Open Letter to Bon Air Church

Monday, December 31, 2007

Dr. Travis Collins
Bon Air Baptist Church
2531 Buford Road
Richmond, VA 23235-3419

Dear Dr. Collins,

Recently I received a mailing from your church offering choices of classes which seem unrelated to spiritual development and which seem in competition with other community service businesses that have no such special tax exemption. I felt as if your mailing was more similar to the junk mail I get from a Wal-Mart or a Valpack, and that has prompted me to write this.

At 64 and with a life of reflection, I find comparing my childhood Baptist upbringing with the reality of this mailing and my present experience of the denomination to suggest that the church is moving in its dogma, and arrogance, and human bias further away from any real Biblical precept.

If science and reason are God’s given rules of the universe, and if inspiration, creativity, curiosity, common sense, and intelligence are God’s gift to man, and are the true talents not intended to be kept under a bushel, then how can you defend the inconsistent manner in which your church operates?

Maintaining a male deacon dominated church that in its circularity seeks ministers who do not challenge but merely perpetuate the dogma and ritual and bias of its members, is hardly Christ-like. And to ignore the science and understanding of modern man in areas of race, mental illness and even homosexuality is to be as blinded in the present as similarly ignorant and mistakenly oppressive religions have been in the past. A church that cannot see it reflects the skin color, the sexual orientations, and the spectrum of mental conditions of its community is self evidently not inclusive.

How then is your congregation then not a self-selecting and self-serving social community that falls far short of being the spiritual flock, and caring and loving and accepting beacon it pretends?

It took courage for those before us to fight against convention, to bring equal civil citizenship to non-whites, to accept the equality of women in civil affairs, to even allow marriage across races. But we revere those who were courageous in their time – not those today who merely acquiesce to those hard won struggles. Where does this courage express itself today in your congregation? – I see it not.

And should there be a final judgment will you be able to justify your lack of courage, your insistence on comfortable belief over the struggle for God’s will, and the inconsistency between your choices and the core moral teachings of Jesus to which you supposedly subscribe?

I would expect you to be defensive to such an accusation, however I feel it is not unlike the Christ overturning the tables of the moneychangers at the temple realizing, that they, like you, have lost your way.

Sincerely,



William T. Garnett, Jr.

2521 Trotters Lane - #205-7
Midlothian, VA 23113-1490

The Internal Inconsistency of the Righteous Religious Right

With the increased intrusion of the religious right into civic government, now is the time to ask who these people are. I suggest that they are authoritatively controlled conservatives who are basically hypocrites.

Hypocrisy: a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not; especially: the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion

Is a Christian someone who tries to model their life after Jesus and who asks when making their choices in life, “What choice do I believe Jesus would make”? Should a Christian use their belief in the example of Jesus as a guide to how to live their life?

I ask the readers and posters visiting this blog to respond to the following hypothetical situations and answer as to how they believe Jesus would have them respond.

1) Would you, just after marriage, but before choosing to procreate, choose instead to adopt one of the millions of children in the world who otherwise would not have a chance at a healthy and happy life, with loving supportive Christian parents?

2) You are at a Starbucks and buying a five-dollar café latte, when you see a starving five year old lying on the sidewalk outside the window, who could be saved from starving by just one dollar of the money you spend each day on a latte? Is the fact that this child isn’t on the sidewalk but is out of sight of you and your gated community materialistic life, sufficient for you to not consider all the children who have starved to death that you, by making simple and easy spending choices, could have saved?

3) You support your government and its practice of dropping massive bombs from 30,000 feet in Iraq, where collateral civilian damage is probable and expected. Such that tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children are horribly killed.

4) What if the final choice of executing someone in your state were your personal decision. The prisoner is someone who is caged and is reasonably prevented from ever harming anyone for the rest of their life, and who may find redemption and come to Christ and save his soul should he not be executed

6) Children are born with a blank slate – they learn as they grow and are educated and experience life. Public education is a way our society insures that all children are exposed to and taught, such that they will be good and prepared citizens, and equipped to reasonably handle the life they will be confronted with as an adult. At what point should this growing child discover the facts and realities of human sexuality and reproduction? And where should this information come from?

7) A carefully screened gay Christian couple wants to adopt an orphan from Darfur who otherwise would not be adopted and would probably die horribly. Would you prevent this adoption and the opportunity to have the love and support of Christian parents?

I would hope that these narrow-minded and judgmental and arrogant hypocrites back off from crossing the bright line between religion and government, that earlier wiser Virginians were so instrumental in creating in our state and federal constitutions, and instead, start questioning their own leadership -- and begin to instead take responsibility for their own spiritual path. After all, I don’t think St. Peter will accept your argument that James Dobson, or Jerry Falwell told you to do it.

Or, that’s what I believe Jesus would have you do.

