Thanks to an astute blog reader who brought to my attention a clarification by Dan Haseltine regarding the true intent of his Tweets and the fact that he did not mean what it clearly appeared he said. He makes a very humble admission that he did not write his words well and that he understood the confusion he caused. I’m actually happy to hear that. It’s clear Dan is a guy who is learning along the way just like the rest of us. I still have a bit of disagreement with some of his thinking, but I feel a lot better about where he really stands on scriptural authority.
I feel I owe it to Dan (I don’t even know him) to be sure to follow up my original post with this one so that you can receive a much happier ending to his original statement and to my response to that. While I don’t feel I intended nor did “throw rocks” at Dan, I did write as a response to a very serious statement that should not be left to go by unchallenged. The motive was correct and the response I feel was correct, but unfortunately for me, I was unaware that he didn’t think through what he was writing and didn’t mean what he wrote outside of a wider context.
I think rather than link to his blog post, which some will never click, I’ll just do a raw copy and paste. After that, there were a couple of interesting comments made on my Facebook page concerning all of this. I will try to copy and paste those too.
Here is Dan H’s blog post from earlier today:
Reset. (context…tangent…apology)
Friday, April 25, 2014 at 10:50AMLast week, Jars of Clay performed at a music festival in Australia. As part of the programming of the event, the festival offered various breakout sessions and panel discussions on a host of topics that might be interesting to the festival attendees. I was invited to sit on a panel discussion about moral behavior and the church. The question we were presented was, “Does the western church’s focus on moral behavior undermine the church’s ability to love?”
On one side of me sat the head of a lobbying group that fought against the legalization of gay marriage in Australia. On the other side of me was a Christian street evangelist. I was immediately aware that I had not given much attention to the dialogue about gay rights. I knew it was a focal topic for many people in the church, and that it was a major issue in the growing partisanship of American politics, I just had not had the opportunity to think about it much.
During the panel discussion, the question was asked of the lobbyist, “Why not legalize gay marriage?” His response sparked my curiosity. He said that gay marriage was a slippery slope into other forms of marriage ie: polygamy, marriage to animals, etc. He also said that it was harmful to children to be forced into a situation without a father, or without a mother. He also spoke of the sanctity of the traditional marriage model and how it could be diminished.
It was a lively conversation, and in the end, I don’t think we reached much of an answer to the question of moral behavior and the church. I did walk away with quite a lot to think about. I had so many questions about gay marriage. With so many angles to consider and so many layers to unfold, it was overwhelming, and so I did what most people do, I got distracted and forgot about it.
Two days later, I was on an international flight traveling back to the U.S. I should have been sleeping, but the time reversal’s effect on my body kept me awake, and so I caught up on a few movies. The one that stirred my soul, more than Anchorman 2 or American Hustle was 12 Years a Slave.
The film had such incredible storytelling and superb acting that gave faces and souls to the men, women and children trapped in slavery. The thing that continued to swirl around my mind was a scene when one of the slave owners was quoting scripture to slaves. He was using the words to drive home a point about his supremacy over the slaves, and the wrath they would face if they were disobedient.
He was mis-using scripture to back up his acts of oppression toward another human. He was using scripture to back up his idea that slaves were less than human, and so should not be given the rights of humans.
I would not say that the issues of slavery, which are tied to color and race, clearly mirror the issues of gay rights. But for some reason, all the questions I had surrounding gay marriage came rushing back.
I sat on the plane and thought about the hard questions I would have to ask myself in order to find my way toward a healthy dialogue about gay rights. If gay men and women were being oppressed, not having an opinion in the matter seemed equal to the acceptance of systemic racism by way of silence. The common quote, “What is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing” came to mind.
Having grown up in the Christian church, I have observed and perpetrated many acts that originated out of fear. In my career as an artist, musician, and storyteller, I have attempted to illuminate fear-based behavior in the church.
I have attempted to provide questions that could lead to a more love based approach. This has meant taking a careful and often critical view of contemporary church behavior and culture. At times this has led me to unproductive and unfair assessments of the church culture. Other times, it has helped me navigate around unhealthy environments and practices that could have caused me to hurt people.
I wanted to figure out if I had a blind spot. Was I buying into a form of oppression?
Or does the legalization of gay marriage actually undermine traditional marriage and the biblical view of how we are called to live our lives?
So… yes, the implications and applications of answers to these hard questions are staggeringly important. And my engagement of the issue of just under 3 days left me very under equipped to answer my own questions.
So that was the background and motivation behind my latest Twitter conversation.
(A TANGENT + EXPLANATION)
Why Twitter? Like most people who use it, I have found that 140 characters is incredibly limiting. I have to constantly re-sculpt and re-fashion my words. I am constantly chopping and simplifying my statements… and for that very reason, it keeps me and others from just vomiting opinions into the middle of the conversation.
I have liked the limitations because some people, me included, like to write doctoral dissertations that cannot possibly be helpful in a live and organic dialogue about an issue. The format is quick, and it is inclusive. It is also the only space I know with such a vast collection of different people with different perspectives.
