Jimmy Roughton

Jimmy Roughton speaking before the Union Gospel Mission congregation.

In my “On Love” post I wrote six weeks ago, I beat up a bit on the Union Gospel preachers, and particularly on most mission-goers’ [and my personal] favorite Jimmy Roughton for being cowardly in preaching on love – that is, neighborly love or agape.

Jimmy Roughton was the UGM preacher yesterday and he got into the love-stuff some in a return to his high form. At his best his sermons have a point and an arc. And, always, Roughton displays amazing passion and showmanship. He is a riveting speaker; he is loud, passionate, with grand gestures; his eyes dart as he makes contact with individuals in his audience. He doesn’t make use of a text; he doesn’t need one – he knows his stuff and what he is going to say and speaks without pauses or stumbles. He begins on the pulpit at the lectern, but as his message unspools he makes his way down to the chapel floor. A part of his charm is that Roughton comically – mockingly – does a good job imitating classes of people: False Christians, atheists and rationalizing substance abusers are prime targets.

Often he has been discretely miked so that he can roam, but yesterday he made do with just being loud.

Much of his sermon yesterday compared Moses with Jesus. Moses was a common man, a murderer, an imperfect servant of God. Jesus, of course, is God. Both Moses and Jesus went to a mountain. Moses was met by God at his mountain, where he was given the stone tablets that proclaimed the Ten Commandments, fast instructions from God on how to behave. Jesus met Satan and temptation on his mountain; Jesus’s challenge was a test of character.

Citing the Book of Hebrews, Roughton told us the Old Testament’s hard rules were notably not successful. Only two of the some two million Jews who fled Egypt made it to the Promised Land. The Jews lacked faith in God. The New Testament idea of changing your character is what God truly seeks, according to Roughton. Changing one’s heart is what is sought. If we become pure of heart [change our character], THAT will empower us to be good Christians and from that our behavior will become good. Being good, love will naturally flow between us and our neighbors.

There are interesting similarities between this and Buddhism. Buddha’s earliest teaching is the Dhammapada: Rules to live by, similar somewhat to the Ten Commandments. Later teachings by the Buddha that Mahayana Buddhists [including Western Buddhists, natch] gravitate toward are unmapable pathways toward having a better heart.

Whatever Happened to "Love Thy Neighbor?"

One thing that is mostly missing from Union Gospel sermons, and is intermittent in what a homeless person experiences staying in the mission dorm, is the ideal of brotherly love or ‘love thy neighbor.’ And, indeed, in the sermons, there is far, far more hate talk about earthly society than mention of anything in the vicinity of lovingkindness.

This bugs me. Most of the homeless guys I know have a lot of problems, including addictions, unemployment and a hardscrabble life getting anything done, due to the time-devouring way all the homeless-service providers in our world are organized. Getting kindness and endeavoring, ourselves, to be kind is a rather obvious need.

Christianity didn't used to be stinting with kindness and talk about kindness. Writes Elaine Pagels early on in her book Beyond Belief:

Jesus … said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” What God requires is that human beings love one another and offer help – even, or especially, to the neediest.” [Mark 12:29-31]

Such convictions became the practical basis of a radical new social structure, Rodney Stark suggests [in his book The Rise of Christianity, pg 86-87] that we read the following passage from Matthew’s gospel “as if for the very first time,” in order to feel the power of this new morality as Jesus’ early followers and their pagan neighbors must have felt it:

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me…. Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, my brethren, you did it to me. [Matthew 25:35-49]

These precepts could hardly have been universally practiced, yet Tertullian [in his book The Apology] says that members of what he calls the “peculiar Christian society” practiced them often enough to attract public notice: “What marks us in the eyes of our enemies is our practice of lovingkindness: ‘Only look,’ they say, ‘look how they love one another!’”

Recently, on consecutive nights, Brett Ingalls of Vacaville Bible Church and Jimmy Roughton of Capitol Free Will Baptist Church gave tremendous, inspiring sermons that had a lot to say about goodness, the near cousin of "love thy neighbor." Hooray, them.

