Faith Works 3-16-19

Faith Works 3-16-19

Jeff Gill

 

Defining terms in prison

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It's probably no surprise to many of you that some of the first drafts of my columns can be found on social media, which on a good day is a sandbox for open inquiry and random feedback.

 

On a bad day it's a fever swamp of political partisanship and anonymous bots generating trend influencing memes which often make no sense, but that's a different column.

 

What I did do recently was get my foot caught in the bear trap of making a comment after reading an article posted by "The Atlantic" magazine about the Paul Manafort sentencing. "The system isn't broken because Manafort got four years rather than the 19-year recommendation that the sentencing guidelines spat out. The system is broken because other people get the long sentence—because other poorer and often darker people don't get the same chances."

 

I agree, and not because I have any reason to defend Mr. Manafort, but because his sentence rang a bell I've been pulling on for some time. Four years for a non-violent crime seems like the most we should be giving anyone. Our prisons are crowded, our incarceration rates in the United States are the most punitive in the entire developed world, and our outcomes are not exactly making that look like a good call.

 

Here's a different angle on the same question: are there really any non-violent crimes that warrant more than four years in prison? At all, for anyone? On a purely pragmatic, practical basis, four years clearly disrupts your life (that's a feature, not a bug), gives time to break ties to unhealthy relationships, and a period more than long enough to deal with anything from simply rethinking your life to dealing with recovery . . . or earn a degree. I honestly am asking: why would anyone who hadn't committed a violent crime ever get more than four years of lock-up? Are we perhaps not thinking reasonably about what we want from criminal justice, incarceration, and rehabilitation? Or is it just about shifting sands of vengeance and retribution?

 

There are, of course, arguments against my view here. One is "what about repeat offenders?" Okay, there's room for escalation if folks keep coming back around having not learned any lesson, I suppose.

 

Others asked me about non-violent crimes which cruelly tear apart people's lives. Usually Bernie Madoff was invoked. I was thinking of Madoff when I wrote this, and my only response is "but where does that end?" In general, I lose zero sleep over Bernie spending decades in prison; in practice, we end up with large numbers of people in prison for many years on small matters, and I think we're spending millions to no good end. If sentencing was indexed to amount stolen and non-recoverable, I'd probably vote for that. However, I think many people underestimate the social impact of prison, and just how much a term in lock-up disrupts lives. Beyond a certain point, you're just setting an inmate up to develop a "new normal" of prison life, from which they have to transition to come back into life on the outside.

 

Meanwhile, 95+% of those who go to jail or prison return to our communities: I think our goal should be that, having invested the time and environment in convict housing, we see better outcomes than we currently get.

 

As a Christian, I struggle to determine where my faith and religious tradition guides me in a question like this. My reading of the New Testament says that civic authority should be respected, and that good government is part of a godly social order; it also tell me that we can rebel against injustice, and should. I don't think the general idea of locking up criminals is against Christianity, but I think a corrections system overly reliant on retribution and vengeance might be. Even if you push aside the Gospels and go back to "an eye for an eye," much about our current sentencing feels like we sometimes take an eye, a hand, and a toe against an eye-level offense, and that leads me to speak up.

 

My faith does lead me into the practice and promotion of restorative justice, which isn't about offenders getting off scot-free, but asking if we are truly giving victims what they need for wholeness, especially in crimes where society is the victim as much as any individual.

 

Feel free to argue with me!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's very interested in counter-arguments, honest! Just not political partisanship. Tell him what you think at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 3-14-19

Notes from my Knapsack 3-14-19

Jeff Gill

 

Roads and ravines and streams

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It's with a wincing and morbid fascination that I watch the continued mangling of the course of Salt Run from Spring Valley, underneath and along Ohio 16 to its historic destiny in Raccoon Creek.

 

This once salty watercourse gave the Licking River and our county its name, truly a central stream in our local story, but now appearing to most passers-by as a simple ditch. Middleton's development across Weaver Drive herdes and silts it even more into a narrow channel, directed past the west edge of their benevolent development and north to the equally tamed Raccoon Creek bottomlands.

 

Tamed, but not tame entirely; floods can still surprise us. The interplay of rains and soil and springs which shaped our landscape in large ways still can creep up on us in small.

