Words, Words, Words

On Monday evening, our group of pastors traveling through Turkey were guests in the home of a Muslim family in Izmir. The two older sons are grown and have moved away. (One is in  America and one is a professor at a Turkish university.) The third son, Yusuf (Joseph), was much younger – late elementary school age perhaps – and he was the only one of the family who spoke any English. Of course, like any respectable boy that age, he preferred to be anywhere but in a crowd of adults, most of whom he’d never laid eyes on, and he didn’t say much.

The meal was a traditional Turkish one, served in courses. There was a delicious lentil soup, followed a dish of eggplant, potatoes, meat, followed by rice and green beans, all of this accompanied by homemade bread and side dishes of salad from the family garden, something made from yogurt, mint, and cucumbers, and a wonderful eggplant salad made with smoked eggplant, yogurt, and spices I couldn’t quite identify. Then we retired to the living room where we were brought plates of fresh watermelon, and lastly, the end to most Turkish meals, a small glass of hot tea.

We feasted like kings and queens with our hosts scurrying about in a kitchen cramped by the nine of us, quickly removing one bowl or plate and replacing it with another. The husband, Baha, did most of the talking, but both he and his wife, Binnur, were incredibly enthusiastic in their hospitality. Conversations were interesting, with Bilal, the Fairfax, VA imam who is leading us in our Turkish odyssey, having to translate back and forth.

It was a remarkable evening, with many touching moments, but a couple stand out. The first happened over introductions. This family has hosted groups like ours many times before, but we were something of a novelty. With the exception of Bilal, all of us are Christian pastors. They had never hosted pastors before, and when they learned of this, Baha called us “friends of God” repeatedly and excitedly. And he spoke of seeing the light of God in us.

But I think the moment that touched me the most was when Baha said how rich he was because they were able to host us. That’s not how I usually hear people use the word “rich.” Perhaps there were some issues with translation, but I don’t think so. He and his wife were treating us like royalty, and he felt enriched and blessed by the opportunity to do so. It was an amazing demonstration of the biblical call to show hospitality to the stranger, a call I have often found to be considerably more evident among those of Islamic faith.

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A hectic schedule and the lack of reliable WiFi in our hotel has led to a delay in finishing this post. In the meantime we have again dined with a Muslim family. This family was younger and the evening somehow felt a bit different. One colleague spoke of the previous night being “moving” but this meal being “fun.” Yet one constant remained: the remarkable level of hospitality that genuinely felt joy and gratitude for the opportunity to host us.

As I reflect on these two evenings (we have another in a couple of hours), I’m struck by the connection that we made at these dinners despite significant language barriers. More striking, this connection achieved despite the difficulty understanding each other’s words happened  between people who are sometimes divided by words.

I suppose that all faiths, in an understandable attempt to more fully understand that faith, use mountains of words to explain and detail the essentials of faith, to make sense of our faith stories and how they are to impact our lives. Yet so often our words become our fences, the lines we draw around our group that leaves others on the outside. Too often our words become weapons to say who’s in and who’s out. For Christians, our great commands are about love, yet we have often had little trouble telling others that our loving God is happy to damn them to hell for all eternity if their words don’t match ours.

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I’m reading a wonderful, historical novel that takes place in Turkey at the end of the Ottoman Empire and the early days of the Turkish Republic, Birds without Wings, by Louis De Berniers. I ran across this quote in it. “(T)he first casualties of a religion’s establishment are the intentions of its founder. One can imagine Jesus and Mohammed glumly comparing notes in paradise, scratching their heads and bemoaning their vain expense of effort and suffering, which resulted only in the construction of two monumental whited sepulchres.” (pp. 142-143, Kindle edition)

The observation is perhaps a bit harsh, but not without its truth. When we Christians forget about the command to love neighbors, along with Jesus’ teachings that broaden the neighbor to include even our enemy, then we inevitably misuse and abuse his words and words in general.