Brett Ingalls used the whole of his time to talk on the topic of "forgiveness." He had a lot to say that was fascinating and he anchored what he said to Scripture. Christians should endeavor not to be angry with each other, but when one is aggrieved, he should discuss what is wrong in a kindly way with the other who has hurt or harmed him. A Christian who transgresses against another should prepare himself to apologize, humbly and genuinely. And, how ever much someone has hurt or harmed us, we must forgive, fully.

There was a second part to this -- a "vertical" aspect -- where Christians humbly and genuinely seek forgiveness from God, when appropriate.

I wish I had an audio or transcript of what all Pastor Brett said, or had taken notes. From the gist of what I remember and will retain, I see the elements of outstanding guidelines for best behavior.

Jimmy Roughton, the next night, was in top form, speaking passionately and pacing back and forth in front of the altar like a caged jungle cat. His sermon was on the idea that Christians needed to be wonderful examples to others both for themselves, to live as manifestations of their dear faith, and so that nonbelievers will see them as beacons of the transforming power of belief in Jesus.

While many of the Union Gospel preachers make becoming a Christian sound like a burdensome, horrible chore, Reverend Roughton spoke of it as something that is in all ways wonderful and joyous and burden lifting. Roughton ended his surmon with one of his varietions on Pascal's Wager, saying that he would rather be wrong with all he believed about God and Jesus, and suffer no penalty, than be a nonbeliever and be wrong -- and, thus, be hellbound. Roughton is the only mission preacher who uses Pascal's Wager (though never identifying his argument as such). By the reaction of the guys in the seats, "the wager" seems motivating to many. It doesn't work on me; I feel I'm stuck believing whatever seems to be true.

While I think Ingalls's and Roughton's sermons were excellent and effective, I await a sermon that is very directly about lovingkindness, addressed to the tough rescue-mission crowd. Such a sermon might talk about how the guys should think about their behavior being too selfish or me-centered.

Today, getting a bed at the mission requires aggressiveness with some pushing and shoving at the sign-up window, outside. Lining up for dinner is competative, with many guys using sneaky means to move up in the serving line. A lot of guys have a need to maximize the space they have at the dining table; they put their arms on the table at either side of their tray.

A lot of the selfish nonesence is understandable. There are benefits that accrue from being selfish in Homeless World Sacramento. For people who don't have much, having a little extra by way of being aggressive is meaningful.

At Loaves & Fishes, there are tussles to get better or earlier services than others: There's a 7am race to get early men's showers and low lunch-ticket numbers. We live in a race to the bottom; because so many are extremely self interested, others of us have to act in self interested ways to get something close to 'our share.'

Homeless World Sacramento is full of mostly-wonderful people [truly, truly], but the tough time-devouring circumstances in which we live makes ungenerous and suspicious people out of us. Teach us to be kind, O Preachers.

On Love

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What is love? Few of us will be tempted to consult a dictionary on the subject. We know that we want those we love to be happy. We feel compassion for their suffering. When love is really effective — that is, really felt, rather than merely imagined — we cannot help sharing in the joy of those we love, and in their anguish as well. The disposition of love entails the loss, at least to some degree, of our utter self-absorption — and this is surely one of the clues as to why this state of mind is so pleasurable. — Sam Harris in The End of Faith

The above is a quote from one of our current-day fiery atheist writers. Impressive sentiment, and all the more so, so far as I am concerned, because in his definition of love, which comes dropped pretty much out of the blue in his book, Harris's instinct is to focus on giving/feeling love, not on the receipt of it. {Note, though, that Harris means to poke a stick at theists when he writes of love being "felt [i.e., directed toward people], rather than merely imagined [i.e., directed toward Jesus/God]."}

Speaking about love is difficult for the preachers who give sermons at the Union Gospel Mission. Certainly, they will tell the constantly-shifting congregants that God loves them or Jesus loves them, but mighty felt love of other people (i.e., our neighbors, whom Jesus tells us includes even our enemies, far away) remains a topic unexplored. This seems odd to me since Paul did something kind of weird and very bold in his epistles, that appear as many of the books in the New Testament: He adapted the then rarely-used Koine Greek word agapē to represent the powerful, encompassing, expansive Christian idea of love extended to all. [The New Testament was originally written in Koine Greek, btw.] By finding and adapting a rare word, Paul raised the stakes, making the claim that this Christian love was something new and significant. [In his Sermon on the Mound, Jesus tells us, "Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you. (Matthew 5:43:44) Other books in the New Testament, written later, adapted Paul's usage of agapē.

