The Gospel of Ray Lewis

Religion seems to take a front seat in sporting events in the last few moments.  There are prayers for a hail Mary pass that might win the game, and the bench warmers staring into the heavens with hopes of angels carrying the ball to a preferred location.  Then there is the Gospel according to Ray Lewis.

I spent much of seminary trying to balance The Gospel of Ray : The Good, the Bad, and how it falls upon me.  Lewis seems to think that all the good things happening in his life lately is proof of his elect status.  Winning the Super Bowl, to him, meant he was on the right track because God would not allow good things to happen were he doing the wrong thing.  Okay, plenty of people have used this reasoning, but that's so 11-13th century.

What's so bad about this?  It creates a division within the body of Christ.  Does the Ravens win mean that God does not favor me or the Green Bay Packers?  My goodness, most of the country is in for a very sad year if that's true (Sorry Lions fans).  What about the people who don't even care about football?  Are they condemned to purgatory until they cleanse their evil baseball ways?  People, I can't believe God plays like that.

When we play to be on a winning side, we view others as...well... others.  It's sibling rivalry for the love of a parent with enough love for all.  It doesn't comfort in times of trial but can lead to a greater sense of loneliness.  Job doesn't need any more friends like that.

After three years actively wrestling with this question of Election, I came to this conclusion - let God be God, and let me be human.  Bad things will happen because bad things sometimes just happen.  Good things happen because sometimes they just happen. The difference between Ray Lewis and me is I don't believe God will ever stop rooting for me.

Health Care and women

In reading posts regarding the latest changes in the Obama Administration's policy on Universal Healthcare, I am once again bothered by the use of the words "the faithful" as a reference to the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) or Christian churches with similar bends.  James Salt takes the credit for creating the comment which lead to this post.

The problem with the division seems to be the notion that contraception equals promiscuity or an image of 20-something adults on college campuses who choose sex over God. It fails to take into account committed relationships where not having children is considered stewardship.  Morgan Guyton summed up an amazing rebuttal to the cry of Evangelical Christians standing together against this slide into moral anarchy.  He and his wife decided to use contraception because they wanted to remain good parents to the children they already have by not straining their financial resources beyond what they can afford. They also want to make sure they have time for their marriage in the midst of the other commitments of life.  Both of these reasons would be greatly strained with the addition of another child.

Is it really the taking of a pill or using a condom that represents a moral decline in America?  Does contraception use mean that Christians are turning their backs on God? Hardly. It means we choose to be good stewards of our bodies and resources. We are aware that our planet is groaning under a population explosion that threatens our natural resources.  It means we do not want to saddle our children with crippling debt because we had them before we could care for them.  Faithful men and women can still follow God's teaching and Christ's example of ministry while using modern medicine to elect delaying having children.