Since I’m quoting folks I’ll throw in another by Barbara Brown Taylor. “(I)n an age of information overload . . . the last thing any of us needs is more information about God. We need the practice of incarnation, by which God saves the lives of those whose intellectual assent has turned them dry as dust, who have run frighteningly low on the bread of life, who are dying to know more God in their bodies. Not more about God. More God.” (An altar in the World, p. 45)

Said another way perhaps, Not more words about God, not more words, but more God. Of course it's taken me a whole lot of words to say that.

Muslims, Confederate Flags, and Guilt by Association

As I write I'm sitting in the airport terminal, waithing to begin my journey to Turkey. I'm traveling with a group of pastors on a trip sponsored by the Institute for Islamic and Turkish Studies, or IITS, in Fairfax, VA. Members of my congregation recently broke the Ramadan fast with worshipers at the IITS mosque. It was a delightful evening with great food and the most wonderful company and hospitality.

Because of my relationship with the folks at IITS, the recent attack on a Navy recruiting center in Tennessee that killed five servicemen left me with a second, heartbreaking reaction. After the initial shock and sadness that such a tragedy had occurred, I immediately thought of the good people at IITS and countless other Muslims like them. Because the attacker was Muslim, some Americans with declare all Muslims guilty by association. This seems so unfair to my friends, and I can only imagine the pain it causes them.

Speaking of guilt by association, I have a number of Facebook “friends” who claim that the Confederate battle flag is not tainted by its association with a war to preserve slavery, hate groups such as the KKK, or the fact that so many southern states raised it over capitals and incorporated it into their state flags to protest the civil rights movement. And in an interesting oddity, those most vocal in defending the Confederate flag are often the same people condemning all Muslims for the actions of a few.

What is it that makes us humans so good at dividing ourselves into different groups, then assuming the worst of those whose group is different from ours? What makes us willing to believe the absolute worst about those who are different than us while at the same time excusing terrible actions by members of our own group as aberrations?

For me as a Christian pastor, such questions are even more troubling because religion is often heavily invested in the “we’re in and you’re not” game. We Christians, whose greatest commands are about love, can be downright hateful to those we deem on the outside. Clearly some Muslims have similar issues.

As I finish writing, I am now in Istanbul, brought here by a Muslim imam, and experiencing the warmth and hospitality of all those I've met. It is interesting being in a place where I'm the minority, whether the measure is language, ethnicity, or religion. Surely my being a Christian American carries with it a number of guilt by association issues for people here. But based on my limited experiience so far, perhaps not. Regardless, I look forward to the coming week and the chance to continue pondering those things that divide us, as well as looking for those things that bind us in a common, shared humanity.

Taking the Bible Seriously - Two Different Idolatries

The next day an evil spirit from God rushed upon Saul, and he raved within his house. 

1 Samuel 18:10

I encounter very many "liberal" and "progressive" Christians who have a tenuous relationship with the Bible. (I'm not speaking of pastors so much as regular church members.) This is usually not because they haven't read Scripture, but rather because they have. At least they have read it enough that they have encountered sufficient terrifying or troubling texts that make them question the Bible's validity.

You don't need to look very hard to find such texts. From rather minor things such as the ban on eating shrimp or wearing clothing made of two materials to appalling commands to kill children who curse their parents and to conduct genocidal slaughter of a land's indigenous inhabitants, the Bible contains a large number of verses likely to make most people squirm. Ignoring the Old Testament doesn't help very much either. Women should remain silent; slaves should obey their masters; "accept the authority of every human institution." (I've always been confused by Christians who speak of infallible Scripture in one breath and in the next insist the right to bear arms must be maintained in case we need to overthrow the government.) There is plenty to make you squirm in the New Testament.