In his book Good and Evil, humanist philosopher Richard Taylor writes briefly of the revolutionary quality of this new love-thing that Jesus introduced and Paul eloquently embraced:

It is fairly common to find love treated as a virtue, particularly by moralists who are influenced by religion. It was considered by St. Paul to be the highest virtue, surpassing both faith and hope. [Taylor is referring to a short letter to the Corinthians by Paul, 1 Corinthians 13.] Whatever may have been the fortunes of other Christian teachings, this one at least has persisted. Even depisers of religion are apt to stay their criticism of this teaching, however severely they may wish to deal with the rest.

It was not generally conceived to be a virtue by the ancients, prior to the rise and spread of Christianity. Most ancient moralists did, to be sure, devote considerable attention to friendship, but this was thought of more as a blessing than as a virtue and it was never, I believe, represented as one of the cardinal virtues. They thought of love or friendship as among the great goods of life, belonging to the same category as health, learning, honor, and the like, and their thinking was directed to analyzing its different forms and discovering the means to its attainment. They rarely thought of it as a unique incentive to noble and vituous conduct generally, or as anything one should try to extend to all humankind.

Adapted from Wikipedia:

The Christian usage of the term agapē comes almost directly from the canonical Gospels' account of the teachings of Jesus. When asked what was the greatest commandment, Jesus said unto him, "Thou shalt love (agapao) the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love (agapao) thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." (Matthew 22:37-40)

Though agapē is a powerful Christian thing [just as metta, the practice of universal loving-kindness, is powerful in Buddhism], the UGM preachers seem to have an aversion toward it.

Jimmy Roughton speaking before the Union Gospel Mission congregation.

Jimmy Roughton, whom I've previously praised and called my favorite mission preacher -- because of his showmanship and because his sermons have had a theme and arc that builds over the course of thirty minutes to make a point -- gave a sermon supposedly on Love recently, but then seven minutes in, abandoned the course of what he was saying, and went back to his old stuff to deliver hellfire-and-brimstone promides, use the reasoning of Pascal's wager, and mock atheists. [Very disappointing and sadly ironic. Roughton evokes the idea of love briefly, then winds his way toward mocking others.] In a comment on the Atheists, he said he couldn't understand why, with their view, they bother to write books attacking Christianity. The answer to that is easy: (1) Of course, they make money from their books; (2) they believe what they are writing; and (3) they believe they are doing good in the world by saving people from religion. Roughton should have the integrity to give the devil his due, and the same to atheists. Please understand: I am not an atheist, I'm pro-religion, and I fault the new atheist writers for their flatland thinking. [See Flatland described on the list of Wilber concepts here.]

Another recent preacher at the mission even cited lines in Matthew about separating the sheep from the goats to buttress his argument that we must believe in Jesus to save ourselves from hell, while ignoring the context of what Jesus was saying. Here are the lines the preacher quoted, from Matthew 25:

32: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
33: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left
41: Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels

The preacher strangely ignored the point Jesus was making that determined the separation of the sheep from the goats, which was this, from the intervening lines:

34: Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37: Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38: When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39: Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40: And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

A third preacher in the past week gave a sermon on Faith, using the first few lines of 1 Corinthians 13 to make his argument, but ignored the whole point of the epistle he was quoting, which was this, that came in the last line: "But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love."

Arrrrgh! Love deserves better treatment! It should be possible for one of the Christian preachers at the mission to tell the congregation how terrific loving someone else and embarking on the journey of loving everyone feels*! Paul writes, "Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil; rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth."

I suppose that fire-and-brimstone makes for the most-straightforward sermon to save a mission congregant, and that "love" would seem to be a girly topic for a seemingly hardened, overwhelmingly-male mission audience populated by many tattooed felons, drug- and alcohol-addicts and glass-window breakers. But the audience at the mission is really pretty smart and savvy and wise in ways beyond being streetwise. Give love a chance, you preachers. When we are told in the Book of John that "God is love," that statement doesn't mean that God loves us. The full quote is "He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." Thus, the imperative is to love.