 

The central intersection of the 1805 establishment of Granville was selected both for a now lost mound once the center point of Broadway's meeting with Main, but also because of springs nearby, a few of which still trigger sump pumps in church basements nearby. Perhaps the erection of that mound had something to do with the springs being so handy.

 

All along the southern face of what are now the Welsh Hills, their geology directs water to the surface in a variety of spots once found to be life-giving for the thirsty, and traditionally thought of as access points to the underworld. A practical and spiritual source all at the same time. Now many of those once vital outpourings are almost immediately redirected into storm sewers; if you have a sense of their former locations, you can find a grating and lean down and listen, and still hear them roar.

 

One is just in front of my house. I can hear the echo of rushing water in dry seasons and wet; the deer can't quite hear it, but somehow they remember, and follow a lost watercourse from the hills to the north down into bottomlands to my south, even though the lawns are leveled off today. There are easier places for them to stroll their four-legged way, but they don't depart from the path of their predecessors.

 

Behind my house is Newark-Granville Road. A long, straight stretch from the foot of Ashley Hill east of us, past the Cherry Valley Road intersection itself fraught with history, but undeviating pretty much all the way to Clear Run and Mount Parnassus on the other side. It may mark deeper history than first sessions of common pleas courts and pioneer encampments, a path turned road that might, before the so-called "Indian trail" as the early settlers called it, have been a buffalo trace. Buffalo or bison could have worn that way which in turn, deeper back into unrecorded but no less real history, might have been a mastodon track. Thousands of years earlier, their trunks asway, tusks sweeping the grasses on either side, those mighty megafauna would have trodden deep a route from river crossing to watering hole, walking one after another in single file.

 

Sometimes I look out of an evening and imagine a line of mastodons or mammoths walking towards the village. The road's alignment tells a story, just as much as the realigned streams and rivulets do today.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he imagines all sorts of strange things. Tell him where you see streets and trails taking us at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.    

Faith Works 3-9-19

Faith Works 3-9-19

Jeff Gill

 

A godly stumblebum

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Physical therapists have long enjoyed saying to patients that "Walking is controlled falling down." It's true.

 

In order to move forward, you basically have to throw yourself off-balance and catch yourself mid-fall with the opposite foot . . . again and again and again. A long stroll is a controlled fall, all across the landscape.

 

If you don't run the risk of ever being off-balance, you'll never make progress.

 

In somewhat the same way, I believe in Christianity because on the one hand (or foot) I believe it's true, and on the other hand, because it works.

 

Saying I think Christian faith is true might be a longer discussion for another day to some of you. I'll try to skip ahead just by explaining this belief in this way: my faith has reference to an objective reality that may be greater than my perceptions, but can in part be understood. Not perfectly, by me, but ultimately understandable, and valid in so far as I can understand it.

 

Or, I believe it is true.

 

And that I think it works? Well, I believe Christianity works in large part because I know I need grace. Forgiveness, if you will. Because I keep falling down.

 

There are some critics of my second argument who claim that guilt, personal and social varieties, comes from doctrines of sin that are creations of churches. Sin is a tool to keep people feeling guilty and anxious and putting money in the offering plate. An interesting argument.

 

Anthropologically, I think sin and guilt are a little bigger than the churchianity conspiracy proposed in that model. Psychologically, we're all still wrestling with Paul's statement "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do . . . For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing." (Romans 7:15-20, NIV)

 

However you interpret it, I think it's a human universal that we struggle with our tendency to want to do wrong things. Wrong for us, wrong for others, wrong even if no one else ever knows we did it.

 

And that knowledge haunts us. Why am I this way, can I ever change, and even if I do, what or who can help me stay on that path and think it worth the effort even to try, let alone to fail? Which we will.

 

Working with addicts, I hear people say proudly "I've been clean twenty days!" And I hear others say skeptically "do you know how many times they've been clean twenty days?" And I know people in our community who have been clean twenty days twenty times, but have now been clean twenty years. When and how do you help people get back up? My default is to say "every time," because my imperfect knowledge of eternity and infinity also means I never know which time falling down is going to be the time they get up and do not fall again. I just know it is possible, and that the weight of previous failures should not be carried when you're ready to rise up and move forward.

