to faith and holds to the view that every word in the Bible was divinely inspired. A liberal, on the other hand, views the Bible as helpful in some ways but only as a series of books and letters that should not to be taken literally or dogmatically.

Conservatives are often labeled as evangelicals, while liberals are usually branded as skeptics. Liberals are generally identified as being free-thinking and open-minded, while conservatives are fixed on certain conclusions and are usually closed-minded. Those are generalizations, but they are often accurate.

My spiritual pilgrimage began about sixty years ago in a very conservative setting: a little Baptist church in Arco, Idaho, where a visiting evangelist said that the only way to escape hell and go to heaven was to walk down the aisle and give your life to Jesus Christ, who would save you from your sins, so that's what I did. While the Arco Baptist Church is not far geographically from the Idaho Falls Unitarian-Universalist Church, the two places are light-years apart when it comes to theologies. Yet they hold two things in common: each is a community of loving and good-hearted people who support and care for each other, and each is sincerely trying to make this world a better place. I hold both groups in my heart with love and gratitude for what they represent and what they give, but today I cannot be in both places and be true to my own heart and mind.

I needed the Baptist church when I was a fifteen year old lad, and later as a Baptist minister, and today I still need a church. But it has to be one that will allow freedom of thought. Some years in Seattle, before I retired from forty years as an American Baptist pastor, a woman, who was an occasional visitor to my church, asked me one Sunday morning after one of my sermons how long I had been a Unitarian. She said she could tell by my preaching that I had embraced a spiritual universalism. My congregation knew it too, and a few members left over that issue. However, new people came and joined.

You might be interested to know, if you don't know already, that Baptists historically are more compatible with Unitarians than is often acknowledged. Roger Williams and other early Baptists formed several viewpoints that set them apart from other Protestant groups. Some of these were: soul freedom (the right of the soul to follow its own path), the priesthood of all believers (everyone is essentially a minister), the freedom of every person to interpret the Bible for himself or herself, and the right of the church to order its own life, such as calling its own leaders. While some Baptists have strayed from those principles, and are narrow, fundamentalist and dogmatic to extreme, historically the fabric that brought Baptists together is shared with such groups as Quakers, Congregationalists (United Church of Christ) and Unitarian-Universalists.

While it is true that conservative groups are generally more suspicious and fearful than liberals, it is also true that some conservatives look at themselves with unsparing honesty and change their minds and their behaviors when it seems to be warranted. Liberals, on the other hand, occasionally tend to be a bit smug, quite sure that their views are progressive and advanced, while conservative views are totally outmoded. Yet some liberals also look at themselves with unsparing honesty and are not afraid to change their minds and behaviors from time to time. Christian conservatives place a priority on nurturing an intense personal relationship with Jesus Christ, while liberals generally seek to honor and learn from all faith traditions. Yet despite a shared belief in freedom of conscience, conservatives and liberals alike are often inclined to batter each other with their differing perspectives, particularly when it comes to doctrines surrounding Jesus Christ and biblical interpretation. Only on rare occasions do they pool their efforts and unite their energies in trying to make the world a better place for everyone.

The one issue today where our differences as religious people have become most apparent is homosexuality. I firmly believe that who we are sexually is genetic (a view upheld by medical science), and that we need to recognize that God invites all GLBT (gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgendered) persons into full church membership, a place where their commitments can be sanctioned and blessed. Not everyone agrees with me, and the "gay issue" is tearing Christian denominations apart today. I am relieved to be in a faith community where that is not an issue, where all persons are revered and honored, no matter their gender or sexual preferences. In fact, I could not belong to any religious group that denies full acceptance to anyone. I believe that God invites all people, men and women, straight and gay alike, into the church as well as into society, not only as members but also as leaders. Equality on all levels has been a long journey, but slowly and surely it is happening.

It was not until I was in college that I began to recognize the full impact of the social aspect of the gospel. Through the writings of Harry Emerson Fosdick, Walter Rauschenbusch, and other advocates for social justice I was moved to a deeper commitment to the equality of all persons and the call we share for the betterment of the human condition. At that time I also began to grapple with the issues of war and peace. I saw the futility of war as a means of achieving peace and recognized that we will never build a better world until we learn to be at peace with the remarkable diversity that marks the fabric of human existence.