You would think that after all these centuries Christians would have arrived at some generally accepted notions of what to do with the Bible, but this seems not to be the case. Even stranger, many who've decided they can no longer accept the Bible's authority, appear to have accepted the literal, inerrant model of some fundamentalists as a norm. And some liberal Christians I talk to struggle to accept Scripture because they think doing so means reading it this way.


It may come as a shock to some, but reading the Bible literally is a modern phenomenon. It took the Protestant elevation of Scripture combined with 19th century scientific advances for some to embrace a doctrine of inerrancy. The problems with such a doctrine are many. For one, Scripture makes no such claim for itself. The passage from 2 Timothy 3:16, "All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching..." is often quoted on this topic, but inspired and inerrant are quite different things. And of course, the writer is referring to the Old Testament only. The New Testament did not yet exist.

Notions of literalism and inerrancy also make it difficult, if not impossible, to let Scripture have its own say. For example, the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, place Jesus' cleansing of the Temple during the last week of his life. But John's gospel has this at the beginning of Jesus' ministry. If we are committed to a doctrine of inerrancy, we now must commit to explaining away this discrepancy. At such a point, this doctrine has now become more treasured than the gospel witness itself.

Or look at the quote from today's reading in 1 Samuel where God sends an evil Spirit to afflict Saul. Do evil Spirits come from God? In much of the Old Testament they do. In Exodus, Pharaoh repeatedly changes his mind about letting Moses and the Hebrews go because God "hardened Pharaoh's heart." For much of ancient Israel's history, they had no notion of an evil counterpart to God. Indeed their radical monotheism argued against such a thing. And so evil that at a later date might be attributed to "the devil" is attributed to God.

As I said, the problems with inerrancy are many, as well as obvious. Maintaining a belief in it requires a blind faith in the doctrine itself, which of course is idolatrous. The doctrine was devised to protect the authority of Scripture, but its many failings may have done more damage to the idea of biblical authority than science or secularism or anything else ever did. So then how do we lay claim to some sort of legitimate, biblical authority?

Perhaps that verse from 2 Timothy can be of help. "All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching..." Inspired; what does that mean? I looked up inspired and found this: "aroused, animated, or imbued with the spirit to do something, by or as if by supernatural or divine influence." If a poet is inspired to write some incredible verses or a musician to pen a spectacular score, we do not mean that the finished product has nothing to do with poet of composer. Inspiration does not overwhelm the person. 

Hopefully my sermons are occasionally inspired, something more than just my thoughts and reflections, but on those occasions when God does speak through me, I am not obliterated by such inspiration. I do not simply become stenographer or parrot. My voice is still there, my perspective, my biases, and so on. So too the writers of Scripture are presumably present in their writings, along with their context, perspective, and so on. The inspiration is divine, but it does not swallow up the author.

The inspiration is divine. This is a critical thing to remember, for if some Christians have tended to claim too much for Scripture, some have tended to claim far too little. In the process, some liberal and progressive Christians have engaged in a different sort of idolatry from that of their inerrancy counterparts, an idolatry of reason. This idolatry sets up my own judgment as final arbiter and acknowledges no authority outside of self.

This poses an entirely different problem for faith. If inerrancy requires one to embrace a God of genocide and slavery, this second idolatry risks doing away with God altogether, or at least any insights into God not readily apparent and palatable to me. At some point such a move rejects the idea of revelation altogether. But if God cannot be other than I imagine or conceive, then God gets created in my image.


Faith is damaged by an overly simplified, black and white, "God said it and I believe it" mentality. But it is equally damaged by a refusal to acknowledge any biblical authority. If I do not engage with and wrestle with the Scriptures, if I do not allow the Bible to have some sort of claim on me and my life, then I am may be many things, some of them good and noble, but I am not seeking to be a Christian, a person who seeks to live in faithful relationship with the God revealed in Jesus.

