Christian Mythbusters

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared debunks the myth that Christianity doesn’t have anything worthwhile to say about sex. You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1, WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am.

The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. 

Earlier, in the heights of debates surrounding questions like divorce or same-sex marriage, a common refrain on the left was that we should get out of people’s bedrooms. That is, whatever happened between consenting adults is their own business. It’s not the business of the government and, for many people, it’s not the business of the church either.

I think a lot of this frustration was because of people’s experience with Christian messages surrounding sex and sexuality which seemed far removed from the actual lived experience of this part of the human life. So much of it seemed to be based upon fear and control… And so people increasingly just stopped paying attention to what the church said.

And so, though I might regret it, today I’d like to bust the myth of the idea Christianity doesn’t have anything important to say about sex… because I think it does. It’s probably just not what you’ve heard. 

Let’s start by clearing up just a few things. 

First, sex is not bad or dirty or evil. What sex is… is powerful. That means we need to think carefully about what it is, and the role sex has in our lives. Because, as former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams says, sex can be an experience of the body’s grace. That is, your experience of having your beloved delight in you fully can be a profound experience of the grace one body can give another. 

Sex is powerful. It can do tremendous harm when used destructively and not with deep care and respect for those involved. 

Part of the problem is that for too long Christians have thought about sex in terms of a list of rules, list of things that are not okay. So, no sex before marriage. No sex among people of the same gender. And, in some traditions, no sex unless you’re trying to make a baby. The problem with only thinking about sex in terms of rules is that it doesn’t force you to have some difficult conversations with yourself (and your partner) about the moral implications, the lived implications, of choices you make. It’s either OK or not, according to the rules. 

The other problem is that some of those rules are based upon ancient conceptualizations of sexuality that we would no longer hold in the 21st century. So, for example, one of the reasons that homosexual relationships were rejected by Paul was because they were “unnatural.” Of course, we now know that homosexuality is a naturally occurring phenomenon in both humans and animals. Also, Paul believed it was debasing for a man to take the place of the woman in the sexual act… which is a pretty patriarchal understanding of gender roles and sex, one that we would hopefully reject at this point.

Contrary to what Paul’s experience in the ancient world, in my own experience as an Episcopal priest, the marriages of our gay and lesbian members of my church tend to be the very strongest in the community, the ones which most manifest the fruits of the Spirit. 

So, I think Christians do need to stop saying some of the things ...

In the this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared debunks the myth that “It’s Almost Christmas.” You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1, WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am.

The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. 

Well, the 2020 presidential election is now behind us. I record this segment in advance and so I don’t know who won, but odds are you still don’t know who won. So, I figure, let’s go ahead and talk about something else… at least for a minute.

The end of the Halloween season and the movement into November always marks the beginning of a new season in the commerce of our country,  the season of “It’s almost Christmas.” Now of course, Christmas is still just a little less than two months away, but you probably could not tell that when you took a look at stores that are already hard at work setting up their aisles for Christmas decorations. 

And so today I would like to bust the myth of the idea that it’s almost Christmas… especially if you are a Christian who follows the traditional calendar of the church. 

The feast of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, commonly known as Christmas, is a feast that actually last 12 days, from December 25 until January 5, culminating with the great Feast of the Epiphany on January 6. That’s where that song “The 12 days of Christmas” comes from.

But in the calendar of the church, we have a lot to do before Christmas arrives. We are still on our journey and Bethlehem is a long ways off. In the church we have just celebrated the Feasts of All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days, remembering that great communion of saints who encourage us on our daily walk, and also those faithful departed whose memories we still hold dear. And so now we are now in the final weeks of what is known as Ordinary time, those final weeks before we reach Advent (which will begin this year on Sunday, November 29). 

And during these last weeks before Advent, the church invites us to look toward the future, not to begin a nostalgic looking back to Christmases long gone or even to that very first Christmas. The church invites us during these last weeks to remember that the world we live in is not forever but that there will come a day when Christ will return, and God’s love will finally be made manifest in this broken world. And so, in the traditional Christian calendar, we hear Scripture readings at this time of the year about the end of time, about the importance of repentance, about looking at the world we know God wants to bring about and then asking how we need to change our lives to be a part of that world God dreams of.

This journey of looking toward the end of time and asking how our lives need to change will culminate in the last Sunday after Pentecost, called Christ the King Sunday in many Christian traditions. And then the week after that Advent will begin, but Advent not as an early celebration of Christmas, but as four weeks of prayer and fasting, four weeks of giving up of yourself to the needs of this world so that you can prepare yourself to celebrate Christmas when it finally comes on December 25th.

Don’t get me wrong, we all know Christmas is coming—after Thanksgiving I’ll be right out there at the tree farms with most of you. But I encourage you to explore some of these more ...

In the this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared debunks the myth of the beloved children’s song, “Jesus Loves Me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1, WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am.

