War and the Limits of Morality

”When the statesmen and lawyers
And preachers of duty disappear
There are no more robberies either
And the world is at peace” – Chuang Tzu (or Zhuangzi, 4th century BC)1

Chuang Tzu, in the above quote, views moral principles as supports for all kinds of wickedness and a barrier to peace.

President Biden is a moral man and speaks the language of morality and principles, a morality that provides lofty rhetoric for the support (in money and weapons) of the genocidal war in Gaza. But, of course, war of all kinds has been given principled and moral support. We do all manner of evil in the name of the good or of God.

President Harry Truman, after the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, rationalized the use of nuclear weapons for gaining and maintaining peace: He promised “recommendations to the Congress as to how atomic power can become a powerful and forceful influence towards the maintenance of world peace.” And he gave thanks to God that the Germans failed in their attempt to produce the atom bomb. He said “We may be grateful to Providence that the Germans…did not get the atomic bomb at all.” (There are nine nations today that have nuclear warheads and, of course, we are no closer to peace.)

With our moral justifications, we are able to reason that war makes and maintains peace, blind to the reality we continue to live.

Like Chuang Tzu, St. Paul saw the limits of principles to live by. For him, the most that moral law could do is to be a disciplinarian until we come to be in Christ. It puts some constraints on us but does not keep us from evil.

For Paul, our morals and principles to live by lead to self-righteousness and the judging and condemnation of others. Moral reasoning brought about the death of Jesus. Paul’s morality, before he came to be in Christ, brought about the persecution of the followers of the Way.

As the alternative to moral principles, Chuang Tzu calls us to be open to the Tao (the Way), Paul calls us to be open to the Logos (the Word). Paul writes, ““The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart (Romans 10:8).” As with Jesus’ “reign of God,” the needed word and direction is not far away; it is near. But to receive it, we must become open by the self-emptying of our lives. Jesus tells us we must relinquish ourselves in order to find our true selves and receive true discernment and direction.

Paul tells us that the children of God are led not by a set of principles or laws but by the Spirit. The Spirit opens us to the living and active word and to the way we are to walk in. With the Spirit there is discernment and the next steps that Love gives us to take.

Nations will continue to go to war and support war and justify their actions in moral terms and with principled rationales. In the midst of this, God calls forth witnesses who will live and speak from the word that is near.

In this present evil age, their witness points to a future with hope, a future not of our own making, a future that does not arise from our ideologies, moralities, and principles, but rather comes as a gift of God. This witness springs from those who empty themselves and are open to the Word and Way that is near.

The prophet Isaiah speaks such a word of hope from a place of relinquishment and openness. Placing God’s future before us, he then calls us to walk in the light of that future:

God shall judge between the nations
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation;
neither shall they learn war any more.
O house of Jacob,
come, let us walk
in the light of the Lord!

Isaiah 2:1-5
  1. Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu, p.68 ↩︎
Filed under: Peace, Spirit, War, WitnessTagged with: ,

Gaza

I find myself looking away, hardening myself to the pain. And yet I know that you, gracious God, do not turn away. You grieve. We see in the cross of Christ that you unite yourself to our suffering, to the suffering of our world. So, I draw near to you.

You see how we build rationales for ourselves, for the pain we inflict. We say it cannot be helped. An eye for an eye, a life for a life. But we do not even limit ourselves to that; we justify taking many more lives. We decide it is right to take life indiscriminately. We take our pain and we pour out pain.

And many of us look on and say it cannot be helped. We live by the sword and die by the sword. We have got ourselves into a vicious cycle of pain and death. And cannot free ourselves.

We cannot see it otherwise. Hamas must be stamped out. But even if Hamas were to be stamped out, something else similar would arise. And we would choose to operate in the same way toward that. We would fight pain with pain, death with death, destruction with destruction. We choose death over life, hate over love.

How is it possible to love your enemy, when your enemy is so ruthless and brutal? So, we choose the enemies we will love, maybe someone who briefly slights us. But you, gracious God, do not make such distinctions. We see that in the cross of Christ who took on our sin and suffering and prayed, “Father forgive them for they do not know what they do.” We still do not know what we do.

