The Whole Enchilada

The Whole Enchilada

I have heard younger folks use the term, “the whole enchilada.” I understand that it means the “whole situation, everything.” I guess this is the same kind of descriptive term my generation used when we said “the whole ball of wax” or “the whole shebang.” When I searched the term I found many references. The earliest appeared to be a comment from the Nixon tapes wherein Herb Kalmbach told John Erlichmann about the “whole enchilada,” meaning the entire thing he was talking about.

This got me thinking, what is the “whole enchilada” of our Christian faith? For me, it is the physical and emotional condition of being open and malleable to God’s influence in my life. It is realizing God’s presence in my life through the Holy Spirit.

I fear that what has caused the diminishment of our faith in the Western world today is because we are just too comfortable, too provided for, too busy, too willing to let others do it, too self-centered to get up from our mat (remember the paraplegic outside the Temple in Acts 3; a beggar who was, perhaps, too comfortable to get up and walk until Peter healed him in the name of Jesus).

In Western culture we have replaced God with our economy, health care, social security and life insurance. Hey, with all this, who needs God?

Well, as for me, I do. And, perhaps, you do, too. Despite living in a Great Society (at the expense of just about everyone else in the world) I need God’s enchilada – the whole enchilada – and not some appetizer bits. I need the whole thing.

I need God to be a better husband, father, priest, and friend. I need constant healing, restoration, and forgiveness. I need God to be the anchor in my life; to hold me fast because I know life itself is about turbulence, loss, and grief as well as joy, happiness, and fulfillment. I need to God fully become the person God created me to be.

So how does that happen? My God-needs get fulfilled when I serve others, worship in community, and study God’s word and what others have said about God. It happens when I pray for others and myself, when I give of my bounty to the “widows and orphans” of today. It happens when I engage in the “warp and woof” of my friendships and relationships. It happens when I am quiet in retreat. It happens when I am no longer afraid of the Holy Spirit’s action in my life and those around me. And it happens when I hear Jesus knock on my door and I willingly open it, step out, and follow. It happens when I submit.

As followers of Jesus, we are the people of resurrection. Henri Nouwen reminds us that "the resurrection does not solve our problems about dying and death. It is not the happy ending to our life’s struggle, nor is it the big surprise that God has kept in store for us. No, the resurrection is the expression of God’s faithfulness…. The resurrection is God’s way of revealing to us that nothing that belongs to God will ever go to waste. What belongs to God will never get lost."

Alleluia! Christ is risen and we with him -- now! Get moving!

What's Going On with Dying?

Sometimes the results of research are strange. 

Take this is one example: clergy at the bedside of dying patients resulted in less use of hospice care and greater use of aggressive and costly end-of-life medical procedures which resulted in a lowering their quality of life during their last days.

In a paper recently published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Dr Tracy Balboni and others reported that patients reporting high spiritual support from religious communities were less likely to receive hospice care, more likely to receive aggressive end of life measures, and more likely to die in an ICU in several hundred surveys in seven oncology centers in Boston, Dallas and New Haven compared to patients who were not highly supported from their religious communities! 

However, those patients who were not highly supported by their religious communities and, instead, tended to use chaplains and medical team personnel, had a higher quality of life in their final days.

What could possibly be going on here? 

After all, this would appear to me to be contrary to how we as clergy aid the dying (but then, I did a year's residency as a hospital chaplain as part of my preparation for ordination).

This research team surmised that the more dying patients received support from religious congregations, the more likely they were to fight death through experimental, highly toxic regimens of chemotherapy or surgeries with little chance of success. Apparently, these patients believed that God, acting through doctors, hospitals, and drugs, would miraculously save them.

Here’s the scary part – The data suggest “a lack of understanding on the part of religious communities about the medical realities that these patients are facing and that they focus instead on praying for miracles and perseverance through aggressive therapies.”

However, when patients received their spiritual support from hospital chaplains, they received forthright and realistic information bridging the facts of their medical situation with their end-of-life considerations and religious beliefs. But isn't that what all clergy should be doing? As I recall in my training, a chaplain is to elicit a patient’s values and goals, and, at the same time, weigh the potential benefits and risks of medical therapies. Trained hospital chaplains are to have one foot in each area – spiritual and medical. The goal, of course, is to help the patient have what we used to call a "good death."

So why aren’t clergy outside the hospital setting doing this? 