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Sermon video: Caught Up in the Conspiracy

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Caught Up in the Conspiracy

Philemon 8-19

Caught Up in the Conspiracy

James Sledge                                                                                       July 12, 2015

The practice of referring to “books” of the Bible probably is a bit misleading, never more so than with the “book” of Philemon. I once had my answer on a seminary quiz marked incorrect because I wrote that a particular quote from Paul was found in Philemon chapter 1, verse so and so. I guess Professor Achtemeier would have marked down Brian McLaren as well. His chapter for today says our Scripture reading is Philemon 1:8-19, but in truth, Philemon has no chapters. It’s a one page letter, less than 500 words.

Like most letters in the New Testament, it is occasional and particular in its content, but this one is also personal, speaking primarily to one individual, Philemon. The exact circumstances aren’t known because Paul has no need to explain it to Philemon. But it seems that Paul is writing on behalf of a slave, Onesimus, who apparently belongs to Philemon.

The first seven verses of the letter are introductory, warm hellos and recollections of service together in the church. It seems Paul is charming Philemon a bit before he gets to the point of the letter which goes something like this. “I could command you, but I won’t. I’m giving you a chance to do the right thing on your own. Receive Onesimus, not as a slave but as a beloved brother, and free him so that he may return and work with me.”

As I was reading this letter, I imagined Paul living and writing it in our day. What if Philemon was an active leader in his church but also a CEO. Might Paul write, “I could command you but I won’t. I’m giving you a chance to do the right thing on your own. Treat Onesimus, not as an employee, a human resource, but as a beloved brother. Pay him a living wage so he may can stop working three jobs and help me.

But what makes Paul think he can make this sort of request? Or that he could have made it a command in Christ? Just who does he think he is?

It’s important to realize what a life altering thing it is for Paul to be “in Christ.” For Paul, this is not about getting to go to heaven. Paul has become a “new creation” in Christ. He has been transformed in ways that completely change how he lives in the here and now. Those who are in Christ live now as citizens of God’s new day, no longer recognizing the world’s division of Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free, CEO and employee.

The Brian McLaren chapter that uses today’s verses from Philemon is called, “The Spirit Conspiracy,” and I love that title. As Paul well knew, the gift of the Spirit that is given to the Church does join us to a conspiracy, a movement to radically alter the world, to begin conforming it to what Jesus called the kingdom of God.

Back in Jesus’ day, there were many who hoped that he would be a conquering Messiah, that he would cast out the Romans and institute the wondrous day of peace and harmony foretold by prophets. No doubt they were crushed and confused when those Romans instead executed him, and for many, hope that he was the Messiah disappeared.

In our day we understand that Jesus is not a military Messiah, but far too often this has led Christians to conclude that Jesus is apolitical, concerned only with forgiving sin and getting people right with God before they die. But declaring Jesus a non-political Messiah requires ignoring the very core of his message.

Sermon video: Downward Mobility

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Downward Mobility

Philippians 2:1-11

Downward Mobility

James Sledge                                                                                                   July 5, 2015

A number of our youth recently went on a mission trip. Working with the Pittsburgh Project, they helped elderly residents with limited income make badly needed repairs or improvements to their homes. This is the second year our youth have gone to Pittsburgh, in large part because those who went last year has such a profound experience.

Similar experiences have been shared by countless other youth groups, college groups, adult groups, and intergenerational groups who’ve taken mission trips to all manner of locations to do all sorts of work. Rarely, have I heard anyone complain about their experience on such trips. Even though the accommodations may have been incredibly spartan, even though the weather may have been horrendous, even though the work may have been hard and strenuous, people talk about how moving the experience was, how much it impacted their faith, how life changing it was.

We live in a culture that bombards us with messages of needing more, of striving to get ahead, of leading a life that others can only dream about. Yet I’ve almost never heard anyone tell me that their faith blossomed or their life changed because they got that bigger house or nicer car, got that promotion everyone else wanted, or got into that highly selective college. People may get immense satisfaction or benefit from them, but they don’t talk about them in the same sort of language they use for those times when they sweat and work in the most difficult conditions, forming relationships with people very unlike those they usually meet.

