Jesus told a parable about two sons.  Their father asked them to go and work in the field one day.  One son said he would do what his father commanded.  The other son said he didn’t want to.  Later, when it was time to show up in the field, the first son who had agreed to be obedient was nowhere to be seen.  He went off and did his own thing…what he wanted to do.  The second son, however, showed up in the field despite the fact that he had said he didn’t want to, and wouldn’t.

     Jesus asked the crowd who was the best son.

     Pretty obviously, it is the son who followed the father’s wishes rather than his own, and not the one who spoke respectful words, and then went and did his own thing.  Message: God respects action rather than pretty words.

     Of course, it goes without saying that the BEST son would be one that said he would do what his father wanted, and then did it, but it’s pretty clear that we can’t have everything.  And it is especially difficult to have everything desired by a religious patriarchy, but that’s an entry for another time.

     So here we have the story of two communities.  Both claim to serve God.

     This one is dominated by people who want to impose their beliefs on others, and who say they follow Jesus, and yet act against his teachings.   (New York Times story about a Jewish family run out of town by their “Christian” neighbors for asking if it would be too much if they could simply broaden the scope of religious prayer and invocation at school functions so as not to exclude Jews, and if they could possibly talk to some of the kids about ceasing to use the words “Jew-boy” to describe their son.)

     This one is a mega church lead by a conservative evangelical pastor who lost roughly 1/5 of his congregation for saying that America was founded with a secular government, and that the current attempts to co-mingle religion with government hurts both religion and government. (New York Times article, quoted below, because I just can’t pass up these four paragraphs.)

Quote:

The requests came from church members and visitors alike: Would he please announce a rally against gay marriage during services? Would he introduce a politician from the pulpit? Could members set up a table in the lobby promoting their anti-abortion work? Would the church distribute “voters’ guides” that all but endorsed Republican candidates? And with the country at war, please couldn’t the church hang an American flag in the sanctuary?

After refusing each time, Mr. Boyd finally became fed up, he said. Before the last presidential election, he preached six sermons called “The Cross and the Sword” in which he said the church should steer clear of politics, give up moralizing on sexual issues, stop claiming the United States as a “Christian nation” and stop glorifying American military campaigns.

“When the church wins the culture wars, it inevitably loses,” Mr. Boyd preached. “When it conquers the world, it becomes the world. When you put your trust in the sword, you lose the cross.”

Mr. Boyd says he is no liberal. He is opposed to abortion and thinks homosexuality is not God’s ideal. The response from his congregation at Woodland Hills Church here in suburban St. Paul — packed mostly with politically and theologically conservative, middle-class evangelicals — was passionate. Some members walked out of a sermon and never returned. By the time the dust had settled, Woodland Hills, which Mr. Boyd founded in 1992, had lost about 1,000 of its 5,000 members.

But there were also congregants who thanked Mr. Boyd, telling him they were moved to tears to hear him voice concerns they had been too afraid to share.

Anyone want to weigh in on who are the “best sons”?

My view is that if you have to have “magical” explanations for things in order to be considered moral, if you have to have violations of nature to fuel your faith in God (miracles), then you will have to constantly struggle to maintain your moral compass, groping and inching along in a fog of superstition and ignorance.  Any mumbo-jumbo can sway you if you rely on a confusion of magical thinking and emotionalism.

On the other hand, if that is what you have to work with, I have to at least respect those who make an effort to grope in the right direction, and are willing to turn around when they believe they are going the wrong way.