Cchicken's Weblog

I heard something delightful at church today.

I’ve often felt frustrated at the institution of church – while I know the majority of church goers are lovely, well intentioned people, there are times I just don’t understand the whole church thing.  Meaning, I can get annoyed at the apparent disconnect between what I would imagine Jesus was preaching and the way some “Christians” actually live.  I’ll give you a few examples.

1. Homosexuals.  This one really frustrates me.  From all I can see or hear, God, Jesus, and the like were preaching about loving all people.  Not just people who aren’t gay.  All people.  So why are people who are gay not allowed at some churches?

2. Animals and all of Creation (i.e. the trees, the waters…) I find it disconcerting (a very lame word to describe my true feelings here) that throughout the Bible belt, where numerous Christians reside and evangelize, there are hundreds of Factory Farms torturing animals everyday.  All to produce some cheap meat (that is nutritionally void anyway…but that’s another topic) for the masses of people ready to chow down.  If God created everything, didn’t He create the animals too?  And if so, shouldn’t we respect the animals and not treat them with cruelty and hatred?

Along the same vein, having a presidential candidate who believes himself to be a great man of God, whose ideas for improvement include extensive oil drilling in extremely fragile ecosystems, seems quite the contradiction to me.  To me, a person who deeply respects God would also deeply respect God’s creation, and not simply look at the abundance of this Earth as a means for man’s consumption, with complete disregard for the life therein.

3. Other faiths. Also frustrating to hear Christians spouting off about how other religions (such as Mormonism or Islam) are not true religions, are cults, what have you.  Again.  Back to the idea of loving all people.  Not just the ones that follow the same religion.

Obviously, these are extremes.  I do realize that.  But they, and smaller, less extreme examples, have made me feel a bit of inauthenticity in how the words of the church are carried out into daily life.

And then, today, at our lovely Episcopal Church here in Seattle, I heard the most marvelous thing.  Recently, a big group of the church’s bishops met in Quito, Ecquador to discuss issues of the times.  From this meeting, the bishops created some new doctrine for the church.  (Refer to #2 in the list above) – The bishops decided that taking care of the Earth is a God-given mandate and a moral responsibility of every citizen.  They further stated that until we stop exploiting both the Earth’s resources (God’s creation) and the people who rely on these resources for life (i.e. indigenous peoples) we are not actually acting in a way in accordance with Jesus’s teachings.

Bam.  A rule for religion about preserving and protecting the Earth.  Couldn’t ask for better news this Sunday morning.