“The Spirit leads us downward.” That’s the opening sentence in Brian McLaren’s chapter entitled, “Spirit of Service.” It seems totally at odds with the upward mobility focus of our culture, yet it is the experience of those mission trips.

Guns and Other Idols

From time to time I see a post on  Facebook talking about how guns aren't the root cause of all the gun violence in America. They speak of growing up with guns, being taught to respect them, and never using them in ways that create a danger to others.

I can appreciate such a stance because I had that sort of experience growing up. I was raised "in the country," as they say. My father taught me to shoot with a .22 caliber rifle. When I was a teenager I saved up my money and bought a shotgun, but I never really cared much for hunting, so I eventually got rid of it.

I've had the opportunity from time to time to do a little target shooting, and I've enjoyed it. But I don't own a gun and have no plans to do so. In general I avoid guns in large part because I don't want to be part of a culture that has become more and more idolatrous over the years. Respect for guns has turned into veneration of guns, and I see that as a problem.

It's by no means the only such problem in our country. Some might say there's been a similar progression in the realm of income and possessions. Making a decent living and providing for one's family has increasingly become an obsession about having more. Consumerism is an idolatry that is much more tempting to me personally than gun obsession is, so I won't claim that those who worship at the altar of the 2nd Amendment are somehow worse than me. Still, I think it's worth naming idols for what they are.

My theological tradition, with includes Presbyterians, Reformed, parts of the UCC, and a few others, traces its peculiar brand of Christianity back to John Calvin in Geneva, Switzerland. Calvin was adamant on a number of things. One was the absolute sovereignty of God. And another was the human tendency toward idolatry, our propensity to organize our lives around things other than God. These things need not be inherently evil in order to become our idols. In fact the very best idols are not. Family, country, church, even the Bible, can all become idols, things that occupy a place that belongs only to God.

In America, with our focus on individual freedoms and rights, the self often becomes an idol. The worship of guns and wealth and possessions may all be subsets of this idolatry of self, which is likely why Jesus says that no one can become his follower without denying oneself. "Deny yourself and take up your cross," is a familiar command to many Christians, but not one we're all that inclined to take too seriously.

That said, I do think that there is a distinction to be made between the idolatry of guns (and likely some other of "my rights") and that of the more widely practiced idolatry of wealth and possessions. The idolatry of consumerism has been fully named in our society. Its allure may be strong, but many people of faith have recognized it for what it is and struggle against it as an alcoholic struggles with drink. I'm not sure the same can be said for the veneration of guns.

However, one thing is painfully obvious to me. John Calvin was certainly correct that we humans are remarkably skilled at devising things other than God to serve.

Sermon video: Functional Unitarians and Unflattening God

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Functional Unitarians and Unflattening God

Ephesians 4:1-16

Functional Unitarians and Unflattening God

James Sledge                                                                                       June 28, 2015

I had a theology professor in seminary who was fond of saying that nearly all of us are functional Unitarians. We may sing Holy, Holy, Holy on Trinity Sunday and baptize people in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but when it comes right down to it, we reduce God to one person of the Trinity.

It is possible to do a Unitarianism of the Son, begining every prayer with “Jesus we just ask you…” Quakers and others sometimes reduce God to Spirit. But I think by far the most popular choice is a Unitarianism of the Father.

Many open their prayers with “Heavenly Father” or even “Father God.” In fact this form of Unitarianism is so pervasive that” God” and “Father” become virtual synonyms in a way that never happens with Jesus or the Spirit. Just look at the hymnals in our pews. They have various sections, seasonal ones for Advent, Christmas, Lent, sections for baptism and the Lord’s Supper and other parts of worship. And there are sections for the Trinity labeled “Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ,” and “God.”

