Greece v. Galloway: The Place of Public Prayer

As a pastor, I will happily pray when asked.  Want to start something with prayer?  I'm there  Unless it's a family dinner, when I'd really rather someone else do it. Because Daddy gets enough practice.

In worship, prayer is a core part of what I do.  It's a fundamental and irreducible part of the pastoral skill set, and a basic component of any faithful life.  It's as central to what we Jesus folk do in our lives together as meditation is to a Buddhist.

It's how I start my day, too, at least the days where I feel more centered and grace-filled.

I start pretty much every church meeting with prayer, because when you're deciding about your future, it's a good thing to remind yourself exactly why you're there in the first place.  But in those meetings, I'm aware that the purpose of the meeting, generally speaking, is not to listen to me praying. That doesn't make the prayer less necessary.  It becomes a marking: what we're doing is part of a sacred commitment.  And as Jesus so pointedly put it, we don't need to ramble on endlessly.  Keep it focused.  It's the vocal equivalent of ringing a bell, a bright tone that hangs in the air, marking a transition.

When I'm praying publicly and outside of the bounds of a service or church meeting, though, there are other things to think about.  I am usually aware of who is around me.  I'm aware of what will work, and what will be meaningful.

And that means, when I pray in mixed company, meaning a room that might include infidels, unbelievers, and other family and friends, I'm aware of how my prayer might sound in their ears.  Typically, in such circumstances, I'll pray the sort of prayer that, were Thomas Jefferson and George Washington sitting around the dinner table, they'd be able to say Amen.  On a good day, I might even be able to get a nod or a grunt out of Richard Dawkins.  OK, it would have to be a very good day.  But it's within the realm of possibility.

Meaning, I reach into my Enlightenment Deist toolbox, which is a subset of what I believe, and pray from that.

There are plenty of Christians who have a problem with that, or who struggle to figure out how that gets done authentically.

It's part of what's at play in one of the cases currently before the Supreme Court, as a township in which  prayers regularly begin public meetings has struggled with a legal challenge to that practice. I tend to think that in mixed company…as our nation is…it's better to go with a time for silent contemplation.  Seek the truth you know, and the common good, and meditate on it.

The township seems to have done everything reasonable to accommodate all belief systems, opening itself to Muslims and Buddhists and Wiccans.  If a humanist wanted to lead off with a secular reflection, they'd be welcome to do so.  I find it hard to see that as exclusionary or establishmentarian, by any rational definition of those terms.

But I find myself reflecting less on the legal merits, and more on how this impacts how Christians publicly speak.  if you find yourself in a place of public prayer, as I have on occasion, you can do it right, and you can do it wrong.  Here, I'm not thinking about the law, or about the Constitution.  Love this country as I do, it does not have my primary allegiance.  I'm thinking about the Gospel.  There are ways we can screw up the Great Commandment, and make the Gospel look brittle and unwelcoming, and we can do it publicly.

I know this more deeply than most pastors, because through a peculiar twist of the Lord's providence, my family is Jewish. My wife is. My kids are. I've been in places where prayers that closed them out have been offered, and I know…because they are my flesh and blood…what that feels like.

A few years back at a scouting gathering, an earnest youth pastor from a large nearby Jesus Warehouse offered up a sustained prayer to the gathered scouts in the name of Jesus, invoking the sacrifice of the Cross and the Blood of the Lamb.  I think, for those in the gathering who were already part of his community, the prayer probably sounded fine.  "It's just how we talk," they would say.

But it jarred not just my wife, but others in the gathering, because it did not establish a sacred space that the whole group could enter together.

A prayer that is ferociously and defiantly cast at a group from the collective in-group language of Christianity does not draw more people to the message of Jesus. It might feel good, to be up there, praying in the Blessed Name of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ so that all Might Hear His Glorious Name, but what you're really doing when you do that is neither group prayer or evangelism.

Because they already know you're Christian. They do. What they don't know is why that's a good thing.

I know, I know, don't be ashamed about what you believe.  But honestly? It's equally important not to be foolish about it.  If the Paul had marched up Mars Hill in Athens and tried to hammer folks with the Unvarnished and Uncompromising Gospel Truth, he'd have failed.  Put him in Greece, and he knew what he had to do.  Paul knew how to speak to those who were different.  That didn't make him weak.  It made him an Apostle.

Christianity first spread because it was willing to articulate its transcendent truth cross-culturally, to express itself in terms that had nothing to do with groupspeak, and instead to find ways to be self-evidently good.

But we have to pray in the name of Jesus, folks will respond. If we don't, then we're not following Him!  That's just namby-pamby wishy-washy liberal relativism! To which I would ask, simply: When Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, in the one great prayer of our faith, did he tell us to do so in his name? Or did he invoke our Maker, and then call us to humility and mutual forbearance?

When we find ourselves in a position to make public statements…particularly public sacred statements...that rise from our faith, there's no good reason for us not to find and use common language. Yes, there are other things you believe. But who will care to learn about them if your language is a closed door?

The Usual Cruelty

In this morning's reading through the newspaper, I found myself caught up in a most peculiar column by George Will.  I enjoy him, as I also enjoy Michael Gerson and Kathleen Parker.  Articulate, intellectually capable conservatives are generally quite entertaining to read.

This column, though, snared my attention more than most.  Perhaps it was the viscerality of Will's beginning, in which he recounted a "lenient" penalty for a horse thief in the 1790s, which involved the removal of ears and face-branding.  What was most striking was Will's analysis of a recent Supreme Court decision, in which the SCOTUS ruled that mandatory life sentences for juveniles represented "cruel and unusual" punishment.  The moderate/liberal wing of the court argued that forbidding judges to consider details of the crime coupled with the youth of the offenders meant that justice could not be served.  The inflexible sentencing guidelines had to go.