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* Late note: As Richard E. Watts writes in his Mar92 article in the Journal of Individual Psychology, 'Biblical Agape as a Model of Social Interest,' "Agape is the highest form of love and is primarily volitional and self-giving rather than emotional and self-centered." Thus while agape can feel good, the love that comes is "consciously developed" for others, driven wholly by desire for others' welfare.

Happiness is virtue itself

I thank my always-great friend Steve Curless for pointing out a blogpost in Bill Harryman's splendid Integral Options Cafe which discusses a modern view of karma via an article by the excellent David Loy that was in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

I've snagged a snip from the article that greatly appeals to me, that is both central to the article and relates to the sermon by Jimmy Roughton last night at the mission.

As Spinoza expressed it, happiness is not the reward for virtue; happiness is virtue itself. We are punished not for our "sins" but by them. To become a different kind of person is to experience the world in a different way. When your mind changes, the world changes. And when we respond differently to the world, the world responds differently to us. Insofar as we are actually not separate from the world, our ways of acting in it tend to involve feedback systems that incorporate other people. People not only notice what we do; they notice why we do it. I may fool people sometimes, yet over time, as the intentions behind my deeds become obvious, my character becomes revealed. The more I am motivated by greed, ill will, and delusion, the more I must manipulate the world to get what I want, and consequently the more alienated I feel and the more alienated others feel when they see they have been manipulated. This mutual distrust encourages both sides to manipulate more. On the other side, the more my actions are motivated by generosity, lovingkindness, and the wisdom of interdependence, the more I can relax and open up to the world. The more I feel part of the world and genuinely connected with others, the less I will be inclined to use others, and consequently the more inclined they will be to trust and open up to me. In such ways, transforming my own motivations not only transforms my own life; it also affects those around me, since what I am is not separate from what they are.

I love this snip because I think it is certainly true, even as I stumble often in living up to its sentiments.

Jimmy Roughton, I think, would agree to the core of it, but it would have to be cast in conservative Christian terms. He would not go for the idea of our being punished not for our "sins" but by them. And I think he would see things as Christians achieving the aims of the idea by separating from the secular world.

The whole of the article the snip comes from makes the point that a modern-day understanding of karma can view it not as merit and punishments passed on to a future life, but as the benefits and difficulties we give ourself (and others) near-immediately in our current life.

I have more of a pantheist take on things. I think that we are each "the whole of the reflected moon." Each of us is the complete consciousness package, though we are imperfect in differing ways. Karma is immediately felt in what we do to and do for each other.

Neither I nor David Loy sees karma as a means to rebirth. The stumbling block is that there seems to be no mechanism to accommodate it. But unlike Loy, I think that there is a capital-S Self that we all/each are that prevails.

The collision of the finite and the infinite. Or, What Jesus was trying to tell us.

In my year-plus listening to nightly sermons at the conservative Union Gospel Mission, it is not frequent that I have been so impressed with a sermon that there's been something I've taken to heart.

I've been very impressed with the performances of various preachers, including, especially, Jimmy Roughton and Tom Mooney. Both of these fellows are very organized with what they come to tell the congregation. They have something to say; they can talk without mumbling and fumbling and ever losing their place. There's an arc to what they say, with their case building and leading to a cascade of important points. Beyond that, Roughton and Mooney are mightily charismatic (and I mean that, fully, in a good way). Each is bursting with talent, bigger than life, and convinces us of his true-hearted belief in his spiel.

Pastor Brett Ingells of Vacaville Bible Church, more than anyone, does impress me with messages he delivers that are stirring and have a clarion ring of truth about them. His wonderfully prepared and delivered messages invariably pierce my heart. Other preachers, too, from time to time "get their game on," with sermon messages that are fresh and profound.

Still, I haven't been motivated to consider Christianity as saying anything to me to cause me to embrace it, on the whole. Pastor Brett has said some wonderful thinks about being profoundly open hearted and forgiving and loving toward those who are still "of the world." [Almost all the other UGM preachers are quick to use worldly folk as subjects of ridicule and disparagement.]

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Recently I read this scruffy little book I found at the public library, called The Gospel According to Us: On the Relationship between Jesus and Christianity by Duncan Holcomb. In just about every way, the book looks foolish and amateurish. The title is poorly chosen, the cover is silly and the foreword and first section didn't impress me. Then, the second section got me interested. And from the third section on, I was smitten.

What the book did for me, someone who was raised outside religion, is it takes a step back and shows me the whole of what Jesus and his disciples were like and what Jesus, if you look at everything he said, was trying to do. It was a means for me to see the forest for the trees; to understand what the picture was when the pixels where assembled.

An important first element in the understanding the book gave me was to see Jesus's general connections with everybody. Including, to my surprise, the much-derided [by the mission preachers] Pharisees. Quoting Holcomb in his book:

Strange to say, Jesus seems to fit in with the Pharisees better than any other group. ... Like the Pharisees, Jesus believes in a loving Father who will bring his children resurrection and eternal life. Like them, he scorns animal sacrifice. Like them, he preaches an ethical code that transcends all other loyalties, even loyalty to country. Like them, he believes that the children of Abraham are sent as a blessing for all peoples of the earth.

Of course, Jesus and the Pharisees differ with respect to the poor. Quoting Holcolm:

The "poor" constitute a broad segment of society that includes shepherds and prostitutes, beggars and day laborers, fishermen and itinerant craftsmen and a great variety of the immigrant, homeless, harried, diseased, and disabled. These are people who live precariously, who eat what they earn each day, who in war or famine are the first to die. they're accustomed to insult and injury, plagued by frustration, anxiety and disease, disdained by civil authority, deprived even of the hope or consolation of religious faith. They are the ones the Pharisees call "the rabble, who know nothing of the law," and whom Jesus calls "the poor in spirit." They simply don't have the time nor money nor disposition to observe properly the intricate and resource-consuming practices of orthodox Judaism (Fasting is a sacred act, you see; starving is a profane one.) Most of them can't even read the holy books, the great code of the Jewish faith. The verdict is unhappy but, in the Pharisees' judgment, inevitable: "They are the damned."

But why does Jesus preach mostly to the poor? And what is his message? It begins with a values system that is markedly different (1) from the Pharisees, (2) that in modern-day America, and (3) that of the UGM preachers. Jesus has a complete disinterest in money.

Quoting Holcolm:

[Jesus] pays no mind to the financial dealings of his shifty treasurer (coincidentally, another money-obsessed peasant named Judas). He never gives alms to the poor. He refuses to arbitrate between two men contenting an inheritance. He cares not at all that the fine oil a woman uses to cleanse and anoint him was very expensive. When Jesus does mention money he turns its face value upside down: in his stories money isn't treated even as a dependable measure of material value. This of the parable of the talents, of the dishonest steward, of the laborers who worked all day in a vineyard. The monetary values here are all skewed, and our first reaction is that someone has been treated unfairly. How can a servant with one talent be expected to do as much, or even obtain the same interest rate, as someone with five? ...

Jesus explains his worldview very carefully, says Holcolm. The Pharisees, with their great interest in outward behavior, have things backward. For Jesus, it is what comes out of a man that is his fruit, that either defiles him or is the merit of his being.

What Jesus was trying to tell us.

Jesus was trying to tell us, explains Holcolm, that we avoid being condemned by not condemning others. "In an astounding conceptual coup, he applies the fundamental principle of law – reciprocity – to the law itself. In this way he attempts to break the vicious circle of sin and condemnation and guilt, once and for all."

And yet, to do his 'work,' Jesus most certainly does condemn the condemners, but from a meta-position of rising above the fray and rising above his human self. Kierkegaard, following in Jesus's path, as an imitation of Christ, would, eventually, go from being judiciously non-condemning to being condemning of condemners. [Note that Jesus often sees himself outside himself. Being ego-less, he, on occasion, speaks in the third-person, in "witness mode." It is from here, the meta-position, that he condemns.]

Finite and Infinite

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern." ~William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Quoting Holcolm:

Sense tends to suggest that this tangible, visible, tastable, quasi-controllable world is all that really is, or at least all that really matters. There can be no sensory window on the infinite, since "what is flesh is flesh, and what is Spirit is Spirit." (Of God Jesus baldly tells his listeners "His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen.") We're unable to understand or assert our control over an infinite realm, so it's not surprising that we might prefer our own, and simply ignore the "radical" questions, those of spirit and truth. But Jesus wants at least to call to his listeners' attention their act of willful blindness. ...

Our spirits yearn to be liberated; our egos suppress the craving. Jesus is condemned by the religious classes for wanting to break out of the dull round of reason, to offer something more than just himself and the apprehensible world, to point beyond himself and it, to teach an infinite message instead of a finite one.

Re charity

Jesus never once mentions the material value of the work done for people by charity, the common justification for such efforts offered by Christians and agnostics alike. His unique emphasis is always on the benefit to the giver. We often do lip service to this sentiment, but Jesus actually appears to believe that it's a greater blessing "to give than to receive." So what is the blessing provided by giving to others? How does it enrich us? It's hard to say. There are no miracles where Jesus turns lead into gold. In fact, he never construes physical wealth as a sign of blessing.

What shall I do?

Near the book's end, Holcomb tells the story in Luke 10 when a lawyer asks what he must do to gain eternal life. Jesus is amazingly clever, here, Holcomb avers: beyond what Luke realizes! Jesus turns things around and asks the lawyer, "How do you read it?" The lawyer answers rightly and is praised: "Love God with all your heart and soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself." Then, the lawyer asks "And who is my neighbor?"

In response, Jesus tells a story where a Jew is beaten and bloodied and is then aided by a Samaritan. The parable, then, casts the Jewish lawyer as the Samaritan! It is the Jew, in the story who receives the aid. You should love your enemy so thoroughly that you identify with him as yourself!

The New Covenant, "Love God with all your heart and soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself" is, then, a single statement with only one part: You identify with Everyone, and make no distinction between yourself and others. Holcomb calls this New Covenant the "Love Commandment."

Writes Holcomb,

How should I act? How should I threat those around me? Well, how would I like to be treated? Look within yourself, Jesus suggests, and nowhere else. The Love Commandment thrusts us into a moral universe in which we have to make the determinations of what to do, how to act. No one else, not even God, will do that for us. (Jesus often refuses to do so for the disciples: "Why don't you judge for yourselves what is right?") There are no prescriptions provided to us by the Love Commandment, because it's not a traditional standard of law. If fact, it's not really "law" at all, but a way, a sign, a method of relation. Jesus points out what should have been obvious to us from the beginning -- that a moral code can make sense only within the context of our relation to one another. He tells people to act in accordance with the central human dynamic composed of Self and Other, I and Thou. Treat others based on how you want to be treated. Love others as much as you love yourself.

Free Will and Grace

John Newton

[The Union Gospel Mission is where I have been attending a church service, eating my evening meal, showering and sleeping most days during my first month of homelessness.]

The daily services at Union Gospel Mission are presented by thirty area churches, most of which are Baptist, that each come once a month. Services usually last an hour each evening, from 7:30 to 8:30, with singing dominent in the first half hour and a preacher's sermon beginning at 8:00pm.

The sermons vary in their core messages, often being at direct odds with sermons of prior days. This is understandable, of course, since each church has its own slant on things, but it is troubling the disparity one hears of what's required to get into heaven.

One pastor, Jimmy Roughton of Capitol Free Will Baptist Church, echoed the sentiment of Blaise Pascual in his April sermon: "Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists." To me, this rationale for belief is terribly fragile and is clearly, wholly self-interested. For me, and for most people -- I would wager -- you believe what you must believe and there is no wiggle room for believing what you perhaps ought to.

In his sermon given at the rescue mission in May, Roughton didn't say "I don't know that there is a God any more than any of you," as he had, but he did emphasize the benefits of believing (i.e., gaining entry into heaven and the horrors of the alternative, hell.) His is a rousing, clear message of getting ready for the eternal future.

Other preachers insist that faith is not enough. At at least three services I've heard the sentiment that "even Satan believes in God and Jesus," thus mere belief is greatly inadequate. For these more-conservative churches, being humble before God and following his dictates is necessary to warrant the eternal reward of a body of light and to be in God's presence to praise his glory forevermore. Basically, to live for God you must surrender your free will and fully follow God's will as you understand it from your reading of the Bible.