We are at a critical point in history at this moment, yet every crisis we face is one we have created. Global warming, that is threatening our survival, is something we humans have produced. Likewise the war in Iraq and the present conflict in Israel and Lebanon, which have killed and maimed thousands, is something we humans have created in our blindness because of our hunger for power, and our lack of foresight. This great adventure of life, with its wonderful opportunities and ultimate meanings, is in some respect being wasted and destroyed by our stupidity and our refusal to learn the ways that make for our peace. We continue to refuse obedience to that one simple commandment which Jesus said was supreme: "Love God and love one another with all your heart, soul, mind and strength."

To be fully complete, liberals not only need conservatives, conservatives also need liberals. I am tempted to say that conservatives need liberals more than liberals need conservatives, but that sounds superior and is not completely true. We are on this journey together, and we need each other. We may not share the same religious perspectives, but we need to share a common desire to help each other have a safe trip and to make this world a peaceful and better place for everyone in the process. We can learn from each other if we lay aside our smugness and suspicions. There are better alternatives for settling our differences than demeaning or killing one another.

As I look back at my conservative beginnings, I admit there is a part of it I have not totally left. I sometimes yearn for a protective, supernatural heavenly being, One who watches over us, who is the source of all truth and meaning, and who will do what I ask, if I ask in faith believing. But at the same time I also recognize the futility of depending on a Divine Being to solve the problems and the crises that we humans have created. We have created global warming, and the changes in weather patterns and natural resources are results of what we have done. The increased abuse of children is a symptom of something gone wrong in the fabric of family life. Many of the young people, that we gloriously honor and send to war, die in combat, despite our fervent prayers for their safety. Our human yearning for God to play the role of a good parent over the universe does not work, as long as we violate the rules of being good parents, good citizens and good stewards of the earth.

So if our definition of God is not completely accurate, does that mean there is no God? No. But God is not a person playing the role of a divine Santa Claus. Indeed, God is not a person all. One of the first steps toward spiritual enlightenment is to admit that there is much that we humans do not know and may never know, particularly when it comes to God. I no longer view God as a person who we can persuade or control. Rather I view God as the mystical and sacred presence that inhabits all life, an imminent presence of mysterious transcendence, the ultimate reality that can expand human consciousness, break down boundaries and bring about transformation and change. That is why a religion that is pursued earnestly and openly generally ends up in spirituality, or what we call mysticism.

Although today I consider myself a mystic, my religious beliefs and views continue to shift and change. I no longer view the Bible as writings that God dictated; rather I see the Bible as a collection of writings, some more inspired than others, written by our spiritual ancestors as they struggled to know themselves and the mystery they called God. I do not see Jesus as God; rather I see Jesus as fully human, but a God-realized individual whose teachings were profound, inspired and inclusive of everyone.

I no longer view prayer as a means of trying to persuade God to do what I say and to give me what I want. Rather, prayer for me is, as John Shelby Spong has said, "a conscious attempt to enter into the transcendent moment." In that moment, my limited consciousness may be expanded, old boundaries may be broken, and I can be changed and transformed. In that moment God may become real, even though not totally definable nor One over which I have control. In that transcendent moment I can see Life as a tremendous and glorious adventure, an adventure that is somehow eternal and which helps me know that real life is eternal, because I have touched my own immortality and experienced eternity in my mortal and limited state. This, in summary, is what it means for me to be a liberal, a seeker, and a mystic. And I now realize that I would not be who I am today were it not for my conservative beginnings.

I cannot demand that others must agree with me. I can only continue to pursue what for me is a meaningful way of living and being. I am grateful for religious communities where everyone is accepted, and for religious communites where we agree to differ, where we promise to love, and where we unite to serve in ways that will make the world a better place for everyone.

