Originally published at Creedible.com in April 2011.

There is a simplicity to capital punishment that appeals. Deciding the appropriate penalty for a crime often feels like some abstruse mathematics: two offenses which call forth the same sentence rarely have much relationship to each other. Murder, however, elicits a comforting equivalence: the penalty for killing is death. Justice is comprehensible at last.

Capital punishment also sets a close to the catastrophe of murder. With an execution, the process ends. The court turns its attention away; the prison system no longer bears the weight of its charge. The grieving, so the theory goes, can lay aside their pain and go on with their lives.

Perhaps some do. I wonder how many can; I have lost no loved one to violence, only to illness. And I grieve their absence still.

Capital punishment may be comprehensible, but it does not meet the test of justice. Its very simplicity belies the complexity of life, and ignores the very real possibility of human malice, manipulation, or error. In 2011 the New York Times printed John Thompson’s account of his eighteen year struggle not just for his freedom, but for his life. When prosecutors failed to turn over exculpatory evidence to his attorneys, juries convicted him of two crimes he had not committed, including a murder: and sentenced him to death. An investigator’s discovery of a report on forgotten microfiche averted his electrocution and eventually freed him – after his execution had been scheduled for the seventh time.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/opinion/10thompson.html?_r=1

If the amendment planned by those favoring continued executions in Connecticut had been in place in Louisiana in 1999, Thompson would have died.

Capital punishment makes too many assumptions. It assumes that the convicted is guilty – Thompson was one of 138 condemned prisoners to be exonerated between 1973 and 2010. It assumes that the penalty will be swift – but the legal processes required (which prevented 138 innocents from dying at the hands of the state) continue for years. Justice delayed, it’s said, is justice denied.

Capital punishment assumes that the world has no more use for the condemned, that no repentance, no reconciliation, no renewal are possible. In contrast, Christians recall that Jesus said that God cares for each sparrow, and how much more for each person. Capital punishment assumes that somehow, an action undertaken by the state has a different moral quality than one taken by an individual citizen. It does not, except in this: when the state acts, we all act. We all take this life.

This fundamental hubris, that we are entitled to take life when one is taken, corrupts us all. Its very simplicity in a complex world should warn us.

And I shudder at the deepest warning of them all. According to my faith, only one person has walked this earth since it first began to spin in the void who could truly be called innocent of sin and error. When the police arrived, his friends fled, and we will tell that story in our churches next week. We will further tell the story of a swift yet thorough legal process that, less scrupulous but as self-righteous as our own, manipulated evidence and led inexorably to that most ragged legal maxim of all: expediency. And from there to a cross on a hill.

The Roman legal system that executed Jesus has echoes in our own. Even more, its hubris is the model for our own. We human beings applied the ultimate sanction to the person who least deserved it in the history of the planet. How did those who follow him ever dare to take it up again? Are we so arrogant as to believe that we should never be wrong again?

This essay was originally published in September 2011 at Creedible.com.

On August 31st, a colleague and long-time friend of mine, the Rev. Dr. Lillian Daniel, published a short reflection titled “Spiritual but Not Religious? Please Stop Boring Me” in the United Church of Christ’s Daily Devotional series. In it, she described her frustration with some airplane conversations she’s had, in which seatmates assure her that they find all the spiritual sustenance they need outside established religions. “Being private spiritual but not religious just doesn’t interest me,” she says. “Can I spend my time talking to someone brave enough to encounter God in a real human community?”

http://www.ucc.org/feed-your-spirit/daily-devotional/spiritual-but-not-religious.html

Lillian is a gifted writer, and when she chooses not to pull punches, she hits hard. I found her piece simultaneously refreshing and discomforting. I knew quite well that those who pictured themselves in the seat of the “spiritual but not religious person” would likely be deeply offended. It took me quite some time to decide to share it with my friends, many of whom are religious, but many of whom are not, on Facebook.

My predictions were not disappointed. It’s been one of the most discussed things I’ve ever shared. Some condemn her for her condescension, while others praise her insight. What I think I’m seeing in both responses is very deep pain from people who’ve experienced significant hurt because their spiritual insights and foundations have been censured. And I’m seeing it equally from the spiritual but not religious, and from the spiritual and religious.

So I’m taking a step back, because it seems to me the only way to really begin a conversation about this precious part of ourselves is to tell our own stories. How did I come to choose a faith community to nurture my spirit? How did you choose you path to nurture yours?

Obligatory warning, Gentle Reader. I chose a faith community, and I’ve stayed with it. I’m not unbiased here. I chose a way because I think it’s a better one, and although it may not be better for everyone, I think it probably is for most. But I’ll get to that. Here’s the story:

I was raised in a pretty straightforward New England Protestant church family – both the congregation and my own birth family. That meant Sunday School, church picnics, and the awareness that it was very important to my parents. They sang in the choir, served on committees, and my mother taught Sunday School (though not to me).

As I entered my adolescent years, I rejected it all. Mine was a fairly mild expression of adolescent rebellion (my parents might disagree with that), but on the topic of religion, I was adamant. Well, almost. I would not take part in the Confirmation Class, but I chose not to fight the weekly battle to stay home on Sunday mornings. I sat in the balcony, got involved with a youth ushers program because it was better than doing nothing for an hour, and took solace in the three hymns we got to sing.

I like to sing.

I would not have described myself as “spiritual but not religious” in those days. The term spiritual was about, but it hadn’t lost its anchor in the house of faith. I’m pretty sure I would have said I found more inspiration in the mountains than in the church, but I wouldn’t have connected it to God, either.