Now, the draw back to Twitter as a discussion format is that it is sometimes hard to find the nuance in a persons post. And in my case, I think I’m communicating one thing, but what comes out is entirely different…. In my haste to get the next idea out, I wrote things that were unnecessarily combative.
For example, In my latest conversation on Twitter, I knew that the immediate response to questions about the gay community would be about whether gay sex was wrong or right. I do think this is a part of the issue, but I wanted to talk about other areas, and having just been on a panel discussing the ways the church’s focus on moral behavior undermines its ability to love, I didn’t want to get stuck on the “moral right or wrong” part and stall any ability to talk about other aspects of the issue. So I wrote:
@Scribblepetomus:
“It is perhaps less important to know what is “right and wrong” morally speaking, than to know how to act toward those we consider “wrong.”
“I don’t particularly care about Scriptures stance on what is “wrong.” I care more about how it says we should treat people.”
In the heat of discussion, I communicated poorly and thus unintentionally wrote that I did not care about what scripture said. Thus, the tsunami hit. It was picked up by bloggers and written into editorials before I could blink. And rightly so, people were shocked and offended by my statement dismissing the value of scripture. I got it. And possibly, I got what that combination of statements warranted for response. I should’ve chosen my words more wisely.
I care about what scripture says. It matters.
The second round of poorly chosen words surrounded the clarity of scripture. I was trying to communicate that although we often say, “Scripture is clear about this or that,” the very fact that so many people disagree or have alternate perspectives or interpretations of scripture, means that we have to move beyond simply quoting a scripture to prove our point. We have to dig into the scripture and help translate it and offer context. Simply quoting a scripture can stall out a good honest dialogue.
But what I wrote was:
“Never liked the phrase: “Scripture clearly says…(blank) about…”
Because most people read and interpret scripture wrong, I don’t think scripture “clearly” states much of anything regarding morality.”
Yeah…. That was definitely not my intended point. This was also met with a great amount of negative feedback.
So, that said, Twitter is a great place to share selfies and a horrible forum for discussions and a bad place to communicate under the fog of jetleg…which leads me to this:
(MY APOLOGY)
In my questions and dialogue with people on Twitter, it became evident that the issue I had chosen to discuss was far too personal, nuanced, and deeply connected to faith and our human condition to honor the amount of wrestling that others have done on this topic. And though they were my questions and it was a dialogue provoked by me, it bled into the Jars of Clay world, and my other band mates felt people’s dismay, frustration and the projection of my views and ideas back on to them. It is not theirs to shoulder.
It was a poor choice of venue on my part. I chose some of my words poorly. And I was unable to moderate the conversation in such a way that it kept everyone’s views with a shared validity and civility as I had hoped. And so, I am not going to continue the conversation on that forum. I do apologize for causing such a negative stir.
In the coming days, I will begin posting some questions on my blog (www.danhaseltine.com, and even doing some interviews around this topic, as I believe there can be healthy dialogue and better understanding even if there is not shared agreement. I am dedicated to being a life long learner. With a full heart- Dan
So, from Facebook here are those follow up posts, including the clue-in to Dan’s post:
FB POSTER “D”: I’m not terribly familiar with this group, I just recognize their name. Out of curiosity I just went to their facebook page and this is his lengthy explanation/apology. http://danhaseltine.com/…/reset-contexttangentapology.html
danhaseltine.com
FB POSTER “D”: Still not fully convinced but… I believe it makes clear that he doesn’t have a solid biblical foundation as some things that he was struggling with should have been clear from the start.
Alan McManus Thanks for sharing that “D.” It is a bit of a relief to hear his clarification. All is not quite as bad as it was worded by Dan, and he didn’t intend to say what he did actually say. That happens sometimes and as he points out, with 140 characters to work with in Twitter, it is pretty easy to not say enough in the system of Twitter that is meant to prevent saying too much! (ironically) In his attempt to be fair to others whose opinions and lives are opposed to clear teaching of Scripture, I believe he goes further than he needs to and really further than he should. I’m sure he’s contemplating that for himself as he admits that he hadn’t really thought through the issues before the interview in which he made his eye-popping statements. Where I think he goes too far, is that there really is no place to go with sin other than confession, repentance, and a turn to obedience to God. There is no good reason to start, even in the name of “fairness” and “reaching out” to simply begin with even a hypothetical approval of the sin as if to show compassion to the one in public sin. How can we justify looking at murder from “all the positive angles” we can think of in order to be sure we’re being fair to the murderers? I don’t see a Scriptural support for this type of thinking. Jesus was compassionate to sinners, but he never forgave the unwilling to repent and never affirmed anyone in their sin. He always called sinners to repent and he always was quick to get to that call. Compassion for sinners is not affirmation of sinners but rather helping sinners understand that God is holy, we are not, and sin is sin is sin and we must repent or face the justice of God on our own. True compassion will call sinners to repent and all them and all of us to lay down our sin in confession to God and plead the blood of Christ as the satisfactory payment for the debt of our sin and the wrath of God. To consider the comfort of sinners is to encourage them to remain in comfort and thus to condone their sin and ultimately to condemn them. The call to repentance is the true compassion of Christ.
Knowing Your ABCDs 