Balboni offered an explanation: “[a] fixation on the possibility of a miracle by both patients and their religious communities makes it difficult to change the focus of care;" that is, being able to shift away and deal with symptoms like pain, and to make end of life as comfortable as possible, and this means getting away from focusing solely on getting cured. She has actually heard from patients that stopping various therapies would be going against God's will. "One patient was concerned that stopping chemotherapy,” she related, “would be equivalent to committing suicide, which was against that person's religious beliefs."

Of course, it is not wrong for a terminally ill patient with advanced stage cancer to try experimental drugs, particularly if they are very young. But if it's at the expense the spiritual preparation people need at the end of life it may well be wrong; like keeping the focus away from the reality of the patient's true medical condition.

In their paper, Balboni and co-authors rhetorically ask why a belief in the potential for a miracle might result in more aggressive use of medical care? One possibility is that many religious people consider medicine to be a means of God's divine intervention. According to a survey in the Southeast, 80% of respondents endorsed such a belief -- that God acts through physicians to cure illness. 

But here's where this can go askew. Religious people may then view the withholding of heroic efforts as taking these technologies out of God's hand. Another view may be the tendency of some religious communities to elevate the role of suffering as "spiritual" or redeeming in itself.

So how is the problem fixed? As a starter, it is a strong endorsement for the continuing training of hospital chaplains through a method such as Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE). This specialized training helps clergy keep a foot in both worlds -- medical and spiritual. Along with this there is the need for medical practitioners to reach out more to religious communities and create a better understanding of end-of-life care, hospice, and what medicine can realistically offer. 

The point is this: spiritually-minded patients need to be convinced that choosing to withhold aggressive end-of-life measures does not constitute taking matters out of God’s hand.

And may we all strive in our own spiritual lives to have "a good death. " A death today which hospice-trained nurses and chaplains care can provide; that is, care designed to improve the quality of a patient's last days by providing comfort and ensuring the patient's dignity. It is delivered by a team of specially trained professionals (including chaplains), volunteers and family members. 

Hospice addresses all the symptoms of a disease, with a special emphasis on controlling a patient's pain and discomfort. It also addresses the emotional, social and spiritual impact of the disease on the patient and the patient's family and friends. During the patient's illness, and at the end, hospice offers a variety of bereavement and counseling services to families before and after a patient's death.

Against Religion

For a number of years I have subscribed to the Christian Century, a progressive monthly magazine on things Christian. Often, one of their articles grabs me as did Douglas John Hall’s article this month: “Against Religion: The Case for Faith.” Hall taught at McGill University in Montreal for years and is the author of many provocative books including, The Cross in Our Context: Jesus and the Suffering World. What he had to say is worth our consideration; especially those of us who struggle with the obvsious differences between the Christian religion and the faith of Jesus. I have tried to summarize the main points of his essay below -- especially the difference between religion and faith.


Hall begins with a quotation by prominent atheist, Richard Dawkins, written on the day after the attacks on September 11, 2001:

[Heretofore] many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where’s the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers from killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others [who are] labeled only by a difference in inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let’s now stop being so damned respectful. The Guardian, September 12, 2001.

Okay, let's!  Our spiritual traditions: namely Amos' denunciation of religious pomposity or the more scathing letters to the churches of Asia Minor in the Book of Revelation. It was also the young Karl Barth who wrote, “The message of the Bible is that God hates religion.” What “we must say [of religion] is that it is the one great concern of godless men.” Then there is Paul Tillich in his sermon “The Yoke of Religion;”

We call Jesus the Christ not because He brought a new religion, but because He is the end of religion, above religion and irreligion, above Christianity and non-Christianity. We spread his call because it is the call to every person in every period to receive the New Being, that hidden saving power in our existence, which takes from us labor and burden, and gives rest to our souls.

And Dietrich Bonhoeffer contrasted two important biblical stories: The story of the Tower of Babel and the day of Pentecost. The Tower was an attempt to grasp God; to possess God – as it turned out, a tragic and futile effort! On the other hand, Pentecost is no longer humans trying to grasp God, but the divine Spirit descending and transforming human beings from within. Pentecost, the birth of our faith, is all about reconciliation -- even among those who cannot fully understand one another. This is powerful stuff. It is the caution uttered by St Augustine in the 4th century: “Si comprehendis, non est Deus” – “If you think you understand, it’s not God you’re talking about”). What better words of caution for today?  But does not organized religion seek an exclusive certitude of God?

