Are we dysfunctional as a denomination?

I'm a Packer fan and have been sad to see how dysfunctional the Packer offense has been the second half of the season that has just ended for them when Arizona beat them in overtime last Saturday.

As Mike McCarthy the coach has said, "We still won ten games and got into the play offs, winning our first game there."

So when i read in a recent UMNS article of a colleague calling the UMC "dysfunctional," I had to laugh.  Every institution, including families, football teams, and denominations, is dysfunctional in some respect, at some time, with respect to something, but as the Packers could do, continue to function pretty well, if not perfectly.

The UMC is not perfect.  It has many aspects that are dysfunctional besides how it handles certain violations of some Discipline passages.  Over the years I have pointed out several and my focus has been quite narrow, mostly with respect to personnel management.  As large as we are as a denomination, we could easily spend the day pointing out other dysfunctions.

But I am a United Methodist because we are still a very strong mission-oriented institution, mobilizing millions of caring people to provide help where it is most needed.  I am a United Methodist because we have an open theology which hangs on to tradition and Bible but lets experience and reason temper our expressions of faith.  I am a United Methodist because it has been the source of my most enduring friendships, among whom I found my wife, and where my children were given support and encouragement to be the wonderful human beings that they are.  I am a United Methodist because we have survived major shifts in culture, overcoming mistakes (the 1844 split among others), and have not usually fallen back into making them again.    

Hardly any of that is in jeopardy because of the disagreement over the seriousness of issues related to homosexuality.  We are all a part of many dysfunctional social units that bumble through life, some more successfully than others.  We find ways to do better when we can.  Like most fans of the many different sports leagues, maybe next year we'll get it right.  

No Accountability?

For eight years we watched George W. Bush and his administration take us into unnecessary war, screw up our economy, violate our rights, and all the other things reasonable people like us resented and tried to change.

When the stories of torture came out, we could not stand it. We could not get a new President and Democratic Congress soon enough.

Now we have the Democratic President and all but two Democrats of the sixty necessary to control the Senate, and the President is resisting any holding of the Bush administration accountable for their terrible acts.

Why in the world would he back down from a campaign promise? How can he allow one of the cruelest insensitive Presidents ever to get away with it?

He says it would be taken as retribution and partisan.

But the law is on our side! Ask nearly any constitutional lawyer and each will say the former President and his people violated the law. A Spanish judge, the UN legal minds, several European courts, all point out the illegality of the torture we did and how the Bush policies violated international law to which the U. S. was a signer.

And the Obama administration is refusing to even have a special prosecutor to investigate.

What is the problem here!?

Let me suggest some things that might be involved.

Forgive me for going anthropological on you but Americans think in binary fashion. Things are right or wrong, black or white, win or lose, true or false. Not you, of course, or me. We think in plaids, shades of gray, multiple factors.

Do you have any idea how hard it was for our teachers to get us to think independently and break from bifurcated thinking?

And do you have any idea how many kids never caught on to that? Guess how they voted?

How many of them are there as compared to how many of us there are?

Which leads me to a second thought: How patient are we? How respectful of their lack of information are we? How successful have we been in giving them enough information to catch up with us? Whose fault is it that they do not respect us and our opinions?

Do we really understand the world of folks that think that they are in danger of socialism from that man that wasn't even born in the United States?

You know some of those folks, the ones you do not want to engage in conversation because they will be off and running on politics no matter what you offer for conversation.

And you know they have two things that keep them living in that world: Rush Limbaugh and not much interest in news, even the kind that we see on the major networks which never talk about depleted uranium (used to harden bunker busters) that contaminates much of urban Iraq.

And you know they are passionate about their opinions.

They already do not want President Obama to be President. It is not enough to say they lost. Their world has been taken from them and they are grieving for what they thought President Reagen brought them, "morning in America."

Is this the time to tell them their leaders were criminals? Is this the time the new President pushes in any way questioning the character of the former President?

The atmosphere of the country not only has the know-nothing toxicity that has grown since schools were underfunded in the early 1980s, it faces the grief of major change overtaking close to half of the nation.

Okay, when can war crimes be brought up within our judicial system? When the grief-stricken finally hear from one of their own, someone they trust. Probably someone they elected to the Presidency. Otherwise, they would never believe that a challenge was not partisan.

And is it irrelevant to ask, "How many AK-47s have been sold in the last few months?"

You be President and face that set of dynamics.

What would you do?