Arizona Shooting Reminds Us the Hatred Needs to Stop

Arizona shooting reminds us the hatred needs to stop

Published: Saturday, January 15, 2011, 4:30 AM

‘We are so blessed,” Christina-Taylor Green used to say. “We have the best life.”

In that remarkably intuitive way children sometimes have, the 9-year-old girl summed up not only the life of her family in Tucson but of our American family.

Her often-repeated phrase, born of her awareness of those less fortunate than she, lingers as an appropriate epitaph for her death in the national nightmare that began one week ago today.

An awareness of how blessed we are is a painful but instructive thought to bear in mind as we mourn the killing of this lovely little girl, along with five other people who had the misfortune of being interested in public service. Their attendance at a gathering convened by U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords brought them, as well as her, into the gun sights of a dangerously deluded young man.

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Jared Loughner’s unsettling grin and disjointed Internet ramblings provoke the latest national soul-search as to how and why such things happen in a country so blessed in so many ways.

The 22-year-old’s mental instability and free-floating hostility are all too familiar, as yet another unhinged guy with appallingly easy access to weaponry makes the rest of us pay for his rage.

Causes still unknown

As of this writing, it is unclear what motivated Loughner apparently to target Giffords. His infamous YouTube rant about government currency and grammar control is baffling. Friends describe him as nihilistic and dream-obsessed. Pending further evidence, he appears more schizophrenic than political. It may be unrealistic to attribute “motive” to one apparently so deeply troubled.

Jared Loughner

That’s helpful to keep in mind while we soul-search about whether the increasing vitriol of political rhetoric contributed to Loughner’s rampage. Maybe we’ll never know. But you don’t need a sociology course to get that when you create a flammable atmosphere, an unstable young man with a gun is a lit match.

“No! I won’t trust in God!” Loughner defiantly declared on YouTube.

Christina-Taylor Green did. She sang in the choir at St. Odilia Catholic Church, where she had just received First Communion. She was interested in politics, served on her student council and volunteered at a children’s charity.

Interestingly, she was born on Sept. 11, 2001. She was proud of her birthday because it lent a “grace note of hope to that terrible day,” The New York Times reported in an interview with her mother, Roxanna Green.

Christina-Taylor’s birth day, like her death, stunned the country with grief. But while 9/11 set off a national debate about how to respond to killers from abroad, the events of Jan. 8 touched off a much-needed conversation about our political war within.

A growing discord

Sadly, the war within has grown more hateful these past 10 years. Our enemies in mountain caves must be pleased to see how we have turned on each other.

There need not be a direct line from gun sights on a political campaign map to Jared Lougher’s handgun to conclude that violent rhetoric makes real violence more likely. As Christina’s mother put it: “There’s been a lot of hatred going on, and it needs to stop.”

That boils it down well. Much is being said about how the radical right bears responsibility for the shooting, and how the left is exploiting it for political purposes.

Regardless of where you stand on that conversation, it’s a no-brainer that the hatred needs to stop.

I grew up in a time when we had dear family friends who were more conservative than we were, when Republicans and Democrats could argue politics, then say grace together. Where has that America gone?

Start with the Golden Rule

People of faith and moral principle can — and must — push back against this rancor. They can begin with the Golden Rule, the teaching common to Christianity, Judaism and other faiths to do unto others what you would have them do to you. So well-known, so widely ignored.

They can pledge themselves to respectful ways of debating and regarding each other, such as Karen Armstrong’s Charter for Compassion or the Sojourners’ community Peace and Civility Pledge. They can take seriously the Apostle Paul’s statement that “love does not insist on its own way.”

As per Giffords’ Jewish faith, we need to repair the world, starting with ourselves. I don’t know about you, but when I see photos of that young congresswoman and the sweet smile of Christina-Taylor Green, I feel ashamed. We are so blessed in this country. What are we doing to each other?

Controversy over Rob Bell's 'Love Wins' continues

Published: Saturday, March 26, 2011, 5:27 AM Updated: Saturday, March 26, 2011, 9:49 AM

By Charley Honey | The Grand Rapids PressThe Grand Rapids Press

Grand Rapids Press File PhotoThe Rev. Rob Bell, lead pastor at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville.

A group of theologians last week decided the Rev. Rob Bell’s hell just isn’t horrible enough.

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., took a tongue-in-cheek shot at Bell’s new book, “Love Wins,” which argues the iron gates don’t slam shut forever and God never gives up on anyone.

As reported by Associated Baptist Press, Mohler quipped he thought of calling it “Velvet Hell” after Bell’s first book, “Velvet Elvis.”

A ‘horror that doesn’t end’?

Fellow Baptist theologian Denny Burk chimed in with stronger stuff in a March 17 forum, charging Bell removes God’s wrath and downplays hell’s terror.

“It is a horror that doesn’t end,” said Burk, dean of Boyce College, a division of SBTS, also in Louisville. “There’s no anesthetic, and you never settle in. And we all deserve it.”

That’ll scare the hell out of you, all right. But Burk said God showed his love by sending his son to the cross, and “used up all his anger that he had towards us on Jesus. ... You don’t know the love of God if you don’t know the wrath of God.”

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That conviction is one of the popular story lines to emerge in reaction to Bell’s latest book, which has provoked both strong condemnation and admiration from evangelicals.

Doubts and certainties

For many Christians, it seems, belief in the promise of heaven is inextricably tied to belief in everlasting hell. To pretend otherwise, as some Bell critics charge, is trying to make the gospel palatable to modern sensibilities at the expense of truth.

Commenters on the Mlive.com story on Bell also have dug into the question that seems to bedevil many: Would a loving God condemn people to eternal suffering with no chance of release? Is hell life without parole for sinners?