I realize that for many the Trinity is some esoteric doctrine with no real connection to faith, but it seems to me that we flatten and diminish the incredible mystery of God when we reduce God to one thing, when we require God to conform to our conceptual  limitations.

We humans have a tendency to think that unity or oneness means sameness. That is why sports teams and armies wear uniforms, a visible display of sameness. When Christian missionaries first went to Africa, they assumed that converting people the faith meant making them look and act like Christians in America and Europe. In Ghana and Congo they insisted that pastors wear black robes in stifling heat and import pianos or small organs for playing Western hymns. No indigenous instruments or music allowed.

Thankfully we eventually saw the arrogance of this, yet functionally, we still struggle with this need for sameness. There are successful multi-cultural congregations in America, but they are few. Many more are mostly one race, one socio-economic group, one political leaning, and so on. And I have to think such sameness impacts our images of God.

Our reading from Ephesians speaks a lot about unity and oneness. There is one body, one baptism, one faith, one Lord, one Spirit, one God and Father of us all. There is unity in the Spirit and the unity of faith. However the one body is marked not by sameness but rather diversity. The body is a complex organism working together for a common goal, and in this it somehow mimics that complex relationship that is God.

Trouble in Paradise

Now during those days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food. 

 Acts 6:1

Acts depicts an idyllic community of love and sharing that emerges in the wake of Pentecost. Present day Christians who assume that God is fond of capitalism are often uneasy when they read its description. "All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need." But Acts lets us know that there were always threats to this community. First we hear of hoarding by the couple Ananias and Sapphira. And in today's reading, we read that Hellenist widows weren't faring as well as Hebrew ones.

There aren't many details in the story, but one thing is clear. Hebrews get better treatment than Hellenist. (This seems to be a division within a church that is entirely Jewish, some who able to worship and pray in Hebrew and/or Aramaic, and some who can speak only Greek.) The problem is quickly resolved as Stephen and others are selected to lead this service. But it points to a problem that has plagued the Church from its infancy, fights and divisions about boundaries, about who's in and who's out, about the requirements for inclusion.

Despite statements about there no longer being Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female, about all becoming one in Christ, the faith has been remarkably good over the years at coming up with grounds for and exceptions to genuine unity. In today's reading it is cultural and language differences, but that is just a start.

In the book of Genesis, the Tower of Babel story is a mythic explanation of how humanity became divided. But in the Pentecost story of Acts, the gift of the Holy Spirit undoes this division. Yet we in the Church keep honoring the old curse rather than living into the new day of the Spirit.

The struggle for full inclusion in the Church by LGBT people is a very current example of the curse's persistence. But division over race is America's most profound experience of this curse, and one we seem unwilling to confront fully.

It is easy, and often convenient, to forget the deep, religious roots of American racism. Slavery in the Bible was not racially based, and thus was more fluid than the US version. American slavery required that Africans be less than fully human to justify slavery as a status conferred at birth, and the Church was more than willing to help in this effort. It succeeded so thoroughly that even many abolitionists assumed that freed slaves would never be able to take their place as full citizens in America.

Slaveholders actively discouraged slaves from becoming Christian, for obvious reasons. And when the Civil War brought an end to slavery, it hardly brought an end to deeply held and religiously buttressed ideas that those of African descent were not full human partners. I think many would be surprised at the number of people who still hold to such ideas. But even for those who do not, the legacy is still a curse on our society.

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In the aftermath of the Emmanuel AME Church murders, there are signs of Pentecost-like possibility. People have reached across the divide to say, "We are one!" But there are others who are waiting and hoping for things to go "back like they were." And if people of faith do not seize this moment, inertia and long standing practice will be on the side of those who prefer the curse of division to the new community of love Christ proclaims.

The writer of Acts cast the Apostle Paul as his leading hero, and Paul struggles mightily to push the Church beyond the boundaries it had inherited from Judaism. It is well past time for the Church in our day to actively struggle against the boundaries and divisions and inequalities that we inherited and have too often helped maintain.