The four conservative justices disagreed, of course, but it was their core rationale...described dispassionately by Will...that caught my eye.  For the punishment meted out by a law to be unconstitutional, Alito/Roberts/Scalia/Thomas dissented, it must be cruel and unusual.  Meaning, it must a) be cruel and b) also be unusual.  If it is cruel, but is regularly and systematically practiced and legislated, then, argued the dissenters, it cannot be considered unconstitutional.

For justice to be justice, it must be "usual," meaning it must be fairly and evenly administered.  It's not an equation, but if I run a red light, and you run a red light, our tickets should be the same.  Extenuating and relevant circumstances always apply, of course.   If I run it because I'm thumb typing out a tweet while shaving, and you run it because your wife is 10 centimeters dilated and feeling the urge to push, then that factors in, or justice is not served.  But if I get a pass because I'm the son of the sheriff, and you pay a $200 fine because you're not, then justice is not served.   It has to be "usual."

But for justice to be justice, it can also never be cruel.   Hanging or mutilating a horse thief might be the law of the land, but the law and justice are not always the same thing.  Cruelty and brutality in punishment have never served the cause of justice.  They're great for instilling fear in a populace.  But justice?  Not so much.

In this jurisprudential parsing, to be honest, I heard echoes of my own children.  

"Don't kick and punch your brother," I might say. Thirty seconds pass, and then BAM!  "DAAAAAD HE PUNCHED MEEEEE!"  To which I'd say, "Did you punch your brother," and he'd say "Sure, but you said don't kick and punch him.  I only punched him."

Or, worse yet, the "well, all the other kids are doing it" line.  That would make it "usual," eh?

Sigh.    

Gaming, Violence, and the Supreme Court

I am, without question, a gamer.  Just about every evening, I kick back with my PS3 and play.  This has completely taken the place of watching television.  I'm not particularly into sports, and while I can enjoy a good football game or a rousing match of futbol, it's not something I make time for.  I have no patience for reality TV, and most scripted drama is too formulaic to hold my attention.  There are some great shows out there, stuff that's well written and worth watching, but I tend to approach those things as I would a movie...meaning I stream them, and watch them with my wife and/or kids.  If I'm left to my own devices, I just don't watch.

I prefer to game. Gaming is more interactive, more engaging, and if you get the right game, it's just as well acted and scripted.  For gamers, things get interesting tomorrow, because the Supreme Court is taking up a California law that bans the sale of violent video games to minors.  Specifically, they ban sales to minors of any game that involves, and here I quote:  "...killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being."

As a parent and a pastor, I understand the impetus behind this law.  Gaming is...well...it's not what it was when I started gaming as a kid.  I'm a regular player of Battlefield Bad Company Two, for instance.  I checked my stats recently, and found that I'd sent about 1,600 other players to meet their virtual maker.  It's a pretty intense game.

But I don't let my kids play it.  Not because it's violent, mind you.  They are, after all, boys.  But they understand the difference between simulated combat and real combat.  It's not that great a moral leap.  As my big guy puts it, "I'd never want to go to war.  There's no respawn, and you have to watch your friends really get hurt and die."  Instead, I limit their access because the vocabulary of the game is...well...appropriate to a war zone.  And I don't really want that sort of language in my house.

There are other games, like Grand Theft Auto or the brutally ultraviolent and hypersexualized Bayonetta, that I simply will not let in my house.  They may be well put together, but they go beyond just paintball-esque war games into a darker place.  Some inputs are to be avoided.  I won't play those games.  They're not good for ya.  Kids should not play those games...but they're already rated M, and not sold to minors.  I'm pretty intentional about placing boundaries around what my boys are allowed to play.  And watch.  It's called being a parent. 

In terms of blocking access to games that involve "..killing..an image of a human being.."  I think California has overreached.  The metric they're laying out doesn't just apply to some of the more extreme games out there.  It goes far beyond that.  Simulated combat is a central component of gaming.  Pretty much every Teen-rated Star Wars game, which are remarkably popular with boys, would need to be restricted.  As would many button-mashing fight games.  As would Outlaw for the Atari 2600, which is presented in all its brutal gun-blazing glory above.  It is killing, after all. 

This functionally removes California from the gaming marketplace.

I can't see how that definition provides a meaningful metric for what is and is not an acceptable game for kids.  If you're playing a game like Lego Batman, or Lego Indiana Jones, do you "kill" an image of a human being?  It's a Lego Minifigure, sure, but it looks like a human being.  What about games like, say, Dummy Never Fails, a physics game in which you hurl mannequins into objects?  That's definitely human-looking.

I'm not sure how California is going to regulate sales.  The gaming industry is rapidly moving from distributing games through physical media to distributing games via download.  Is California going to block access to gaming downloads over XBox Live or the PlayStation Network?  Or to downloads of games over iTunes?  My boys often get gift cards that allow them to access those games...if they did so directly in California, would that constitute a violation of this law?

Another often ignored but growing area of the gaming industry is free online flash gaming.  Through sites like miniclip or Candystand, you can play an amazing array of games that are paid for by ad placement.  Many of those games are superior to the console games of 10 years ago, and many contain simulated combat.  Unless California is prepared to become China, and to block access to large swaths of the internet, I just can't see how this law will be meaningful.

This seems, quite frankly, like one of those "what about the children" laws.  They're impossible to meaningfully enforce, and only serve to make Californian legislators feel better about themselves.  It's not just that it seems to fail the First Amendment test.  It's that the law seems painfully overwrought and fundamentally unrealistic. 

California needs to just pass Prop 19 and, like, chill, dude.