Last week I went back to Arco for the 50th anniversary of the high school class of l956, a class I had once taught and for whom I was faculty advisor during the three years I taught in the high school there. There were many changes. Those former students were not the same people I had known fifty years ago. For one thing they had all aged. Life had changed and matured all of them in individual ways. But one thing remained. We all held a love and respect for the years we had shared and a fondness for one another than transcended all else. They asked me to speak at their banquet, and I shared with them the three goals that I have adopted for myself as I have aged. Let me share them with you.

I ask to be vital, I ask to be useful, and I ask to be grateful. To remain vital physically and mentally is a challenge that I have to undertake on a daily basis, all the way from eating sensibly and exercising regularly, to keeping my mind active by continuing to read, write and think. To remain vital, I have to keep moving, physically, mentally and spiritually. To remain useful means that I need to be willing to act and do the things that will make a difference in this world, not just for myself but for the world at large and all its creatures. To remain grateful means that I must offer thanks daily for the journey I have had and to live in a constant state of wonder for the wonders that life always reveals. These three goals embody the physical, social and spiritual aspects of life, and if I can live them out to the best of my ability, then I believe this journey will continue to unfold its wonders to me on a daily basis.

Life, as we have known it, will eventually end for all of us. I hope when mine is over that I can say it has been a glorious ride for which I shall ever be thankful, and that if there is a life beyond this one, I am ready for it and the reunions it will bring with all the loved ones I have lost. If this life is not eternal and if it ends when we die, it has still been a glorious ride that I wouldn't have missed for anything.

[Dr. Romney was pastor of two American Baptist churches, Lakeshore Avenue in Oakland and Seattle First in Seattle, for over 40 years. Both churches pioneered in human rights, inclusiveness, and ecumenical/community outreach under his leadership. He is now retired and lives with his wife Beverly in Idaho Falls, Idaho.]

Dylan Addison's speech at his high school graduation

My good friend, Rick Eckel, of Ashland, Oregon, was very impressed with the speech of Ashland High School valedictorian Dylan Addison, and he asked him for a copy. I have also found it quite impressive, and I think you might too. Here it is -- and many thanks, Dylan, for sharing your understanding, and to Rick for forwarding it on to us.

I think perhaps Dylan is onto something really, really big here -- something that may be beyond words to fully describe and communicate, but I think he has done an amazingly good job of presenting it concisely and cohesively to his graduating class -- something for them, and for us, to think about and maybe act on and change our lives for the better because of it.

-- Rick Mitchell

Dylan Addison's Last Shibang

First of all, who am I? I mean, who am I really? You might say, you're Dylan Addison, a valedictorian and a very charming fellow. That may be true, but I at least know that in the past 9 months being valedictorian has turned into so much more than a title. It's become a way of looking at those grades, and saying "hey bud, let's party." Of course, the accomplishments that make me Dylan Addison and who that is exactly may not be the right question, so I ask, who are you? Who are you, why are you sitting on planet Earth, revolving around a sun moving through a galaxy, a universe, the infinite void… Who? And Why?

Ok, metaphysics aside, I would like to continue my speech with something thicker. Something smoother, something chunky. It'll be like peanut butter. And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "Dylan, I'm allergic to peanut butter" or "but Dylan, I know someone who's allergic to peanut butter, so I don't think I should be taking this from you…" Then I say to you "Friend, you will listen to every last word I have to say, because I've worked for four long years to bring you this message."

A poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox reads:

One ship drives east and another drives west
With the selfsame winds that blow.
'Tis the set of sails and not the gales
Which tells us the way to go.

Do you know what I gleam from that? Your attitude IS EVERYTHING in this life. It's not a little bit, it's not a smidgen or a tiny taste of everything – Your Attitude, the beliefs you hold, determine everything you will experience. The fact is that the same wind will blow on us all, but it is the set of your sails that will guide you in life. You get to choose what you believe, and what you believe determines what you experience. Furthermore, the stronger your beliefs, the more your experience in life will reflect them. And that's interesting. How strongly do you believe, and in what? We'll see if that changes here today.