But my presence in the community of faith was a powerful influence, and so was the movement of God in the world. Yes, I’m convinced that God worked directly with me, sometimes through music, sometimes through relationships, sometimes through the wonders of nature, sometimes through literature, sometimes through family. One a special, startling night while I was in high school, I heard God’s voice for the first time and knew it for what it was, even if it was telling me I’d just done something stupid and my next task was to apologize.

How did I know that voice? I’d been trained to recognize it in a community of faith. I’m not sure we’re always concretely aware that that’s what we do, but it is. In the ancient stories, and in the comforting presence of the occasional person whose serenity just glows, and in the hymn lyrics and sermons and the rhythm of the prayers, I found the tools to recognize Who was Speaking when I heard the Voice.

It was still a struggle, a couple years later, when that Still Speaking God started pushing me not just to participate in a house of faith, but to consider being part of its leadership. I held off the voice of God as long as I could (which wasn’t, actually, all that long, though it certainly seemed so at the time), and then sought out the path to seminary.

I think the spiritual life is hard. God’s is not the only voice I’ve heard in my time. There are the siren calls of the commercialized media, the body’s insistence that want is the same as need, the way greed masquerades as wisdom, and the cries of those who mistake prejudice for revelation. From within and without, the spirits fly back and forth, calling, summoning, commanding, beseeching. John, in his first epistle, was not kidding in the least when he urged his readers to test the spirits, because they aren’t all from God. No, the spiritual life is hard.

Coming to religion made my spiritual life just a little bit easier. Muslims have been learning to discern the will of God for about 1400 years; Christians for about 2000. Dating the founding of Judaism is much more difficult, but it’s at least 3000 years. Hinduism is probably impossible to date accurately, but it could go a thousand years or more before that. Millions of believers and practitioners have created, argued, considered, rejected, reconsidered, renewed, revised, and reformed the families of faith the world over.

The fact that we still get punchy (sorry, Lillian) even with all these centuries of spiritual treasure at hand just demonstrates how hard this truly is. Those who find their path to spiritual enrichment on their own, or with a small self-selected community, have my complete and utter admiration. They’ve accomplished something magnificent.

For the rest of us, I’d recommend a path with company. With guides who sometimes disagree and argue with each other, and who can be remarkably arrogant, too. But company. Companions. Friends. Pilgrims, to walk not an easy way, but one that’s eased.

This essay was originally published at Creedible.com in July 2011.

With a new political season in its early days (weeks? months?), it is tempting to direct readers to factcheck.org or politifact.com and let it go, but when I boldly wrote that one-word, provocative (and previously used) title, I had no candidate for public office in mind. Instead, I was thinking of a someone who was not a Gay Girl in Damascus.

Gay Girl in Damascus was the title of a blog that purported to be that of Amina Abdullah, a young woman of Syrian and American parentage, and described her thoughts and experiences as “Arab Spring” protests erupted across North Africa and the Middle East. Gay Girl was articulate, courageous, and quirky. She inspired confidence and compassion among English-speakers for a people of whom they knew little.

She was also an invention: the actual author is Tom MacMaster, a forty-year-old American from Georgia. In his “Apology to Readers,” posted June 12th, when researchers had successfully traced the posts back to him, he wrote:

“I only hope that people pay as much attention to the people of the Middle East and their struggles in thıs year of revolutions. The events there are beıng shaped by the people living them on a daily basis. I have only tried to illuminate them for a western audience.”

Many responses to his fiction, however, which had gone on some years and went so far as to appropriate photos of another woman, have been angry and condemnatory. “No, I’m furious,” wrote Jillian C. York, Director of International Freedom of Expression, on Twitter. “Wasted my time, wasted my government’s time, wasted journalists’ time, hurt some vulnerable individuals.”

I have no complaints with fiction, which will come as a relief to my teenage children, both of whom are avid and talented writers. Storytelling frequently bears truth, even Truth, as a shining pearl within its shell. There is a striking and vital difference, however, between the truth we discover as the treasure in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, or Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, and the cold pit of disappointment we find at the root of the Gay Girl in Damascus. With fiction, we know that the story is a story, and we are free to seek truth within it. In these blogs, we believe that the story is a history, and the revelation of the one lie makes any truth it purports to reveal suspect.

Other writers, writing honestly, may reveal these same truths, testify to these same facts. This lie has made their job of truth-telling that much harder.

I’m sadly familiar with lies. There are the bold lies, which bowl their way over truth with a relentless assertion and reassertion of their claims. There are the subtle lies, which use an extra “fact” or logical stretch to step away from reality. There are the lies of omission, in which ignorance is bliss for the teller. There are the lies of creation, building houses of cards that collapse when their basic nature is exposed.

I’m sadly familiar with lies. I blush at the ones I’ve told, and I blush at the ones I’ve believed. I blush, now with indignation, at the ones that get repeated again and again however discredited they might be, and I blush again at the credulity of humanity, that the lies get once more believed.

And I blush because the hardest lies of all to discern are the ones I might tell myself, and believing, pass on to others. My calling as a minister of the Gospel is to “bear witness,” and that means, at root, to tell the truth. In this one instance, I can sympathize with Pontius Pilate, muttering, “What is truth?” Indeed, truth does not always carry a sign declaring, “Here I am;” does not always fit with my comfortable assumptions, does not always contribute to my comfort.

Sometimes it’s not too hard. If I want to tell a story, then it’s up to me to tell you that it is a story. Jesus’ own parables make no claims that the man beaten on the road to Jericho, for example, really lived. The truth about what a neighbor is does not suffer because the Samaritan didn’t exist to offer help.

And sometimes it’s very hard, and then it’s time to wrestle with my prejudices, and offer my opinions for what they are. “This is what I know,” is what I should say, “and this is what I believe. This is what I hope, and this is what I fear. This is what I deduce, and this is what I’d prefer.”

Somewhere, perhaps, in the middle of it all, lies truth.