Amazing grace: Kevin Rudd's act of faith

Kevin Rudd launches passionate defence of gay marriage

Australia's prime minister, Kevin Rudd, a devout Christian, has stared down a pastor on live television and cited scripture while delivering a stirring defence of gay marriage.

In footage that has since gone viral on the internet, Mr Rudd declared that "people don't choose their sexuality" and said if The Bible were taken literally, slavery would still be legal.

His impassioned defence of his decision to throw his support behind same sex marriage came in response to a Christian pastor who asked on a chat show featuring audience questions: "Kevin, if you call yourself a Christian, why don't you believe the words of Jesus in The Bible?"

Mr Rudd, facing defeat in Australia's election on Saturday, responded: "Well mate if I was going to have that view, The Bible also says that slavery is a natural condition. Because St Paul said in the New Testament: slaves be obedient to your masters. And therefore we should have all fought for the confederacy in the US Civil War. I mean for goodness sake. The human condition and social conditions change."

Mr Rudd said be believed his decision to support gay marriage was in line with The Bible's emphasis on "universal love".

"I concluded in my conscience, through an informed conscience and a Christian conscience, it was the right thing to do," he told ABC TV's Q&A show.

This amazing four minutes is making the rounds. It proves that it's possible to have a lightbulb come on regarding your former beliefs, not just flip-flopping to garner votes but realizing in the clear light of day that human beings in all their diversity deserve compassion, understanding and a fair shake.

The glazed eyes and bolted doors apparent in the faces of the audience speak volumes about their own limited beliefs, and this misguided pastor with the ominous "Republic" shirt (?) seems ill at ease and even afraid. Rudd speaks with poise, confidence, and heartfelt conviction, and with a refreshing absence of shouting, fist-pounding and empty rhetoric. 

After studying it formally for 15 years and even teaching classes, I know my Bible pretty well, and I challenge conservative Christians to find any kind of statement from Jesus on homosexuality. It simply isn't there. And yes, Saint Paul, who could pound fists with the best of them, not only stated that slaves should obey their masters, but that wives should "submit themselves" to their husbands! Rudd didn't need to pull this one out, and to his credit he didn't, but he certainly could have. 

Does this mean we should just toss the Bible away as irrelevant to 2013 and all its multiplicity of views?  In the words of theologian Marcus Borg, it's possible to take scripture "seriously, but not literally." I think that Jesus so embodied near-unthinkable changes in human consciousness that he was put to death for it.  But who has that sort of guts, these days?

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

The Sacred Sweater, Vol. II

Shit on a stick, did I ever have a hard time with that last post. Trying to convert the text into something my blog would accept took forever.

But I persevered, mainly because I thought this piece was so astonishing. The actual text goes on for ten pages or so, and covers most of the Bible, even the Old Testament, in which the "teacher" says all the little Hebrew boys were being slain because "those Hebrews were just breeding like rabbits".

This thing reeks of fundamentalism, not to mention racism, with even the most innocent act (knitting!) dragged in to illustrate scriptural precepts. The thing that astonishes me is how long I fell for this. I was "in" this milieu for something like fifteen years before I came to realize that somewhere along the way, it had come to mean almost nothing to me.

It wasn't so much scripture, which can be interesting if contradictory (as is Jesus). It was the people trying to convey the messages. Hardly anyone I encountered in all that time seemed to have anything more than a superficial knowledge of what this was all about.

You see, the old-time message behind the Bible is that we're basically no goddamn good, if you'll pardon the language. We're selfish and hard-hearted and besides that, we have sex! We have sex. Do you know what people actually do when they have sex? And they enjoy it. Could it be worse?

So it's very important either to not have sex, or, if we do have it, not to enjoy it due to guilt, shame and a smothering feeling of sin that will never go away.

We were always controlled by guilt, not to mention shame and a sense of fundamental unworthiness and irredeemable filth that could "only" be cleansed by Jesus. Trouble was, we had to keep doing this over and over and over again, pretty much every Sunday.

We never quite "got there," as if the goal was to become some saintly figure that no one else would be able to stand.  We always had to go against, against, against our true nature, or God wouldn't love us any more. Certainly, the pecksniffs at church wouldn't - that is, if they ever loved us in the first place.

So. We have the Biblical teddy bear sweater, and later on in the 10 or 12 pages of this drivel she uses the term "bear" in the most groaningly punning way. We "bear with" our sorrows, etc. I have to say, though, that though I may just try that little knitting pattern, I found her theology not so much unbearable as a complete sack of shit.

Fifty Shades of Religious Doubt

I sorta-kinda-do remember this song. Didn't know who sang it, and was surprised just now to find out it was Andy Kim, a Lebanese-Canadian (didn't know THAT either) who penned such immortal tunes as Rock Me Gently, Sugar Sugar, and Baby How'd We Ever Get This Way.

