Going Negative
The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
February 16, 2014
Going Negative
Selected
Texts
Oh how easy it is to go negative.
Politicians know this probably better than anyone else,
especially during campaign season.
To go negative about your opponent is so maliciously simple,
you don’t even have to be truthful:
rumors, allegations,
the merest wisp of suggestion,
all throw thick mud just as well as facts.
Going negative isn’t limited to politicians, of course.
Just think of high school;
in fact I think there is more of mean-spirited
snipes and jabs in middle school than in high school.
The mean things we can be so quick to say about others
may seem to us laughable and harmless,
but words can sting, words can scar.
As scripture teaches us, the tongue can be
a restless evil, full
of deadly poison.
With it we bless the
Lord and Father,
and with it we curse
those who are made
in the likeness of
God.
(James 3:8)
It is one of our least attractive features
that we humans are usually quicker to
say something negative about another person
than we are to say something positive.
Even within churches and faith communities
we can be all too quick to go negative.
There is a reason why our Lord
confronts us with his stern words:
Why do you see the
speck in your neighbor’s eye,
but do not notice the
log in your own eye?”
(Matthew 7:3)
There’s been a trend I’ve seen lately,
a growing chorus of negative voices,
negative words, articles, books, texts,
aimed at religion in general,
and particularly Christianity –
Christianity across the board,
all forms and denominations.
A growing chorus seems intent on condemning
Christianity as hostile, often hateful,
exclusive, judgmental,
narrow-minded,
obsessed with power,
greedy,
anti-intellectual.
Now certainly there is no shortage of things
we Christians and Christianity can be criticized for.
We’ve struggled from day one to follow Jesus faithfully.
Turn to Paul’s letter to the Galatians
and hear him express his astonishment
at how easily the new Christians of Galatia
were led astray,
how easily they bought into words
and ideas that sounded far more appealing
than the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The history of the papacy,
particularly in the centuries prior to the Reformation,
is a history marked by corruption
that seemed to know no bounds.
In the early years of the 20th century,
novelist Sinclair Lewis
didn’t conjure out of thin air
the corrupt evangelist Elmer Gantry.
Lewis probably patched together unseemly qualities
and traits from preachers he read about
in his daily newspaper
to form the protagonist of his novel.
Some of the current writers have argued that religion
has become more a force for bad than for the good.
The reflexive defensive strategy on the part of Christians
has been to counterattack,
to go after the critics as “godless heathens”,
attack them as atheists.
Are we who believe,
who try to live by faith,
walk by faith,
are we under attack?
Are we part of an institution
that does more harm than good?
Are we part of an institution that is obsolete,
no longer relevant,
on the verge of extinction?
Perhaps this negativity, this criticism –
aimed at Catholics, Methodists,
Baptists, Fundamentalists,
Pentecostals, and yes,
even Presbyterians,
perhaps it is a good thing,
Perhaps it is a call to us to look hard and long at
ourselves,
look anew, afresh,
to re-examine who we are and what we do,
as we live our lives and our faith.
Counterattacking the critics may make us feel good
but wouldn’t our Lord disapprove?
Didn’t Jesus teach us
“Do not resist an
evildoer.
But if anyone strikes
you on the right cheek,
turn the other also”
(Matthew 5:39)
Listening to those who are on the
other side of an argument or a debate
can often by a very good thing,
a very healthy thing to do.
It can open our eyes to help us see
where we ourselves have gone wrong.
It is easy,
and almost reflexive when we are attacked
to turn defensive,
and then to dig in our heels
going after the one attacking us.
But isn’t that what we’ve been doing in politics
and in our culture all around us
for the past decade or so?
And what’s that got us?
Paralysis.
We are stopped dead on our tracks,
even as the Spirit is always calling us forward
into God’s future.
If we did take a fresh look at ourselves,
then we’d probably agree
with the theologian Douglas John Hall
who argues in his new book,
What Christianity Is
Not,
that we’ve only ourselves to blame
because over the centuries we’ve tried n
to reduce Christianity to rules, creeds, slogans,
when Jesus calls us to new life,
transformed life,
life grounded in extravagant love,
love so extravagant that it goes beyond family,
beyond friends,
extending out to neighbor and beyond,
even to critic,
even to enemy.
Hall argues that we’ve trivialized Christianity
as we’ve tried to reduce it to bumper-sticker platitudes.
Hall laments that as a result,
“many of the most sober and thoughtful
men and women of our time
no longer find in this faith
anything profound enough to wrestle with,
or even pay attention to.”
(What Christianity Is
Not, xii)
Our recent adult education offering
on science and faith illustrates the point.
It wasn’t all that long ago that men and women of faith
readily, eagerly embraced science,
seeing it as a path that revealed God’s majesty,
God’s glory, God’s incredible creative powers.
But now many in the religious community,
Christians of all denominations,
reject science as godless,
and in particular reject the idea of evolution,
preferring to look at Genesis as science textbook.
Even as our scientific knowledge has grown,
the number of Christians who argue
that Creationism trumps
what they perceive to be the evils of evolution
has remained steady;
in fact, among some groups it has even grown.
(see the Pew Forum study at
Christians have figured prominently
in the debate over climate change,
until recently fiercely and firmly denying
that human activity could be having
any affect on global climate.
It has only been in the last few years
that Christians have responded to
a small but growing group
reminding us of our call to be
faithful stewards of God’s creation.
Where for years we simply said that God had given us
dominion over all the earth,
power over all the earth,
we Christians in our ignorance and our arrogance,
breezed right by the fact
that the Hebrew word we translate as “dominion”
conveys responsibility more than it conveys power.
When God gave us dominion,
God was imposing responsibility on us
for all God’s creatures.
This is God’s earth;
“the land is mine; says the Lord
with me you are but aliens and tenants.”
(Leviticus 25:23)
Why do we find it so easy to forget
that we are called to walk with humility?
Why do we struggle so to remember those powerful words
spoken through the prophet Micah:
what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
(Micah 6:8)
To walk humbly, to walk in humility
helps us to avoid thinking we know more than we do.
The great 4th century theologian Augustine
offered us wise words with his observation,
“if you think you understand it,
it isn’t God you are thinking about.”
We cannot reduce Christianity to rules, creeds,
slogans and sayings;
Christianity is more than that,
more than a moral code,
more than an ethical code,
even as there is much in the Bible
to guide us morally and ethically:
Don’t kill,
don’t steal,
don’t cheat in business,
don’t be greedy.
Have we missed the bigger picture?
God gave us moral codes
not to set rules for us to live by,
but to help us live with one another,
to help us live in community
with friend and stranger alike.
It is much easier to live with a neighbor
and love your neighbor
if you don’t steal from her,
and she doesn’t cheat you.
We are called to a positive life,
a life focused not on the negative,
but on the good,
on all those things that build up,
not tear down.
We are to go positive
even to those who go negative
saying to them,
“Welcome, come in, sit down,
what can I offer you to eat and drink?
You are my brother,
you are my sister.
We may disagree on this or that,
but let us work together to agree on the importance
of living positive, grace-filled,
grace-giving lives,
the two of us neither judging nor condemning,
neither criticizing nor belittling,
but building up, encouraging,
and working together on those things that truly matter:
feeding the hungry,
helping those who struggle,
living and working for peace.”
For you and me, it is a matter of faith.
For you and me, it is a matter of life –
the life, the positive life, we are called to live
by our Lord Jesus Christ.
AMEN
posted by Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson @ 11:00 AM
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