 

As for them, also for me. I am a godly stumblebum, myself. I've made many mistakes; quite a few even in the recent past. I still fall. But my belief in God's grace helps get me back up, and leads me to lean forward and risk falling again, so that I can move and help others move onwards with me.

 

If I get too in love with being godly, I'm likely to make a mockery of what God intends to do with me. Godly is good, but grace is better. A godly stumblebum, falling forward again and again, sometimes with the occasional faceplant on the pavement of life, but knowing that stopping and sitting and staying where I am is not what the God I love, the Lord I honor, wants for me. So this godly stumblebum gets up, and starts falling again.

 

If you see a group of people walking together, just consider this: they are all falling together, some more elegantly or easily than others, but they are also catching themselves, at different points and in a variety of ways, and swinging forward step by step, fall by fall.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's not sure he's ready for Lent, but too late for that! Tell him where you stumble and fall, and rise, at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 3-2-19a

Faith Works 3-2-19a

Jeff Gill

 

A way forward, or side-stepping issues?

___

 

As for the United Methodist Church and its recent General Conference, let alone the Roman Catholic bishops' gathering at the Vatican that happened earlier, they overlapped in more ways than one.

 

I am a semi-professional church geek, so even though I'm neither Methodist nor Catholic, I actually have had these two scheduled events on my calendar for some time. They are the kind of gatherings from which great things can be expected.

 

Or not. Church conferences and conventions and consultative assemblies are infamous for how little they often produce. It was often said before, during, and after the recent special General Conference (the UMC normally has them every four years, the next regularly scheduled one coming up in 2020 in Minneapolis) that it was being done somewhat in a hurry and moderately on the cheap, and it cost $3,600,000 to put together for 840 delegates and four days.

 

That doesn't include the amounts spent by groups pushing one agenda or another in the weeks and days ahead, clogging my social media with ads and emails and messages – probably a couple million there. Call it $5 million in total to accomplish . . . what?

 

The end result was essentially a reaffirmation of the current Book of Discipline, the guide book and laws of the UMC clergy and conferences and churches. One group hoped for a relaxation of limitations and restrictions on LGBTQ clergy, another wished to see them maintained and even tightened.

 

You could say the latter side won, but I think in Christian life it's always something to worry about when you start talking about sides, and definitely I pause before declaring anyone this side of the Throne of Heaven a "winner." The standards will not be relaxed, and progressives are starting to look for the exits. No one looked good in the four days of parliamentary maneuver and endless voting; to many within and without of the Methodist communion, it didn't look like what we want to see when we are trying to talk about faith communities at work.

 

The bishops in Rome didn't give them a good lead in, having built up expectations perhaps unreasonably, and ending up with a "more of the same" result of regrets, promises to do better, and a slightly more vehement statement by the Pontiff of "soon and very soon." When it comes to child abuse and consequences for abusers, the word "soon" doesn't sound very encouraging.

 

In other words, organized religion did not come off well in general media over the last two weeks. And while I'm not surprised, I had hopes. Let's say they weren't dashed, but they certainly weren't raised.

 

When Christians gather in large numbers, I'd like to hear more strong preaching and teaching, see dramatic acts of service and mission to the area where we came together, and know that God's good news is more widely known for our having met. Bluntly, that didn't happen. I teach history and polity to seminarians, so I know why it didn't happen, and why in many ways it happened the way it did, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

 

In my own tradition, when I'm teaching our basic outlines to groups in churches and in classes for ministry preparation, I often say that the Disciples of Christ hold that there are three sacraments. Ancient liturgical traditions usually call for seven sacraments, and the Reformation churches in many cases boiled that down to two – baptism and communion. But for the Restoration Movement of which we're a part, there's baptism (by immersion), communion (weekly if not more often), and voting on stuff.

 

Is "voting on stuff" a sacramental act? No, not to anyone. Not really. But our life and activity makes it look as if we believe the act of voting on things has the power to bring the Holy Spirit to bear on a problem, that it can be a conduit of grace from the Divine realm into this broken world.

 

It doesn't work, of course. Voting on stuff is not a fast track to the will of God. American Protestant traditions like the Disciples or Methodists have a belief rooted in our relationship to frontier American history that voting fixes things – we may be getting over that. I don't know.