He must have been in a mood that day back in '71 or whenever-it-was, because he managed to write something of substance, something that captures the angst that affects millions of people to this day: how do we know there is a God? How do we know "he" loves us, cares for us, counts all the hairs on our heads, etc.? Must we take it on "faith", and isn't that circular logic: in order to believe in God, you must believe (in God)?

The thing that's weird is that for many years I was a "believer", someone who came back to the church after decades of cynicism and even bitterness. Some of my previous posts have dealt with Rev. Russell Horsburgh, the renegade United Church minister convicted of sexual immorality and jailed in the mid-'60s. He just happened to be the minister of my church. My family fled to the Baptists, where more abuse occurred in the form of excruciating fundamentalism in which you were expected to check your brain at the door.

So why did I come back to organized religion at all? It was the particular circumstances of that time, around 1991, which I thought was the lowest point of my life. It wasn't. That came later, in 2005, which was just about the time I began to pull away from the church. Conversion in reverse, I guess. Reversion?

I want there to be a God that loves us tenderly, etc. etc., but I don't feel it any more. I just can't keep it up. It seems too far-fetched in this wretched, dangerous world. I find it hard to believe that when we depart this realm we are borne up on a sort of Otis elevator of pure light to sit on a cloud of virtue for all eternity (but only if we're "good" - a sort of Santa Claus deal, where God "sees you when you're sleeping, and knows when you're awake").

But maybe, like birds, trees, earthworms, plankton, we just die. If we are part of nature, how can it be otherwise?

This song would probably not go down well today in the Southern U. S., where "doubting" or wondering "if" there is a God is considered blasphemy. (Besides, the guy's from Lebanon.) Not only is there a God, He is represented by a big fat sweating pig in white polyester swindling the widow out of her precious mite so he can buy himself another Cadillac. A holy boondoggle, obviously, but people who lack the capacity to think critically, people of no means or living on the edge of desperation, will cling to whoever or whatever promises them deliverance from despair.

Much of this "product" (for that is what this manufactured grace really is) concerns itself with money. People are told that if they pray hard, they will receive "a gift" that comes straight from God. So they pray their faces off, put money they can't spare on the collection plate, then - wonder of wonders -one day they receive in the mail, in an unmarked envelope, a $10 bill. Hallellujah! So the $20 they parted with at the evangelical service paid off, after all. They may wait months for another one of God's "free gifts", and eventually they will taper off altogether as they're pressured to keep giving more and more. A sort of Ponzi scheme for God.

Then there are the liberal Christians, and these are the people I fear the most. Oh, they're nice all right, but deep down they're afraid of anyone who is Different. They are instructed to practice compassion, but it's in the sense of charity, which is always tinged with pity. Though they will never admit it and would be offended if you even suggested it, they secretly congratulate themselves on their spiritual generosity and their "tolerance".

But what IS tolerance anyway? What does it mean if I "tolerate" you? It seems to me it means that I can barely stand you, but I'll grit my teeth and stay in your presence, if only to demonstrate to everyone how tolerant I am.

I can't imagine Andy Kim, Mr. Sugar Sugar, known for inventing the genre of bubblegum pop and writing hit numbers for The Archies, sitting down and composing such a moody, even tortured song. It's unusual. We heard it a lot in Canada back in 1971, but the YouTube scuttlebutt is that it didn't get much play in the States. It passed through me then and got stored at the back of the mental closet without my knowledge, and I had no idea who was responsible for it, as it had a sort of Neil Diamondesque sentiment, an angst-filled cry in the wilderness, an I Am I Said shouted into the arid howling wasteland of conventional belief.

Is there, is there balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole. . . to heal the sin-sick soul? Or did we will it, wish it, pray it, think it, beg it into being?

                                

Is there a God? I really don't know,
Does he have a son? I really don't know.
But when I'm down and things are all wrong.
I turn to him to help me be strong.
And so I pray Lord..shine on, shine on, shine on, shine on your light. 

God made the sun.
At least that's what they say.
The waters and trees.
He made night and day.
But who made the child who's hungry and blind?
And who has the answers that I cannot find?
And so I pray Lord..shine on, shine on, shine on, shine on your light.
And let me see.
Please let me see. 

People everywhere living in despair, no one really cares if they're dying.
Politicians swear that they really care, everybody knows that they're lying.
People cannot find any peace of mind, even though they have the almighty dollar. 
So they live and search, never find a Church, everyone is fine 'til the final hour. 

Is there a God?
Is there a God?
I really don't know.
Who has the answers?
Is there a God?
Does he have a son?
I really don't know.
Who has the answers?

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.com/2012/01/synopsis-glass-character-novel-by.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm