God has a message: Nobody's perfect

My wife, Becky, teaches fourth grade, and she'll tell you her students don't always give the right answers.

She's firm with the children, but she makes room for grace. She forgives some misspelled words because she says it's more important to get the facts right, unless, of course, those misspellings affect accuracy.

For instance, she once quizzed her class to name the group of California-bound settlers who turned to cannibalism after becoming snowbound in the Sierra Nevada in 1846.

While she accepted alternative spellings for the Donner Party, she had to draw the line when one student spelled it the Dinner Party.

Another student offered a more hopeful explanation saying the party was a celebration over the discovery of water in the desert.

But the assignment I found the most interesting as a spiritual columnist was the one in which she asked her class to write about something they did wrong.

From the response she got, you'd have thought she was teaching Sunday school.

Several kids returned their essays matter-of-factly stating they'd never been in trouble.

Becky responded to her angelic darlings by reminding them of the list she kept on the blackboard, her list of kids missing recess for their bad behavior during the week.

As adults, we are more sophisticated in our denials. We employ at least four strategies for denying our guilt in much more subtle ways.

First, we'll often answer questions about our own wrongdoings by diverting the blame to some other person or circumstance using the famous, "My dog ate my homework" excuse. This is the excuse Adam gave God when he explained he ate the forbidden fruit because Eve gave it to him.

Or sometimes we answer with the half truth: "I did it, but I'm not responsible for all of it." We don't mind some guilt as long as we have company.

Still, sometimes, we go back to the fourth grade and play the ignorance card. We say, "I didn't know better." This strategy is much like the kid who'll pull the fire alarm on final exam day to escape the test. We don't know the answer, so we create an escape from our ignorance.

Finally, when we're asked a really tough question -- like "What makes you so angry?" -- we play the comparison game and say, "Yes, I have a bad temper, but not as bad as my husband." It's as if we think God is grading us on a curve.

We think people can't see through our denials, but the energy we expend to deny our guilt often forms an impression as obvious as the angel pattern left by children playing in snow.

"But wait," you ask, "doesn't faith offer grace?"

Well, it does, but grace doesn't come without admitting responsibility.

We should be careful that we don't take false comfort in the statement Jesus made when he stopped the execution of a woman caught in adultery. "He who is without sin may cast the first stone."

That was not his last word.

His final word was saved for the adulteress when he added the dismissive command, "Go and sin no more!"

If the woman had denied her guilt and returned to her lifestyle, you'd be reading a very different ending. Because at the end of the day, denying your wrongdoings will cost you much more than missing recess. It will cost you your relationship with a higher power.

By the way, one of Becky's students turned in a long list of horrid wrongdoing. Fortunately, at the top of the list he'd written the words "NOT REAL."

My wife tells me he's planning on being a fiction writer.

Political manners have a place

I guess this column is more questions than answers.

When you hear someone omit or change their remarks because it might be offensive to other faiths or cultures, do you dismiss that speaker as "just being politically correct?"

I hear that label tossed around alot. I hear it said when someone wishes an audience "Happy Holidays" or when a Christian speaker omits the words "in Jesus' name" from a public prayer.

Inevitably, someone will moan, "He's just being politically correct." The notion contained in the accusation is that the speaker is being "sensitive" out of his need to gain the favor of a particular group.

Before PC, we called that brown-nosing.

But is it really brown-nosing?

My first PC lesson came a few years back as I played with plastic army men on the living floor with my new best friend Bobby McGhee. OK, maybe this was more like 40 years back.

In a hysterical -- but less than historical -- version of a WWII battle, my U.S. army men ambushed Bobby's German soldiers from atop a coffee table. In a move more like Geronimo than Army Rangers, my men leapt upon Bobby's men as they trailed unsuspectingly from under the sofa."Take that you dirty Germans!" I yelled.

Suddenly, Bobby's mom came out of the kitchen with dish towel in hand, voicing an inquiry as to our activity.

"My men just annihilated all the Germans!" I proudly declared. OK, I couldn't say annihilated, but I said something like that, because Mrs. McGhee patiently explained that the United States didn't fight the Germans in WWII.

"We fought Hitler's Nazis," she declared with a proud German accent. "The Germans are good people."

I accepted her polite correction and ordered a new wording in the battle plan: "Slaughter the Nazis!"

Was I just being politically correct? Or was I practicing good manners in consideration of my host?

