The Case for the Bleeding Heart

Sometimes people remark to me that I'm a bleeding-heart. They say it disparagingly, as though it's a cute quirk of mine like biting my lips or tapping my foot too much.

Well, we should all be bleeding hearts. No matter where on the spectrum your philosophical beliefs lie, you should be a bleeding heart liberal, or a bleeding heart conservative, or a bleeding heart moderate. Our hearts should hurt when we look at the poor and disenfranchised in this country. We can disagree on how best to help them, but we can not disagree on whether to help them and then claim to be a Christian nation.

Why Everyone is Welcome in My Home

There has been a lot on the news lately about Christians vs. gay marriage.

It's tiring, really. I wish they would just accept the new law and move on. Jesus said, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." They can follow the laws of their land without incurring moral guilt, especially in an area as Biblically debatable as the LGBTQ movement. We're not talking about murder or torture here.

I'm not saying I'd vote for it, or that it's my business to vote for it, but the point is I don't have to vote for it and so let's all just please move forward.

As Christians, some of our gay friends have seemed slightly bewildered by our faith. There are religious items in our home, mostly concentrated in private areas to keep guests of different faiths comfortable, but there are a few small trinkets out and visible. Anyway, we live our faith. We go to church, we pray before meals, we talk about religion. I occasionally wear a beautiful, glittery cross my husband gave me for my birthday. We chat about religion and theology in our spare time when guests aren't over, and in the instances my husband finds a guest who seems interested he delves right in with him, too. The best part is: we aren't judgmental. You can be gay, or atheist, or doubting, relapsed, Hindi, Muslim, Wiccan, nominal, recovering, or polygamous, or Asatru (Norse pagan), or divorced, or having premarital sex, or whatever sin you had or have. My husband and I decided those people are welcome in our house because Jesus would want them to be. He was fairly clear on the matter: be a friend to the sinner, the broken, the weak. Help the widowed, orphaned, poor, and disadvantaged. If we made our home a place where we didn't admit sinners, where would we sleep? The answer seemed obvious. It makes me sad it has been less obvious to some other Christians.

That is why every single one of the groups mentioned above is one of our friends, family, neighbors, extended network, or otherwise part of our life and our daughter's life. We believe it's good for her and for us. We all need grace. We take the Biblical command to provide hospitality seriously, and so we strive to make our home a place where all are welcome, where rest and food and friendship and laughter happen. This is our way of witnessing.  As Saint Francis of Assisi said:

I feel saddened when I see these other Christians in the news, creating new wounds between the two groups and reopening old ones, alienating the gay community when we desperately need to understand each other. How can we love our brother from a distance? How can we know his needs until we ask him?

Jesus loved everyone, without exception. There was no sin too abominable for the Christ.

Jesus and Paul, who together gave most of the directives in the New Testament, lived as Jewish men in a Roman society. Put another way, they were a monotheistic minority in a pagan majority. Food and entertainment were often preceded by public--pagan--prayer.  Neither man seemed very concerned with taking down the blasphemers and heretics around them; they seemed to take for granted that their religion was solely on a voluntary basis, and rather than organizing protests against the local temple prostitutes, they focused on training their own members in holiness. Standards of righteousness were strict for members of these Jewish and later Christian-Jewish churches, and can be found throughout the New Testament, but never were they applied to spiritual outsiders and certainly not as some type of demented proselytizing.

Love does not require accepting, or condoning, but it does require a willingness to learn and give and share.

 My friends, Jesus extends His hand to you, no matter your past, your religion, or even your present.

Why Jews and Christians Are Brothers, and They the Elder

It is unthinkable to me that Christians be anti-Semitic. I occasionally hear of these things, but they always shock me. How can you degenerate the people who brought your religion, who fathered your prophets, who obey your God?

A rabbi in Oklahoma once gave a very surprising sermon. He maintained that the Mel Gibson movie, The Passion of the Christ, was anti-Semitic.

I hadn't gotten that impression. I'd seen the film twice.

So I was disturbed to hear that the rabbi thought the Christian producers had purposefully put an anti-Jewish slant on the film. That Jewish peasants were depicted with nasty, crooked teeth while white actors playing Romans had straight teeth. That the movie would incite modern-day Christians to blame the Jews for the death of Christ.

I certainly couldn't understand how anyone could blame today's Jews, or the Jewish people, for the death of Jesus. In fact, here are wise words from a Jewish Christian detailing how to respond to those who persist in the idea that "the Jews killed Jesus." I killed Jesus; you killed Jesus. Sin killed Jesus. Yet Jesus came to die, and it was all meant to happen to make way for the greatest miracle of all to occur. The Jewish people are the bearers of the First Covenant, the chosen people of God, and His special relationship with them is something we can only read the Old Testament/Jewish Bible and wonder at, while they live it. He called them from the desert. They suffered and grew and recorded His scriptures, keeping them safe for us for millennia. It is their history we read and study, their stories. It is how we understand Jesus because He was one of them.  They are the firstborn; we the adopted son. We are brothers, and the the elder.

The best and most scholarly Bible translations are those that include not only Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant scholars, but Jewish experts as well. It would be folly to try to determine how our faith relates to us when it was founded wholly on the texts and fulfilled prophecies of their faith. Pope Francis is wise when he extends his hand in friendship to Jewish leaders, as did his predecessor Pope John Paul II before him, and I personally know pastors and priests who consider area rabbis to be friends and consults. Logically speaking, it makes sense to interpret Jewish scriptures with the guide of a Jewish perspective on the times, culture, literature, and political structure of the day. We Christians can perhaps offer them a deeper appreciation of their own sacred text, with the light of the Holy Spirit showing how prophecies that were fulfilled them are fulfilled anew in Christ, and they can offer us a grounding, a sharing of their understanding of their faith that led so inexorably to ours.