So you let us, prodigal sons and daughters, go off to the far country until we come to ourselves. What does it take to come to ourselves? How bad must our mess become, before we say, “I will return to my Father?”

I live in a nation that amasses great amounts of sophisticated weaponry and then spreads it around the world. We not only support our own killing but the killing others do. We believe in killing. We are committed to war as a solution. We call our blindness, reality.

Gracious God, help us. Give us eyes to see and ears to hear. Give us ears to hear the cries of the people of Gaza. Help us not to look away from their suffering or that of the families of the slain in Israel. Help us to take their pain and ours to you.

Where else can we take it? If we do not bring our pain to you, we will take it out on others, pain upon pain.

Help me, help us, gracious God, to not harden ourselves. Help us not to simply guard ourselves from the hurt and pain, but to come to you with it and to be witnesses to your love which is the only reality that overcomes evil.

Gracious God help us. Have mercy on us. Turn our hearts to you; turn our hearts to love.

Filed under: Death, Love, Prayer, WarTagged with: , , , ,

Who Are Our Enemies?

There is this tendency to identify the bad guys with the assumption that we are the good guys: If we (the good guys) only got rid of all the problem people, all the vermin, things would be so much better. If we simply excluded or neutralized certain kinds of people, maybe whole categories of people, the ones we view as threats, who are the enemies of our communities and our nation, then things would be made right.

Running for president a second time is a man who makes a pledge: “We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections.”

He tells us that there are people who are “poisoning the blood of our country, it’s so bad and people are coming in with disease, people are coming in with every possible thing that you can have.” “Nobody has any idea where these people are coming from, and we know they come from prisons, we know they come from mental institutions, insane asylums, we know they’re terrorists.”

It has been noted that this kind of rhetoric has similarities to the language that Hitler used to enthrall the crowds that came out to hear him.

Donald Trump is often accused of creating divisions in our nation, when he is mostly stoking the divisions that are already there. The fear of others, the experience of threat from this or that group of people, the identification of our major problems as being outside of ourselves (those others) rather than within, sets us up for manipulation. Trump simply hooks into our tendency to ignore our own sin and make the place of evil external. The truth, as Paul tells us, is that “we have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We are all a problem. We are all in need of spiritual transformation.

We have this tendency to see the problem as being mainly out there in “those people.” Exclude them or get rid of them and things will be okay. This tendency runs deep; it can be tapped into and is tapped into by wannabe authoritarians who need us to have an enemy they can promise to vanquish.

Jesus speaks to this tendency to see the problem mostly outside ourselves: “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye but do not notice the log in your own eye?” He makes it clear that until we take the log out of our own eye we are in no condition to help our neighbor, to see the speck in order to take it out of their eye.

When we operate with this kind of blindness and “have religion,” we are particularly dangerous. We are the good ones. We have God on our side. We are the ones who know where the problem comes from and what must be done.

It was religious leaders that handed Jesus over to Pilate to be crucified. When given the opportunity to choose the release of either Barabbas, an insurrectionist, or Jesus, they chose the insurrectionist.

When we remain unaware of the depth of our broken condition and project our disorder on others, blaming others for the very things we are guilty of, blaming them for the state of our nation, then we may seek judgment upon them. We gravitate to a leader who will put them in their place. And then, whatever afflictions they experience, we deem those afflictions as something they deserve.

The divisions we maintain with these attitudes run deep. They are ideological, cultural, ethnic, religious, and political. The attitudes that support these divisions are moralistic, judgmental, hardhearted, resentful, merciless, oppressive, and unloving.

The truth is we are all related, children of God, made in God’s image. We are all siblings of the same humanity whatever the differences of culture, ethnicity, religion, and vocation. And we are all broken. And the decisions we make affect others, all children of the same Creator. Therefore, St. Paul writes, “Let each of you look not to your own concerns but to the concerns of others.”

We must stop listening to someone in a position of power or desiring power badmouth our siblings. We must listen to our siblings, far and near, living under different circumstances from ours, facing difficulties, some of which, as with us, are of their own making and some of the making of others. Some experience societal forces pushing them to the margins. Others experience forces that ease them toward the center.