I say it was manners. Manners involve respect for the people and environment that surrounds you. Political Correctness, in the best intent of the phrase, ought to mean the same thing.

However, it seems that when people don't want to accommodate beliefs that differ from their own, they erupt with sarcasm saying, "Oh, excuse me for not being politically correct."

Recently, I was on a chaplain committee comprised of different Christian denominations. When I mentioned that my sister-in-law was seriously ill, one of the chaplains offered a public prayer for her. The chaplain announced that her prayer wouldn't be "politically correct."

Uh oh, I thought. Was this her preamble for rudeness? Was this her declaration that she would completely ignore the conservative chaplain who might not take kindly to praying with other denominations? Was she dismissing the liberal chaplain who would be troubled at the mention of God as masculine?

Yup. She was.

From my tradition, it was a wonderful prayer. I grew tearful thinking about the possibility of God healing my sister-in-law. It was a lovely prayer, but it would have been more meaningful to me if it had been voiced in the intimate surroundings of my own faith community. (See www.impactcommunity.com).

But I was conflicted. I was a bit exasperated by a colleague who would relegate the well-thought out beliefs of my other chaplains to something as menial as "political correctness." While their beliefs weren't mine, I respect them too much to impose my beliefs on them.

Am I just being politically correct?

I don't think so. Not today and not 40 years ago in the McGee's living room. In my book, it's always been called manners.

Burkes is a former civilian hospital chaplain and an Air National Guard chaplain. Visit www.thechaplain.net.

God isn't a quitter

June 7, 2008
BY NORRIS BURKES
FLORIDA TODAY

Last month, Sen. Barack Obama wrote his pastor, the Rev. Otis Moss III, and announced that he and his wife, Michelle, were quitting Trinity United Church of Christ.

I have an inkling of what Moss and Obama might be feeling. I've been both a parish pastor and a congregant. As a congregant, I've struggled with staying in one place, and as a pastor I heard more than one congregant threaten to quit.

One man promised me he'd quit if I followed through with my plans to replace the chapel organ with an electronic keyboard. Never mind that the organ wasn't really an organ at all. Without pipes, it was an outdated electronic keyboard.

Another congregant, a retired pastor, threatened to quit if I dared to distribute communion juice and wafers simultaneously. He said it was difficult to juggle both trays.

I once threatened to quit a church. When Texas legislators made it legal to carry concealed weapons, I jokingly warned my pastor I'd quit coming if he came packing. The aforementioned parishioners weren't joking. They quit.

The decision to quit a faith community is a question often addressed for people struggling in their faith walk.

I was once asked by a nurse to visit a couple facing the pending loss of their premature twins. When I entered the room, the patient and her husband announced their certainty that God would save their children.

The next day, after both twins died, the nurse called me to tell me that the couple had been getting visits all day from church members bringing books, food and unwanted advice.

The couple would have none of it, and they summarily dismissed each one of the members. So, it came as a surprise to me that the nurse would think I'd be any more welcome than were the church members. Nevertheless, I entered the room.

In the room I found a couple who simply wanted to express to God how they felt. They made several statements about how much they'd given their lives in service to God. Now, they believed, God had failed to come through for them. They sincerely believed they'd been shortchanged by God. Now they swore they'd never go back to church again.

I stayed for 45 minutes and was invited back for additional visits in the following days. At the time of discharge, both parents told me I had been the only one who seemed willing to sit still and listen to their gripes about God. They thanked me for not trying to change their minds or judge them.

Because chaplaincy is such a fluid thing, I can't tell you if they returned to their previous church, but I feel certain they never stopped talking to God and would likely rejoin God's people.

In the end, keeping the conversation going with God is the most important thing, because as long as we talk to God, our reconciliation with the people of God will never be far behind.

My prayer for you is that even when you have a disagreement with the people of God, you will always keep talking to God. I pray that your life will never become like the old joke of the building contractor marooned on a deserted island for five years.

When finally discovered by rescuers, they noted three buildings. They asked the man to tell them why he'd constructed three buildings for only one man.

"The one on the west side is my home," he proudly announced. "The building on the north side is my brand new church."

"What about the crumbling old building on the south side?"

"Humph," he said folding his arms and looking away. "That's the other church. We don't talk about them."

Norris Burkes is a former civilian hospital chaplain and an Air National Guard chaplain. Contact him at norris@thechaplain.net or visit www.thechaplain.net.