As soon as the Christian faith took upon itself to be a religion – a religious establishment – the very experience that once gave birth to a “community of faith” is lost and corrupted. What is lost is the “experience” of faith, of trust not in an individual or institution, but in, as Hall describes, a “transcendent Presence that defies containment, definition, or even comprehension. A religion that wants to commend itself to everyone and to dominate (to be Christendom) cannot afford to be self-critical. It must be promotional, upbeat, positive (my emphasis).

This, Hall reminds us, is what happens when religion seeks “imperial status.” And when imperial status is being sought, out goes critique and doubt – "our way or the highway!" I find great comfort in Hall’s critique of religion (versus faith) especially in the light of most religions (or even denominations within Christendom) stating that they alone have the truth.

This is a time in human history in which we all need to live with the religious diversity that surrounds us in an increasingly smaller planet with diminishing resources. Religion is about certitude and finality and has little interest in other claims of truth. Instead, it develops a "spirituality" that is closed and zealously guarded and, as Hall, cautions, breeds seeds of its own destruction:

With its clamoring for ultimacy, its frenetic triumphalism, its incapacity for existential doubt and the entertainment of alternatives, such religion inevitably courts violent opposition. The newly minted atheism of today understands this an capitalizes on it. It argues with a kind of dogged logic, that the only way humankind can avoid the great catastrophes to which this situation points is by dispensing altogether with “the God delusion.”

To Hall, faith is “awe and trust in the presence of the holy.” Faith will always be a part of religion, but “the thoughtfully faithful will nevertheless be able to distinguish between what comes of faith and what comes of religion. And the greatest distinction of all in this contrast will always lie in the readiness of faith, unlike religion, to confess its radical incompleteness and insufficiency – indeed, its brokenness.”

Hall concludes with a quote Jacques Ellul and what he had to say about faith and what I, too, believe faith is:

Faith… puts to test every element of my life and society… It leads me to ineluctably question my certitudes, all my moralities, beliefs and policies. It forbids me to attach ultimate significance to any expression of human activity. It detaches and delivers me from money and the family, from my job and my knowledge. It’s the surest road to realizing that “the only thing I know is that I don’t know anything.” (Living Faith: Belief and Doubt in a Perilous World, translated by Peter Heinegg).

This is the kind of faith we need today. Not the religious bravado of certitude and exclusivism. Faith, not religion, is the prerequisite for religious dialogue today – and, ultimately, faith is essential for our very survival as human beings living in a diverse, cramped, and unequal world -- not religion.

Why I Choose to Believe

I am often a doubter... but I don't think my doubting has ever caused me not to have faith -- to at least belief in the existence of God.  We probably all would like to have the opportunity St Thomas had to check out the body of the resurrected Jesus by putting our finger in his side.  All Thomas needed was the offer from Jesus to which he responded by saying, "My Lord and my God!"

After all, some of my best friends and relatives are chronic doubters.  We lovingly put up with one another and I still call them friends.  Nevertheless, I got to thinking this week about the subject of belief.  What is it essentially (and minimally) I believe? 

Now I could take refuge in reciting to you the Apostles' or Nicene Creed, but that would be too easy; recitation is not belief -- even though we say we believe.  So in a minute or two (or I should say, a few hundred words?) what is it I want to say about my belief?

Well, probably something about God, Jesus, the Bible, telling others, and the Holy Spirit...

God.  Within this absolutely magnificent, wondrous, breath-taking, stunning (and sometimes numbing) cosmos, I sense God's presence.  God is the Creator and I am God's creation; a creation in which I am, literally, "God-imprinted."  And each day, the wonder of all this never ceases to amaze me.

Jesus. St Paul said that in Jesus the "fullness of God was pleased to dwell."  When I think about Jesus I see the mighty Creator of the cosmos in flesh and bones and pleased to be here. I  believe I was created to please God and the best way to do that is to try to be more like the God-image Jesus.  Now it is true that I often fail to be like Jesus.  And when it happens I also know that it is because of my tendency to be self-centered (sinful) which breaks my relationship with others as well as with God. 

But there's hope... my stumbling and failing to be more Jesus-like enables me to appreciate what I believe to be God's nature.  If I choose to get up and try again, God is always with me.  Through my stumbling, I have come to see that God is love, kind, compassionate, forgiving, and hopeful with regard to my future.  My belief enables me to see God's action in the world today all around me.  For example, I see it through the many "Saints of God," known and unknown, who have God's light shining in them and projecting out into the world. They amaze, encourage, and humble me.

The Bible.  I value what others through history have said about God in my faith's Holy Scriptures.  I believe the Bible does contain all things necessary for my salvation.  This "Word of God" consists of accounts which have been handed down to me by those who have directly experienced God.  But God's Word is more than the Bible -- it is also Jesus.