Other preachers made a simple appeal: Believe in Jesus and heaven is yours. Or, believe in Jesus and that he is the risen son of God and you will live for eternity in heaven. Here, becoming a good Christian is made rather easy. There is ample evidence that Jesus existed and it is not difficult at all to be convinced that Jesus was a remarkable person and that, at the very least, the New Testiment is mostly factual.

Only a couple of preachers I've heard have emphasized compassion and love. Particularly impressive was James A. Robinson, pastor of Greater Hills Zion Missionary in Sacramento. Greater Hills Zion Missionary is possibly the only black church on the roster of those that preach to the UGM congregation. Since the homeless men at the rescue mission are in majority black, it is disappointing that there aren't more black churches involved with Union Gospel Mission. Another pastor that emphasized compassion in a recent sermon was from Wilton Bible Church which associates itself with Bob Jones University, which has gained some notoriety for racism in the past.

Amazing Grace

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

That sav’d a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see.

There are a half dozen hymns that are favorites of the constantly-shifting Union Gospel Mission congregation. One is "Amazing Grace." More so than any, it is one visiting churches love use to lead us in song. The UGM congregation sings the words loud and with gusto and demand a final chorus (or two) where the words are the repeated phrase "Praise God, praise God, praise God, praise God ..."

"Amazing Grace" is an amazing song with a beautiful uplifting tune and interesting, profound lyrics. It's no wonder it is near-universally loved by Christians and admired by non-Christians. But there are some instances when some of the older white preachers lead us in singing it when I feel uncomfortable. The end of the first line is "that sav'd a wretch like me!" and I come to feel, from some of the sermons, that the homeless congregation is pointedly being designated as the wretches the hymn is naming.

As is well known these days, due to a Bill Moyers documentary and, more recently, an art-house film called Amazing Grace, the lyrics were inspired by hymn-writer John Newton's mystical, transforming experience while captain of a slave ship that travelled between West Africa and America. In the song while being written, it is the mighty John Newton, and not his cargo, that felt the power of grace -- and was in greatest need of grace -- and was the wretch that experienced conversion.

Of course, the hymn, now, is meant for everyone and it is wonderful that Union Gospel Mission has embraced it. But I do wish I felt that those leading us in song felt humbled and themselves as wretched as we who are being led in singing.

The opening words of the song are interesting; I do wonder what Christians make of them: "Amazing grace; how sweet the sound ..." Why sound, and not feeling or experience?

As many readers of this blog know, bells and gongs are commonplace in Buddhism because they are known to trigger satori. It would seem from Newton's careful, clever lyrics that his experience, too, was triggered by a sound -- likely that of the ship's bell or foghorn.

I believe that grace, cosmic consciousness or enlightment/satori are all the same experience, colored by the tradition one practices. I am sure most Christians would reject this, feeling that God-given grace is unique and far more mighty. I think that that is wrong, that religions have much more in common that we suppose.

It is also of interest that the lyrics in the hymnal that Union Gospel Mission uses are not altogether the ones that Newton wrote. You can see Newton's lyrics in the righthand sidebar at Wikipedia. The Mission hymnal uses the first three of Newton's six verses followed by the "extra verse" written by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

The Buddhist at the Baptist Rescue Mission

	The Primordial Buddha statue on the grounds of the Sacramento Convention Center. That yellow thing in the background is a statue titled Walking the Dogs. Photo © Tom Armstrong

The person referenced in the title of this blogpost is me.

In Ryan Garou's book On Homelessness in America [for sale in softcover here; downloadable in doc format here], Ryan writes [Emphases mine] ...

In America, Christianity is the dominant belief system and therefore the one to expect when showing up at a mission's doors - there may be Buddhist, Muslim, etc. shelters but I've never personally heard of any. ... This should raise at least one obvious question - if a Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, etc., or even a Christian of a flavor at odds with that of the shelter provider is in need of shelter and has no other options, what happens? How is it handled? And what about the Satanists, Wiccans, agnostics and outright atheists? It entirely depends on the mission's policy. If they rigidly require an hour's devotion to Christianity, a homeless person of a different faith either has to grin and fake it or turn away.

