Candace

Talmadge

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January 9, 2009

Rick Warren Prays to His God; I’ll Pray to Mine

Pity Rick Warren. The pastor and bestselling author may well have been shocked at the outcry over his selection by President-elect Barack Obama to offer the invocation at the presidential inaugural.

While others protest Warren’s Proposition 8 politics, I have to wonder. To what God will the good pastor be praying on Jan. 20?

Warren, after all, says he’s a Christian. Even a cursory search of the four Gospels reveals that Jesus said nary a word of condemnation against gays and lesbians. In fact, Jesus didn’t say anything at all on the topic – at least not in the four books accepted as the New Testament.

So why do so many Christians get all worked up about homosexuality? Those who supposedly wrote against it were not Christians. Yes, Paul waded into the debate in 1 Corinthians 6:9, saying that the effeminate, generally translated as gays, are among those who will not inherit the Kingdom of God. But Paul also said fornicators, adulterers, thieves, the covetous, drunkards, revilers or extortionists will not inherit the Kingdom of God, either. And most of us fit into one of the preceding categories at least a few times in our lives. Oops.

So, again, why do certain Christians fixate solely on homosexuals? Paul was not Jesus – not by a long shot. Jesus associated with a crowd of social outcasts who very likely would be shunned by members of Warren’s Saddleback Church were they alive today.

The love and acceptance Jesus showed to those around him – to lepers, to the poor, to women – was unconditional. That is no doubt why it puzzled exceedingly those who wrote about him. They simply could not understand why or how such a great rabbi (teacher) could treat women as equals or show no fear or revulsion toward the diseased or even the deceased.

Most of us simply do not get unconditional love, even though we yearn to be accepted as we are, warts and all. Christians call it agape or grace and find it very mysterious. But unconditional love really is the simplest of all love. Because it is bounded by no conditions, no standards, no expectations, no caveats of any kind, unconditional love is unlimited love and thus the most powerful love that exists.

Some other names for unconditional love are Allah, God, the Great Spirit, Universal Mind, All That Is.

And although we long for acceptance, we all also have someone we just love to hate. If the designated villain is not gays and lesbians, then it’s polluters, or climate change deniers, or whalers, or greedy corporations, or smokers, or fat people, or Muslims, or Christians, or politicians, etc. The list of those we would throw under the bus is a lot longer than Paul’s.

Truth be told, even those who talk a great deal about grace or agape or unconditional love don’t really want to get it, because such love challenges them and all of us to give up our hatred(s).

Heavens above! We can’t have that!

So while Warren prays to his God, I will pray to mine, who loves me, and the good pastor, and all the rest of humanity alike and without limitation, despite our manifold imperfections, and perhaps precisely because of them.

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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