Telling others.  I have seen and been the recipient of the benefits of belief in my own life and the lives of those around me.  This causes me to try to practice being a disciple of Jesus and telling others about him.  Belief helps me to get through times of trouble, loss, and my belief helped me come to value the importance of helping, sharing, forgiving, and being forgiven.  It has given meaning and harmony to my life.

While some may disagree, my belief has helped me grow as a person.  I freely admit I am not perfect, far from it, and I am not a Saint, but, nevertheless, I believe I am, day by day, becoming a better person because of my belief -- and I am deeply thankful. 

Because I was baptized and raised as a Christian, following Jesus is my path.  As an Anglican, I love my tradition's ability to listen, accept, and be open to others.  I love the mystery of the Mass and other sacramental rites such as reconciliation and healing.  They empower me and give me strength and, hopefully, wisdom and understanding.

The Holy Spirit.  One of the most difficult things to talk about is the daily presence of God's Holy Spirit in my life.  Perhaps the book, "The Shack" came closest for me in describing the ephemeral Third Person of God's household.  Through the Spirit, God is always with me -- an ever-present help in times of trouble -- and celebration!  I believe what Jesus said about the Spirit, that when he left his Spirit would come to help me live.

But, all in all, belief really means nothing does it?  Rather it is the action, the acts, that flows from one's belief that really matters -- where, as they say, the "rubber hits the road!"

I can talk about belief all day but if I do not love people I am, as St Paul noted, a "resounding gong -- a clanging cymbal."  I must also add that this love pertains to all humankind -- whether they are a Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim or non-believer.  Each one of us is part of God's creation and imprinted with God's image -- we are really all one as God is one.

Who really is queer?

We worry a lot about sex. A friend of mine from the U.K. reminds me this is because his ancestors sent us the Puritans! He may be right.

But when it specifically comes to sex and GLBT people, we get a little crazy about what they may be doing sexually. Seldom do I hear anyone question about what heterosexual couples may be doing. But if we want to worry about something, shouldn’t be concerned with the relationship that is going on between two people?

I recently heard a pastor talk about a young man who came to him confessing that he was strongly attracted to other men. The young man didn’t know what to do because he felt that God must have made a mistake in creating him. He felt so bad about this that he had considered killing himself. The pastor said he didn’t know what to do either, because what his church had taught him and what he thought Jesus would have done, were two different things. As a person of faith, what would you tell that young man? What if that young man were your son? Is God making mistakes by creating homosexuals?

Well, I for one don’t think so. I am over seventy years of age now and I am tired of seeing and hearing people of faith struggle over issues that I really don’t think matter much anymore. It’s a lot like evolution, it’s passé to me. And so is the issue of homosexuality.

But I would tell that young man, as I have others over the years struggling with their sexuality, that they are not mistakes. We are all children of God and loved by God. If we shall be judged one day it will be not be by our sexual preference but rather by how we have related to God and one another. Period. What we should be concerned about are sexual relations without love or commitment whether they go on between people of the same or opposite sex.

I know what the Bible says and many of the passages that deal with “abominations” (acts which are abhorrent, detestable) not only concern a man lying down with another man, but also a mixture of other acts humans may particularly not like -- eating certain prohibited foods like shellfish, charging interest on loans, wearing clothing of the opposite sex or clothes which mix linen and wool, or women who grab men’s testicles, and those who miss church. All of these acts are biblically prohibited as well. And lest we forget, the bible also permits fathers to kill their “stubborn or rebellious” sons, sell their daughters into slavery, and stone to death any woman while being raped fails to cry out. How are we to read these passages today?

There are also specific instructions as to who must be excluded from community worship: those with crushed testicles (eunuchs), those who have had a recent nocturnal emission, and those who are children born of an “illicit union” (bastards) and, incidentally, all their descendents down to the 10th generation. As well as bankers, stockbrokers, or anyone who charges interest on a loan (so much for capitalism!).

Jesus seemed to disregard many of the old religious rules of his day and criticized those who religiously kept the letter of the law but did not practice love to others. So, I am not convinced that the few sentences that appear in the bible about “abominations” can over-shadow what Jesus brought to the world -- his teaching that we love one another and be merciful and compassionate -- even to “outsiders” like aliens, criminals, and sick people. Jesus told us to love those whom society marginalizes.

I choose to look at the quality of person’s relationship – whether it is loving, committed, exclusive, non-abusive and with a life-long intention. And if those criteria apply to persons in relationship who are of the same sex, so what!