To which I’ll add: Is the answer about what Scripture says, or what seems right to us as humans?

Critics also berate Bell for presenting a God who can save souls through Jesus without their knowledge, so non-Christians potentially can get to heaven. You expect this kind of thing from liberal theologian John Shelby Spong, Mohler said, but coming from an evangelical like Bell, it may contribute to “loss of the gospel.”

This is an absurd worry for anyone who has read Bell’s books and heard his sermons. “Love Wins” is laced with Scripture, and its reference point is always Jesus.

“He holds the entire universe in his embrace,” Bell writes. You don’t need a flashlight to find the gospel there.

But Bell also rejects the traditional father-God who in one moment loves his children, and the next casts them into eternal agony.

“If there was an earthly father who was like that, we would call the authorities,” he writes.

If there’s one thing the Bell brouhaha points out, it is evangelicals don’t all think alike. Far from it.

Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, hardly a bastion of liberal theology, writes on his blog that Bell’s views have roots in C.S. Lewis. Citing the evangelical view that only justification by faith admits believers to heaven, Mouw tells Christians “shame on you” if they believe Mother Teresa didn’t make the cut.

“Why don’t folks who criticize Rob Bell for wanting to let too many people in also go after people like that who want to keep too many people out?” writes Mouw, a former Calvin College professor.

Bell’s is no voice in the wilderness. A 2007 Pew poll found 57 percent of evangelical Protestants believed other religions can lead to eternal life. So did 79 percent of Catholics and 83 percent of mainline Protestants. And while 82 percent of evangelicals believed in hell, only 59 percent of the general public did.

Of course, majority rule isn’t necessarily correct. And there is a human logic to traditional views. Most of us see justice as life without parole or worse for murderers, rapists and child molesters. Shouldn’t God see it the same way?

Certainly, if God were like us. But Bell is hardly the first theologian to say God is not like us. He quotes the Old Testament book of Lamentations, chapter 3: “People are not cast off by the Lord forever.”

That’s pretty hard for the average person to believe, especially if his own father cast him off forever. Maybe God is more like the father who welcomes his wayward, prodigal son back home with open arms.

Ultimately, these are questions of mystery, their answers unknowable this side of the grave.

Meanwhile, the hells on earth are clear enough, from which people certainly can be saved.

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I sing the goodness of Betty Jean Honey (column)

Published: Saturday, August 06, 2011, 4:45 AM

By Charley Honey | The Grand Rapids PressThe Grand Rapids Press

Music. Betty Jean always loved it, no matter what kind. She grew up in Detroit with my grampa singing opera and grandma playing ragtime. Betty played piano most of her life, for family Christmas carols, children’s church choirs, New Year’s Eve parties, banging out “Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey?” like nobody’s business.

Years later, she’d clap for her grandson when he played Scott Joplin on her baby grand. She beamed when her granddaughter sang living-room arias. She’d close her eyes for great music, transported by Pavarotti or Rosemary Clooney or Audra McDonald to someplace very near heaven.

Melody flowed through her veins. That, and politics, and family, and the faces of little children.

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“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.”

My mother wasn’t much for organized religion. She had no use for its creeds and dogmas and the men who ran the show. She liked my church but was annoyed we talked about God so much. If mom knew I was quoting the 23rd Psalm, she’d tell me to insert “she” for the God pronouns.

But give her Placido Domingo singing “Ave Maria” and she was the most devout woman ever, her heart filled with divine joy.

“God works through our hands,” she said, after a surgeon saved her heart 10 years ago. On that much, we were in complete agreement.
“He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”

Mom’s soul thirsted for righteousness. Equal rights and equal care for all people. Protect the poor and the disenfranchised. Be God’s hands on Earth.

She taught Character School at Fountain Street Church, served on the PTA at Ottawa Hills Elementary. Taught her three kids to respect all people, no matter their color or nationality. Wouldn’t even let me watch the Three Stooges because they hurt each other.

Above all, she hated war. Put signs in the yard against it. Wrote letters to the editor. Called up congressmen. Licked envelopes. Stayed on the floor at Democratic Party conventions until every one else had gone home.

Justice was her religion, to which she was faithful to the end.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”

One night, when I was a boy, I began bawling uncontrollably over the realization that I would die someday. Mom came and comforted me, telling me death was nothing to fear.

She told me so again in her final days, not in so many words, but in the way she faced death head-on. She was not eager to die — a woman who loved life so much could only say goodbye to it with great sadness. But having lived 88 good years, she was ready for the end.

There are worse things than death, she often said. She never was afraid to take controversial political stands. She refused to draw the blinds one night after she got a threatening phone call. They can only kill you once, she said; if you live in fear, you’re letting them do it slowly.

“Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou annointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.”

Mom took a lot of heat over the years for being outspoken. Some men just don’t appreciate a 4-foot-10-inch woman who speaks her mind.

But, she never lost her love for people, even her adversaries. She’d always chat up waitresses: Where do you live? Oh, I know someone from there! Any kids? How old? (Please, Mom, can’t we just order?)

Her cup overflowed with kindness. She was tough but ever remained Betty Jean, who loved music and children and laughter; who turned Keith Honey’s head in high school, and remained his girl for the rest of her life.

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

We all lose our parents, unless we go first. When it’s your mother, it feels like you’ve been pulled from the Earth.

All the old songs, psalms and prayers make a new kind of sense. They bring some comfort to your sorrow, like a mother at your bedside. As do all the loved ones who gather like angels.

Today, we celebrate mom’s life at church. But her goodness will follow us all our days.

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