The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. 

I am going to take a step on a shaky limb today, so I hope you will bear with me. This week I want to bust the myth of the beloved children’s song, “Jesus loves me.”

If you grew up in the church like me, probably one of the first songs you learned was “Jesus loves me.” You know, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” We teach these songs to our children because the first and most important thing we want them to learn about Christianity that they are deeply loved by God, this truth is inescapable and irrefutable. I mean clearly, we set it to rhyme.

But maybe, if you are somewhat like me, as you grew up that song became a little harder to believe. There’s nothing like adolescence, being a young adult, and then moving through your early 20s to realize that you can sometimes be a pretty horrible person, or at least kind of a jerk.  And you know that God is supposed to love everyone, but it becomes more sort of a blanket statement. It’s not like God looks actually looks at you and says, “That’s great. You’re great.”

 This sinking suspicion was broken open for me by a contemporary Christian artist in the 90s named Rich Mullins who once said, “I grew up hearing everyone tell me ‘God loves you’. I would say big deal, God loves everybody. That don’t make me special! It just proves that God ain’t got no taste.”

But what if…. What if… it wasn’t about you being special? That’s part of the problem, I think. What if God’s love for you isn’t because you are special but, instead, is because you are… you. 

A lot of Christians spend a good deal of time trying to get an experience of God in their lives. I remember when I was a minister in the evangelical tradition of the church, working to find the right balance of exciting praise music and emotional worship music to cultivate an emotional reaction in those attending a worship service. I wound up… exhausted.

But the first time I attended a service of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament—this is a devotion common in the more catholic parts of the church where you basically sit (or kneel) in front of the communion elements of bread and wine, trusting Jesus was serious when he said they were his body and his blood, and you just… adore.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. But through the clouds of incense, as I looked at the bread of communion, I was suddenly overcome with a sense that Jesus was right there… and I didn’t make it happen. It wasn’t because I structured a perfect worship service or raised my hands the proper amount to the best Christian songs. It certainly wasn’t because I was special—Lord knows that’s the truth. Jesus was just… there… in the sacrament… reaching out in love… to me. 

This is, theologically, the objective presence of Christ in the sacraments. In simpler terms, it is the truth that Jesus loves you so much that he wants to be with you in that bread and wine, even if you aren’t sure that sort of thing is possible. 

In the this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared debunks the myth that you can follow Jesus entirely on your own. You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1, WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am.

Here is the transcription of this episode, the audio file is at the bottom.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. 

I know this election season has been difficult on many of you. As the rhetoric and vitriol has increased, you have also probably experienced members of your church saying things on social media, or in person, or even your pastor perhaps saying things from the pulpit, which left you feeling angry and frustrated. Or if you’re not a Christian, you may have been watching Christians during this time and wondered how they can claim to follow Jesus given how they have acted politically at this moment in our country. It may be tempting to want to do with so many people are doing these days, to throw in the towel when it comes to organized religion and just to focus on your own personal relationship with Jesus. 

Now, as a priest in the Episcopal Church, with an admitted bias toward organized religion, given what I do for a living, I’d urge you not to give up on the concept of church and Christian community. And so, this week I’d like to bust the myth of the idea that you can follow Jesus entirely on your own. 

Now before I start,  I should be clear that some people are indeed called to live lives as hermits, people to whom the Holy Spirit has given a special vocation to live solitary lives devoted to prayer and service. The fact of the matter, though, is that that is not most of us. Most of us need community in order to follow Jesus better and more faithfully.

I remember when I was in seminary and it seemed to me that several of my fellow classmates seemed to have a chip on their shoulder about the church, something they wanted to prove, or something they wanted fundamentally to change about the church as she was. That wasn’t me. I went in to Christian ministry because I have a deep and abiding love for the church in all of her imperfect glory.  And trust me, in over a decade of ministry as a priest I have seen some of the dark underbelly of Christian community.

And yet here I am, continuing to persist and to devote my life as a priest to the community of Christians at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven. Like any Christian I been frustrated at times by hierarchy and I have been hurt by those who wear the name of Jesus. But I don’t walk away because the church continues to make me a better Christian.

The great German Pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was an outspoken opponent of the rise of Nazism in Germany, including the complicity of some parts of the Christian church with the racist and fear-mongering horrors of the Nazi regime. Bonhoeffer was eventually executed by the Nazis in 1945 for his resistance. But before then, he actually ran an underground seminary for the Confessing Church, those Christians who refused to accept their government’s insistence that you had to hate and fear those who were different than you. 

And out of that experience, he wrote a book called Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community. In it he explored the way that persisting in community with other Christians, particularly when it is hard, makes you more like Jesus. Other Christians can help sand off your rough edges.

In the this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared debunks the myth that there is one uniform and clear view on abortion in the Christian tradition. You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1, WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am.

Here is the transcription of this episode, the audio file is at the bottom.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. 

The confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett to a position on the Supreme Court are underway. Given that her confirmation would tilt the majority even stronger in favor of conservatives, 6-3, and that she would replacing the seat vacated by the great Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburgh, tensions are high and political arguments intense.

A good portion of the hearings have surrounded the concern that a Justice Barrett would provide sufficient votes to overturn Roe v. Wade, returning the question of the legality of abortion to one that individual states would consider. On the right, this goal has been decades in the making and many are ecstatic that a possibility seems nigh. On the left, the loss of Roe v. Wade would undermine protections the Supreme Court enacted around the healthcare of women and their right to make the own decision when faced with the agonizing realities surrounding abortion.

All of which provides me with an opportunity to at least try today to break the myth around Christianity and abortion.

I’m always surprised how quickly Christians seem to be able to trot out a handful of verses as supposed proof of the so-called “Pro-Life” stance. Never mind that most of those verses simply speak to some form of reality before birth—never equating it in value with a living, breathing, human, but many of those verses come from what Christians often call the Old Testament, also known as the Hebrew Bible. And when I’m faced with a difficult question in the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, I always find it helpful to turn to our Jewish siblings, who have been wrestling with these sacred Scriptures—in Hebrew nonetheless!—for a good thousand years longer than Christians have. 

In Exodus 21, if a woman is hurt in a fight and gives birth prematurely or she miscarries, there is a penalty upon the one who causes the miscarriage… but it is not the same penalty as murder. Rabbinic law has long allowed abortion when it would save the life of the mother. Rashi and others suggest that the moment when some form of human reality begins is not at conception but is not until the 40th day of pregnancy, when the fetus moves from water to a living being. But, even then, it is not yet the same thing as a human. 

The Talmud is one of the definitive sources for interpreting the Hebrew Bible, and it states that the act of birth is what changes a fetus from nonperson to person. This is partially based upon Genesis when the drawing in of breath by Adam is what made him human. However, other Talmudic sources and commentators insist that it is when any part of the fetus has left the birth canal. 

Both Conservative and Reform Judaism allow for abortion if the woman would suffer severe physical or psychological harm. Reform Judaism, in particular, insists that the difficulties involved in these questions mean that the decision should be made by the woman within whose body the fetus is growing, in conversation with her doctor and faith community. All of this is why more than three-quarters of Jews in America identify as pro-choice. 

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared debunks the myth that Christianity is at war with science. You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1, WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am.

Here is the transcription of this episode, the audio file is at the bottom:

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. 

This week I would like to talk to you a little bit about Christianity and science. I remember when I was a young evangelical teenaged Christian and a student at Grand Haven Middle School. I wore a shirt which ridiculed evolution in favor of a literal seven-day creation. My biology teacher told me she was actually a Christian and that she had always wondered why it was that God could not simply have worked through the scientific mechanism of evolution to create the world in which we lived. I admit that I did not have a good answer then.

There is this strange sentiment in American Christianity that we have to defend the Christian faith against the claims of science. So, let’s go ahead today and bust the myth of the battle between science and Christianity.

In my study at St. John’s there hangs a prayer from St. Thomas Aquinas, one he wrote before he would engage in study. In it, Aquinas describes the wondrous order and beautiful harmony through which God created the world and he asks God who is the true fount of light and wisdom to shed upon the darkness of his understanding a ray of God’s own light. 

That prayer is actually much closer to a Christian understanding of science than much of what you hear in popular culture or maybe even sitting in the pew of your own church. Christians believe that all truth comes from God and therefore Christians should never be afraid of the vigorous search for truth, including through the avenue of science. If the study of science is a danger to your faith, maybe it’s time to let your faith get a little bit stronger and your appreciation for science to get a little bit broader. Maybe it’s time for your faith to be more in the God who created you and less in your ideas about what that God looks like and how that God operates. 

In my own Anglican tradition of Christianity, this battle was fought well over 100 years ago as leaders of a movement called Lux Mundi, Latin for Light of the World, argued vigorously that the best of science could only lead us closer to truth and therefore closer to God. They insisted that the scientific world was another avenue of God’s revelation to us. They published a book entitled Lux Mundi, a collection of 12 essays by liberal Anglo Catholics. One particular essay by the great Charles Gore called “The Holy Spirit and Inspiration” forever changed the way that Christians my tradition considered the connections between science and faith.

Many people don’t know this, but Charles Darwin went to Cambridge in 1828 with the goal actually of becoming a clergyman in the Church of England. In the end, his desire for scientific study one but he remained involved in the Church of England. And when much of Christianity was fighting vigorously with his theory of evolution, thanks to the work of people like Charles Gore and the Lux Mundi movement, Anglicans were finding ways for scientific study and religious faith not only to coexist but actually to feed and nourish each other.

Because, you see, religion and science are actually often just interested in answering very different questions.