What people of faith should be doing is helping people strengthen their close, intimate relationships along those criteria. If we determine all same gender, intimate relationships are sinful, only because the couple is of the same sex, we are committing a grave error today.

Instead, as people of faith, let us model God’s relational love to the world by being very intentional about our own relationship – that it is loving, committed, exclusive, peaceful, and life-long.

I hope that young man eventually found a clergyperson who was able to share God’s love with him, help him clarify his sexuality, and tell him that the church will help him strengthen his ability to love be it with persons of the same or opposite sex.

If I follow my conscience, I have to believe that this difficult matter before the Church is best viewed in the context of the quality of one's relationship! To do otherwise, appears, well, rather queer.

Torture? Not in my name!

It seems that many people of faith become silent when it comes to the issue of torture. There is even a nation poll which reveals that Evangelical Christians are more in favor of using torture than non-believers. Strange in that Christians follow Jesus who was unjustly tortured and killed by the state. Therefore, wouldn’t Christians have a certain abhorrence (or at least a distaste) regarding the use of torture? But perhaps being a supporter of torture may be more about a person’s politics than their faith.

Nevertheless, I want to say one thing to the folks in Congress, the Pentagon and the CIA – I don’t want you to use torture to carry out our nation’s objectives. No torture. Did you hear that? Never!

I was a cop for over thirty years and I always distinguished smart cops from dumb cops when I was a young rookie by whether or not they would use torture to obtain a confession from a suspect. I liked to think of myself and those whom I worked as smart cops who could get both information and confessions from suspects by treating them with decency and respect and using our brain rather than our brawn. Torture seemed like such a distasteful thing to do to another human being. I found that some police officers, who were little short on intelligence, would often resort to torture – use it as a way to “get the job done.” I always questioned their results along with that of their basic intelligence.

Prof. Darius Rejali, one of the world’s leading experts on torture, has recently authored a comprehensive work called Torture and Democracy. In it, he acquaints the reader with the history of torture from the late 19th century to the present time. Rejali argues that democracies not only tortured, but set the international pace for torture – moving from torture which left “marks” on the subject to a style of torture which left no marks (electric shock, waterboarding, sensory deprivation, etc.).

While dictatorships may have tortured more people and did it more indiscriminately, the United States, Britain, and France pioneered and exported torture which left no external scars or broken bones. Rejali also examined the controversial question of whether or not torture works. Citing the lack of documentation on whether torture is effective, Rejali concludes it is not. Torture does not achieve what some believe it does. It is grossly inefficient in gathering verifiable intelligence or true confessions of wrongdoing.

Lest we forget, on the domestic front, torture is illegal and if the police use it what they obtained could not be used in a court of law. And police who used torture on suspects could find themselves in court facing charges of criminal assault. Does that mean that while it’s illegal to torture our citizens it’s okay to torture citizens of other countries?

But what we must never forget is that torture not only has a devastating, long-term effect on those who are tortured, it also destroys the lives of those who do the torturing. In addition, the use of torture by a democratic society tears away at values on which it was founded – due process of law and the dignity of the human person.

Recently, legal scholar Alan Dershowitz proposed that if we in America are serious about using torture, then we should develop a legal process to do it, remove it from secrecy, and never allow low-level people to administer it. Dershowitz proposes the use of “torture warrants” (similar to court warrants for an arrest or a search or seizure of private property). Yet he also believes that torture should only be used as a last resort – like in the case of a “ticking time bomb.” And each and every time torture is used by the state it needs to be authorized by a court of law and documented.

While I remain an absolutist with regard to torture, Dershowitz has an interesting solution. If we chose to do torture, we should do it openly and with accountability. Then, Dershowitz argues, we perhaps would not appear to be such hypocrites in the eyes of the rest of the world.

While his argument is intriguing, I am still not convinced that under any circumstances our nation should torture. My first reason is that it a terrible assault on a human person and, as a Christian, I cannot condone such treatment to a human being under any circumstance. Secondly, in all the years torture has been used there is no evidence that it works. And, finally, torture has a devastating life-long impact (and this can be documented) on both the tortured and the torturer

I guess the question here is that if we cannot speak out against torture, what does that say about us? What does it say about that which we say we believe about the human person? What does it say about our nation’s word when we are signatories to the Geneva Convention?

If we remain silent and cannot speak out against torture it may mean that the ways of the world have greater influence upon us than what we say we believe about God, Humankind, and the World to Come.