Since I've been at the Union Gospel Mission in Sacramento over six months now, I figure it’s about time I address the elephant in the room: How do I handle being Buddhist in the midst of this Christian conclave?

As I wrote in my third post to this blog, when I returned to Sacramento late last April, I was desperate for a place to stay and ended up at the mission. While I have been out on the street many days, I’ve yet to try to stay at any other shelter, though the Salvation Army shelter, and, now, the Winter Shelter are likely to be a better fit for my requirements.

Why do I continue to stay at UGM? For starters, the Union Gospel Mission has a lot of appeal. Foremost are many of the guys who are so-called guests, like me [that is, the sheltered homeless], and other guys, most of whom were recently sheltered at the mission and who had substance-abuse problems, but are now part of The Program, and pretty much run the joint. Among the guests and in The Program are a lot of fully nice guys who are interesting, colorful and friendly. And a few of the guys in The Program are downright magnificent people who have adapted a Christ-like love of their brothers. Others of my homeless brethren have evident [and sometimes not so evident and sometimes downright mysterious] problems, but seem to do a rather splendid job managing their lives under the difficult, frustrating circumstance of being homeless.

Like what Ryan writes in his book, UGM does rigidly require its sheltered men to attend an hour-long gospel service every night. Generally, in the first half-hour there is singing, by the congregation using the chapel hymnals and/or by a choir or musicians from a church. Generally, during the second half hour a pastor will preach to us.

The music half-hour goes by pretty fast for me. Even though I have a terrible voice and a narrow range of notes I can hit, I usually sing along. While most of the hymnal songs are cornpone, written a century ago, with lyrics that talk about blood a lot or joyously dream of the Rapture, by UGM tradition, many of the hymns are augmented with interesting or strange or comical or wonderful little inserts into the lyrics. These inserts generally come from The Program guys, pretty much all of whom sing robustly. This fun sensibility keeps the hymns from growing stale.

The preachers, on the other hand, are mostly pretty awful – but there are some who are quite talented! Many of the awful ones come wholly unprepared and just ramble on, saying pretty much the same nonsense every month. From those preachers you will get one or some or all of the following messages, usually delivered rather simplistically:

• Repent or you will roast in hell [The fact that the Bible tells us doing good works is important (Book of James, chapter 2) and that love is superior to faith (1 Corinthians, chapter 13) is, always, overlooked – as is Jesus’ Sermon on the Mound which I have only heard mentioned in passing!]
• God/Jesus loves you [But never ever “Love thy neighbor,” with mention of the importance Jesus attributes to having us “love the least of mankind.”]
• End Times are near! [Any bad news, from fires in the state or the economic downturn, is hailed as evidence of the End, coming any day now.]
• Well-established science and reputable scientists are repudiated and mocked. [Evolution and earth science and The Big Bang get special condemnation, though one preacher is a notable exception in that he cites The Big Bang as evidence of the existence of God.]

About ten of the preachers each month are very talented and very passionate and come well prepared to convince congregants of the Good News of salvation. Jimmy Roughton and the mission's in-house pastor, Rev Tom Mooney, are two in this group.

Here is something I believe -- though my believing it or not doesn't make any difference. [Believing the True Thing about The Cosmos, God and Everything almost certainly doesn't affect my future ... I don't believe. Though finding the Source is the goal in cosmic hide-and-seek.] What I believe is that consciousness is all One Thing and that we are all in the Game of Life, "a grand game of cosmic checkers," together. Here, a snippet from a Ken Wilber interview known as "A Ticket to Athens" which explains things:

Spirit is not good versus evil, or pleasure versus pain, or light versus dark, or life versus death, or whole versus part, or holistic versus analytic. Spirit is the great Player that gives rise to all those opposites equally -- “I the Lord make the Light to fall on the good and the bad alike; I the Lord do all these things” -- and the mystics the world over agree. Spirit is not the good half of the opposites, but the ground of all the opposites, and our “salvation,” as it were, is not to find the good half of the dualism but to find the Source of both halves of the dualism, for that is what we are in truth. We are both sides in the great Game of Life, because we -- you and I, in the deepest recesses of our very Self -- have created both of these opposites in order to have a grand game of cosmic checkers.