 

Yet the bishops in Rome showed us that their polity is not a guarantee of wisdom and swift justice, either. How do we wrestle with hard questions and wake up knowing that we have wrestled with God, and been in a holy place? Jacob did it in the wilderness, not a convention center. We may have to find a special place of our own to come and listen and learn.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's not a Methodist, but he knows plenty of John Wesley quotes. Tell him where you see the traffic heading in this and other areas of church life at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 3-2-19

Faith Works 3-2-19

Jeff Gill

 

A way forward, or side-stepping the issue?

___

 

As for the United Methodist Church and its recent General Conference, there's a case to be made that my perspective on their decisions isn't worth a hill of beans in this crazy world.

 

I'm a straight white male, plus I'm not even a Methodist. But I can say utterly unironically that some of my best friends are, and I'm interested in their faith and work for a wide variety of reasons, personal and professional.

 

Plus, as a seminary teacher on occasion (and this semester is one such occasion) of history and polity, this is right in my wheelhouse for at least an historical viewpoint. I'm the kind of church politics geek who's had both last week's Catholic bishops' conference in Rome on his calendar for months, let alone GC2019 in St. Louis for the Methodists.

 

But to even hint in one column on my take on all this, I'm going to have to irritate people all across the spectrum of church and society. So buckle up.

 

It occurs to me that we have a president in this country (hang on, I'm not changing the subject, really) that would be perfectly content with having a harem. Like many wealthy and powerful men, he has shown a tendency to trade in wives for younger models (literally) who become sacrifices to his own mortality and aging process, soothing those transitions by keeping a more youthful partner in his bed and across the breakfast table. Would he like to be able to simply add new, younger ones rather than expensively having to transition from a former spouse to a later edition through divorce and property settlements? I can't imagine he wouldn't.

 

In this country, though, we have guardrails up. Our culture has settled on some guardrails around marriage and relationships – and you (or I) might think the lanes are too wide, the stripes need repainting, and the potholes are terrible, but there are guardrails, outside of which you just can't easily drive in the middle of traffic.

 

The big controversy in many quarters about how the United Methodist Church decided to retain its standards of "fidelity in marriage and chastity in singleness" for clergy and non-acceptance of same-sex marriage as a church act has to do with the role of the non-American membership of the UMC. African Methodists constitute around 40% of the total 12 plus million members, and they're growing at a rate that implies they'll be a majority relatively soon. The pressures on the processes wanting to liberalize standards have that as their backdrop. This Special General Conference was called, in part, because by the next regular General Conference in 2020 that majority will probably be a reality.

 

And the Africans are not interested in relaxing standards on sexual activity from where they've been. For this, they've been demonized in social media and by advocates of the changes proposed; perhaps worse, it's been repeatedly implied they've just been manipulated by cash and propaganda from American conservatives. When I read this stuff, I ask myself "have they actually ever met and talked to any African bishops?"

 

I have. I had a series of life-changing conversations with one, in this country, in 2005 and have kept up with him, and alongside him some mission and ministry partners in North Katanga on the eastern edge of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. What they have said repeatedly is this: our society does not have any guardrails. Next to none. Polygamy is common, exploitation rife in our cities and villages.

 

Christian preaching is often the first message many men have heard about the need to treat women with respect, and to live their family lives as something other than a series of conquests. This is, they tell me, still an ongoing struggle. The boundaries of their church are pretty much all the guardrails they have for defining family and relationships in any form other than through power and force as their defining qualities.

 

So they are not interested in relaxing any standards right now. And I hear them. I also see the conflict in this country perhaps more clearly than they do in Africa, and I acknowledge the pain felt by those who see our society making lane changes and resetting some road markers, opening up acceptance and support of same-sex relationships, but then seeing some churches, perhaps their own faith tradition say "we are not making those shifts." Not now, maybe not ever.

 

It is not a small thing being asked of either side, and the negotiations are perhaps not best worked out through voting and parliamentary procedure. The dialogue is not over. But for now, the UMC is staying in its same lane. And there's heavy traffic ahead.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's not a Methodist, but he knows plenty of John Wesley quotes. Tell him where you see the traffic heading in this and other areas of church life at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.