Because you know, there's a funny thing about beliefs in that the best way to increase their power is by giving them away. Unlike physical possessions, which when given away divide up ownership and denote loss, you can not lessen a belief by sharing it with another person. Quite the contrary, because all of your shared belief is still yours after you've given all of it away. On top of that, if the people you give that belief to accept it and make it their own, they further reinforce the idea in your mind and thus increase its power.

Do you know what? I believe in a thing called love. It would be wonderful if you could join me in that. Love is the most powerful concept the human mind can bear witness to, and I believe it. Now, I'm not talking about high school oo ja boo boo love, no. I'm speaking of that intangible power that is all inclusive throughout the universe, past the boundaries of right and wrong, good and bad, allness and nothingness, you and me, me and me… I believe in sharing this love because that is all we have. Let's face it. We're here, we've found it, this is life. This is the beginning and the end. This is both the journey and the destination. Right here, in this moment. THIS MOMENT! We must set aside all feelings of doubt, hate, fear, guilt not because they are bad, but because they simply do not exist! Do you follow? Those emotions have no basis in reality and no foundation to stand on. Take fear, you can only be afraid of something that happened in the past or of something that you think will happen in the future…both of which are NONEXISTANT! This cannot be overstated. Please come with me on this because it is so simple. There is only this moment, and we must use it for love, because that is the only thing that has ever really existed. It is the concept which every other power bearing concept aspires to. Courage, forgiveness, acceptance, integrity love is at the top of the food chain! There is no reason not to feel love and not to be love. In my opinion, that's why we're here. We've got one job to do: to be full of joy and love and bliss and peace. And I'm doing my part. But what about you?

That's it, that is literally all there is. Now you have to go off and make your world – you know, that completely subjective experience that only you will ever really know about – make your world a tremendous and lovely place to be, because you'll have to live with it the rest of your life and in my opinion, the rest of eternity. That right there is motivation enough let alone the fact that love feels better than anything… ever. So go out and get some good lovin'. Get it, and share it and strengthen it. Let it out and let it in. Besides, who are you to be keeping yourself from feeling love? Ask yourself that. Who are YOU to be keeping YOURSELF from feeling love? WHO AM I? I'm Dylan Addison, a valedictorian and a very charming fellow. That is all. May love bless you all.

We Must See Beyond the Dream to the Necessary Reality

We Must See Beyond the Dream to the Necessary Reality

The recent Baptist Peace Fellowship meeting featured the theme "Becoming the Beloved Community" of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The conference speakers, led by the Rev. Dr. J. Alfred Smith, included the Rev. C. T. Vivian, a colleague of Dr. King, and Rabbis Michael Lerner and Lynn Gotttlieb. We were challenged by the hope and courage of these leaders who follow in the path of Dr. King's dream of peace and justice.

As Dr. Gary Percesepe, outgoing Director of the fellowship, has pointed out (in his article, "Seeing Beyond the Dream Speech: Recovering Martin Luther King's Vision of the World House," January 14, 2005), Dr. King called us to nothing less than a "revolution of values" that will bring a transformation to the world we live in.

King said that we must shift from a "'thing'-oriented society to a 'person'-oriented society." His reading of the story of the Good Samaritan is not merely a call to us for individual compassion and personal transformation but rather to basic structural and systemic social change. "We are called to play the Good Samaritan... but that will be only an initial act. One day the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be beaten and robbed as they make their journey through life. True compassion is more than flinging a coin at a beggar; it understands that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

King believed that "There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen... [and] reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war." Such a revolution of values, he argued, is our best defense against enemies -- to remove conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice which are the fertile soil in which dissidence and terrorism grow and develop.

In the "World House" chapter of his book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, (1967), based upon his Nobel Peace Prize lecture in 1964, Dr. King suggested we all now live in a "world house" in which we have to coexist -- "a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace."

King knew that a transformed world meant seeing beyond our own borders and local interests -- with true patriotism, not narrow nationalism. In the words of Dr. King, "Our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies."

Ten days before King's assassination, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel declared, "The whole future of America will depend on the impact and influence of Dr. King." For us to forget the message of King and the deep implications of his call to justice and peace would be not only faithless but also suicidal.