Katrina

Katrina on Vimeo
My second film - original sound track (used GarageBand) and original animation attempting to convey the buildup and power of a tropical hurricane.

3001 - The Star Ship Lands

3001 - Star Ship Landing on Vimeo

It's amazing how music makes such a difference in our experience of the visual. This is my first animated film. Feedback would be appreciated.

Nature vs. Nurture

Biases, prejudice, intolerance – these human characteristics, which are so entwined in so much of human struggle, seem not to be qualities we are born with. So for the “nature vs. nurture” aficionados, listen up – feeling that you are better or superior to another group of humans is plainly “nurture” – that is it is something you learn from your early environment growing up – this is not rocket science.

I leave it to the psychologists and sociologists to help explain this phenomena – but my uneducated guess is that there is some feeling of security and esteem achieved by various activities that makes one feel to be “better” or “superior” to someone else. Or for your “group” to be seen as better or superior to another.

Being a WASP myself (only by definition – not by pride), I was in for a shock when I first lived outside the United States in Saudi Arabia. There American white men were not at the top of the pecking order. In Saudi it was the Saudi men and this also varied by tribe, age, and wealth. Baboons and other apes have long been studied and shown to have a very structured and constantly tested hierarchical order – so possibly there are advantages in nature to this “I’m better than you” mentality.

But at birth and at death - those crucial intersections with eternity – it seems that human pride and vanity are for naught – and perhaps we might examine how more humility might afford individuals and societies a better quality of life. After all – isn’t that a core Jesus idea?

R U "Born-Again"?

Each year, Lake Superior State University releases its List of Words and Phrases Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness. Such words as “get-er-done” and “breaking news” made the 2006 list.

So I’ve submitted a phrase for consideration for their 2007 list – “born-again”. I spent the first 50 years of my life as a Southern Baptist without ever hearing this phrase, which seems to have just sprung onto the fundamentalist Christian scene. And it is increasingly nauseating in its hypocrisy and ambiguity.

I submit it is an invention of man and not God and I am confused and befuddled, as the baptism I received as a child, and in my childlike faith, seems not to have the lifetime warranty I was led to believe.

What is it to be “born-again? Is this hitting bottom and coming to some realization? Is it a religious experience that transcends normal experience? It is merely a renewal of one’s vows? Who knows – but it has become part of the scene, especially for the evangelical and fundamentalist Christians in America.

Personally, I am constantly reborn, each morning and each moment – so to state it would be a bit redundant wouldn’t it?

But with the bully pulpit becoming just that for our born-again President, it just becomes increasingly blurry where government stops and religion starts.

Virginia's Proposed Marriage Amendment

Virginia is about to pass an egregious piece of legislation to imbed discrimination into our 200-year-old Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

I won’t lay out the usual talking points used to oppose this legislation. I imagine it will pass and that nothing I will say will change that. It appears that, nationally, social conservatives have selected this particular issue to rally their base and that the political and religious juggernaut set to define “marriage” in the very heart of our national and state constitutions is not going to be stopped at this time.

That said, I do ask that you consider this – and do so from the position of a common sense fair-minded Virginian, which has historically suggested those of wisdom, broad perspective, and an overarching stewardship of the most fundamental of American values: – freedom, liberty and equality. And to view this current debate in light of the values that our leaders daily espouse as bedrock to all policy: - foreign and domestic. For it is fundamentally an issue of freedom, liberty, and equality for the one out of every 15-16-17 Virginians that is at stake here.

I ask that you consider the burdens already imposed on your grandchildren: of particularly the looming public debt, a diminished social security net, the erosion of America’s stature in the eyes of many across the globe, and the rising threat of globalization. And in that context I suggest that adding sexual orientation discrimination to our state Constitution’s Bill of Rights will only add another burden that will require generations now to resolve.

Certainly you are aware of the march of change, and are able to see how freedom, liberty and equality have been the hallmarks of democracy throughout history. This is seen in concrete examples in the case of gay rights in progressive democratic countries, in the evidence of the scientific and medical communities, and particularly in the changing values of America’s youth who by significant majorities are tolerant to and receptive to the inalienable rights of homosexuals to live without the specter of government discrimination.

This amendment when passed will have no positive effect that any credible proponent has postulated. I am 62 and tell you that being gay in Virginia has been a burden I did not choose. This amendment will only further alienate, discourage, and deter gays – and at a time when we need the full participation and energy of all Virginians to compete in an ever more competitive global economy.

I only ask that you view this matter in the broad context of our state’s long fight for liberty, freedom and equality - and even if your vote or your voice will not stem this tide – that you will stand up as a courageous citizen and out of a vision of a future Virginia that offers fully equal civil rights to all of its citizens. This is congruent with the ideals of our founders and more likely will be viewed as such by a younger, educated, enlightened electorate that is marching towards us, who will live in this state long after close-minded obstructionists are forgotten.