“I’d be a Christian if it weren’t for all the
Christians.” --Mahatma Gandhi
“In the name of God”…
Sometimes I wonder what God thinks when folks say they do
something in God’s name, especially when such “God” inspired acts can make God
look…well…pretty bad. A story…
If I had children, Carla Hale is the kind of wonderful
teacher I’d hope for them. At the
Christian school she taught at in Columbus, Ohio, Hale was widely respected and
loved by her fellow teachers, administrators, parents and most important, the
kids, whom she taught physical education.
For 18 years, Hale loyally and lovingly taught until an amazing and
awful week last March.
As Frank Bruni wrote in a recent New York Times piece, “Rather
suddenly, [Hale’s] mother died, and an hour afterward, she and her brother
numbly went through the paces of a standard obituary, listing survivors. Her
brother included his wife. So Carla included her partner, Julie, whom her
mother had known well and loved. Leaving Julie out would have been unthinkable,
though Carla didn’t really think it through at the time. Her grief was still
raw.”
This is where the story becomes unbelievable. The obituary ran. A parent of one of the school’s students read
it and wrote an anonymous letter to church officials who oversaw the school.
She complained they could not let a woman like Carla Hale teach her kid or any
kids. Within days Hale was fired, the
school’s principal stating in a termination letter that Hale’s, “spousal
relationship violates the moral laws of the…Church.”
Two months later Hale is still heartbroken, devastated by
her firing. “Every morning from the time you walked into the building, kids
would be yelling down the hall, ‘Hey, Miss Hale, what are we going to do
today?’ ‘Hey, Miss Hale, I remembered those shoes.’ It felt so
comforting.” But no more because hey,
we’re Christians and we can’t let one of ‘those people’ influence our children,
right?
So Hale is out and why? She was fired in God’s name, I
suppose, because she broke God’s “laws”, because that’s what God called that
school’s “religious” leaders to do, right? I wish I could say I’m shocked by
the mean spiritedness of this “God” based act of intolerance--that it is rare,
an exception, but the truth is, it is not.
As a Christian and clergyperson so often these days I cringe and weep at
the behavior of my fellow believers. In whose name do they act?
A “God” who apparently is very exclusive in love. A
"God" who condemns folks who love the wrong person. A “God” who gets
angry if we worship the wrong “God” or go to the wrong house of worship or do
not fit into a narrow and self-righteous definition of the Almighty.
To be fair Christianity has no monopoly on this “name of
God” stuff. Every other major world
religion seems all too ready to be petty as well, finger pointing, small minded
and small hearted, even violent, in the name of “God”.
So last week the Protestant TV evangelist Pat Robertson
commented on the deadly Oklahoma tornadoes by declaring that if only the folks
in Moore had prayed more, they would have been spared. Two weeks ago in Israel a group of Jewish
woman won the legal right to pray at the Western Wall of the Temple, Judaism’s
holiest of holy sites. They prayed but
did so surrounded by hundreds of angry Orthodox Jews who spit on them, swore at
them and threw chairs at them. The
Boston Marathon bombings? Carried out, apparently in the name of “God”, by
Muslim brothers using the cloak of religion to justify killing and maiming the
innocent.
I can’t make this stuff up.
Now I know it is risky to presume to know the mind and
heart of God but my faith tells me that God must cringe and weep too at all
these things done in God’s name. Makes
me imagine if and when we all get to the pearly gates God won’t much be
interested in how religiously zealous we were, or religiously pure we were, or
even religiously devoted we were. To institutions. To doctrines. To laws. To
human made buildings or traditions.
No perhaps, instead, God will ask each of us just one
question: “When you acted in my name, did you love?” I think Carla Hale will
certainly be able to answer that Divine inquiry pretty easily, with a humble
and heartfelt “Yes”. I think lots of so
called religious believers and leaders will answer with a fumbling and bumbling
“No”.
“In God’s name”:
pretty powerful stuff. So here’s
a suggestion: let’s just try love. Let
this be what we do in the name of God.
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