Where Our Heart Is

There are, among pastors responsible for drumming up financial resources to sustain their congregations, a variety of little proof-texts that we're compelled to go to. One of the more painfully cliche Bible passages that always show up when the church needs new carpet for the youth room is the Matthew 6:21:

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Meaning, if something is really important to you, you commit of your material resources to support it. It's a practical measure of assessing what is truly important to a person. If I give money to insure orphans in Malawi have clean drinking water, I make a statement about my priorities. If I give most of my money to Jack Daniels, Louis Vuitton and Jimmy Choo, that also makes a clear statement about my priorities.

Jesus, of course, spun this saying in some very interesting ways, ways that radically subvert our conventional understanding of wealth. But that discussion is for another post. What strikes me this morning is how the simpler funderstanding of the saying plays against the recent talk of a federal spending freeze. From both parties, we're now hearing concern about the exploding federal deficit. So now comes the idea...no more increases in spending. Hold the line. No more growth until we get our addiction to debt under control. I'm actually fine with that principle. We need to learn to live within our means, and soon.

But there is, of course, one exception. Our spending on weapons and the coercive implements of state security will be exempted from that freeze. There are many reasons given for this. Most of them boil down to this: We are at war and facing possible dire threats from possible enemies at home and abroad, as we have been every day of my forty-one years. And every day of my parent's lives. America is always at war or preparing for war. So even though we spend more on guns and jails than the rest of the world combined, we cannot possibly even consider the possibility of not spending more on that area of our national life.

That is because, as any pastor could tell you, war is where America's heart is.

Priorities

About five years ago, the group of ultraconservatives who've committed themselves to torment and disrupt my denomination took it on themselves to help destroy a long standing partnership between my Presbytery and Presbyterians in East Africa. For the better part of a decade, we'd partnered to help build clinics and hospitals and safe-houses for young Christian working women. My own congregation was only part of the partnership for two years, but in that time we put a roof on one new church, dug a well for a clinic, and laid the foundation for another church.

But my Presbytery includes progressives, meaning, there are folks here open to gays and lesbians. So our ultraconservatives sought out the then-moderator of the PCEA, a witch-hunting, demon-seeing, self-aggrandizing Big Man of the most pernicious kind. Their priorities were the same. First and foremost: No Gays. Those hospitals were being built with gay-friendly money! That new tin roof is clearly a bit swishy! Don't drink the water from that new well...it's homosexual water! I had one tiny sip the other day, and I'm already worrying more about whether these pants really match my shirt!

And so the partnership was declared a "partnership with evil." Further interactions were forbidden...and that meant clinics had less medicine for the sick, there was less clean water for the thirsty, and fewer churches were being built for the faithful. At the time, the ultraconservatives in the US declared they would fill the gap. But they didn't. They have their priorities, and having done the damage, they wandered off to find more things to break.

Today, we hear that the Catholic Church is threatening to pull Catholic Charities out of DC, eliminating services for adoptees, the poor, and the homeless. Why? Because of a new law permitting same-sex marriage in DC.

The church has asserted that it's freedom of religious expression would be impinged by this law. If it views gay and lesbian relationships as sinful, it should be under no obligation to provide benefits to same sex couples, or to be open to adoptions by same-sex couples. While I disagree with their perspective, I also think that churches and religious nonprofits should never, ever, be forced to adhere to particular ethical standards in our society...unless they are causing actual harm in a community. So the church does have a point. No church should ever be forced to marry or solemnify the relationships of individuals who do not meet the standards of their particular fellowship. That's what Unitarians are for.

But if you actually bother reading the legislation, that's not what it does. Want to do that? Follow this link, and enter "B18-482." Read it for yourself. If you look through the law, it bends over backwards to explicitly and repeatedly state that religious entities that oppose same sex marriage on the grounds of their faith are under no compunction to have anything to do with them. In fact, the text of the bill spends a great deal of time affirming the First Amendment rights of those who disagree.

What is at play here, when you dig down into the actuality of what is proposed, would impinge not a whit on the religious practices of any community. It seems a bit of a stretch to assert that those rights are being infringed. It's a greater spiritual stretch to refuse to provide charitable care for a community...even a community you view as sinful...because it fails to meet a particular expectation of your faith. That, for all the protestations otherwise, seems to be the threat that's being leveled here.

The measure of Christian faith is not how well we care for our "own." It's how well we care for others, particularly in times of disagreement. Denying charity to those in need for the sake of theological purity seems...well...to indicate a prioritization that just doesn't mesh with our central values. Heck, it doesn't mesh with the values held by most Catholics. Or, for that matter, with the values held by the folks I've known who worked for Catholic Charities.

Some things are clearly and self evidently more important to the faith than others. I think that's being lost here.