Last Thursday, the Rev. Tawnya Denise Anderson, a PC(USA) pastor, posted a blog entitled, "'Allies,' the Time for Your Silence Has Expired." She spoke of white friends and their willingness to listen and offer sympathy toward the plight of black America. But then she said, "White allies, I thank you for your thoughtfulness in this regard. Now allow me to be your stopwatch; Time’s up." And she went on to share a Facebook post of a colleague who she said captured her thoughts. "If you love me and mine, fight for me. If you are unwilling to fight for me, clearly there is no way we can walk together."

Too often the white church's work to break down the curse of racism has looked a bit like the advocacy of country club members who insist that these things take time, that the best way to go about it is gently to convince more and more members that being more open is a good idea. Very rarely has the white church been willing to act like the Apostle Paul, who fought the church leaders in Jerusalem and risked his very life to remove the boundaries that Christ had made meaningless.

Very often, we white Christians have been unwilling fully to acknowledge how pervasive the curse of racism is. Perhaps because to do so would be to demand more action and more confession of our own willful blindness and culpability than we can handle. 

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When Acts tells us about how divisions began to sow trouble in the Church's post-Pentecost Paradise, it is a segue into the story of how Paul and others took on the biggest division for the early Church, that between Jew and Gentile, and eventually overcame it. We Americans have a division problem of similar magnitude, one with roots in the churches we attend and serve. Surely Christ is calling us to do everything we can, to struggle and to risk, until we truly live into our oneness in Christ.

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A Sermon That Didn't Get Preached

This is the draft of a sermon I intended to preach last Sunday... before the murders in Charleston were committed. But rather than just toss it. Here it is.

Proverbs 4; James 3:13-18 

James Sledge                                                                                                   June 21, 2015

Some of you may be familiar with H. L. Mencken’s take on the Puritans. He wrote, “Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” And just in case you didn’t know it, Presbyterians are close theological relatives of Puritans. Presbyterian was the name chosen by the Reformed Church in Scotland, while the Reformed Christians in England were called Puritans.

People of faith are known for a few “Thou shalt nots,” and I suspect most people recognize the need for some of these. When we had the Deacons’ picnic a couple of weeks ago, a group of us was talking about how the church was a great location for the event except for the closeness to Broad Street. About that time a soccer ball got loose and rolled into the street, a child close behind. Immediately shouts of “Stop! Don’t go after it! Don’t go in the road!” came from all over. A few, well-placed “thou shalt nots” are sometimes necessary.

Parents usually know something about shalt nots and other prohibitions. Children may disagree, but most parents don’t see their primary purpose as ensuring children experience a healthy dose of unhappiness. “Yes, ice cream tastes great, but no, you cannot eat it for breakfast, lunch, and supper. Yes, it would be wonderful to be able to fly like Superman, but no, you may not tie a cape around your neck and jump off the roof.”

Certain prohibitions and shalt nots are essential to create some safe boundaries within which a child can go about the business of figuring out how to be a reasonably healthy, well-adjusted, contributing member of human society. But the rules are not goals in and of themselves. They are simply a framework to help along the way.

In the weeks following Pentecost, we have been talking each Sunday about how the Spirit equips us for life as followers of Jesus. The last two weeks we’ve spoken of loving God and of loving neighbor. Many are familiar with the words Jesus spoke about what is most important for walking in the way of God, how we should love God with heart, mind and soul, and how we should love our neighbor as ourselves. But what, exactly, does it mean to love others as we love ourselves? Do we even know what it means to love ourselves?

Very often, self love is understood as catering to my preferences, giving me what I want. But as any parent can tell you, indulging wants and desires is far from a foolproof guide to happiness. Eating ice cream all day long or jumping off the roof turns out to have some real negative consequences. Parents who allow their children to do such things might rightly be regarded as not loving those children at all. Children, it seems, can have faulty ideas about loving themselves, as can I.