Whoever and wherever they are, we must seek to understand what others are going through, what forces affect their lives and their relationships. Get to know their needs. Get to know them. Have them on our minds, in our prayers. When a so-called leader tells us who threatens us, who we must be afraid of, who must be eradicated, we must refuse to listen. He or she is talking about our siblings. Even if there is someone who makes themselves our enemy, Jesus tells us to love our enemies and pray for them.

When we make decisions that will affect others (when we vote, for example), “let each of us look not to our own concerns but to the concerns of others.” Therefore, get to know the experiences and concerns of others. Hold them in our hearts so that, rather than trample over them, we respond to their concerns.

“Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night
I will go, Lord, if you lead me
I will hold your people in my heart.”

Filed under: Compassion, Fear, Grace, Humanity, Mercy, SocietyTagged with: , , ,

Christmas Reflections 2023

At Christmas, those of us who find our center in Christ celebrate our humanity. We celebrate our true humanity in union with God. Traditionally we have used the term “incarnation” to speak of this union: God revealed in the flesh; God among us and in us.

St. Paul writes of the glory of God in the face of Christ and of Christ as the image of God. With these words, he connects Christ to the story of creation in the book of Genesis, where we are told that humanity is created in the image of God.

Humanity, when it is being true to itself, is the expression of the God who is love. Our true humanity manifests love, compassion, mercy, justice. It reveals God’s love.

The attraction that brought crowds out to Jesus was the love of God that shone in his life as he reached out with compassion to heal and to liberate. Jesus said he did not come into the world to condemn the world but to seek and to save the lost. And that is what we see in him. He came in humility and openness to hurting human beings joining himself to the suffering of others, even to the point of death on a cross.

What we see in Christ is our true humanity as the expression of God who is love. We have needed to see this example of humanity, because we see, in ourselves and others, much that is false to our humanity. We see our inhumanity, the ways we put down others and operate with arrogance and selfishness, passing on the other side of the road when encountering one who has fallen, hurt and broken.

In Christ, we come to participate in our true humanity, for we experience our relationship with God. In Christ, we come to trust God. Christ’s faith becomes ours. Christ’s love and hope become ours. In Christ, the way into union with God is open.

In a world at war, divided, torn apart by our inhumanity toward one another, the words of the angel to the shepherds in the field speak to all who have ears to hear: “Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Anointed One, the Lord.”

Therefore, many of us join the shepherds watching over sheep at that first Christmas; we join with them and the angels in rejoicing and giving glory to God.

Filed under: Humanity, Love, Praise, SpiritualityTagged with: ,

Israel, Palestine and What Makes for Peace

“As Jesus came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”

Luke 19:41-42

Jesus still weeps over Jerusalem and Palestine and the cities and nations of the world, weeps over our nation’s capital and our nation. If we only knew the things that make for peace, but they are hidden from us by our pridefulness and arrogance.

Join Jesus in weeping over Jerusalem and Palestine. That is a starting point for those of us distant from the horror, but who learn daily of the carnage and loss of life. Weep over the acts of terrorism in the slaughter of Israelis, men, women, and children. Weep over the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians, men, women, and children, and for the many children being traumatized, going hungry, exposed, and living in fear.

Then weep for ourselves and our warring ways, for our support for war as a solution. Weep for the wars fought in the name of God and for wars fought in the name of no God; for wars pitting one religion against another and for wars to end religion; for wars fought in the name of ideologies, fought in the name of democracy, or an autocratic ruler, or capitalism, or communism, or any of the many isms.

Weep for the poor and suffering and the violence added to their lives. Stand with those who suffer. Stand against oppression and brutality in whatever name it is exercised, whatever religion or ideology. Join Jesus in weeping over the world and then take up your own cross and walk in the way of peace. Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. Justice, mercy, and humility are the ways of peace.

“There can be no justice without peace. And there can be no peace without justice.”

Martin Luther King Jr.

These words of Pastor King are a statement of reality. Peace cannot be achieved without justice and justice cannot be achieved without peace.

Israel, in the end, will not know peace without doing justice, making right what is wrong in their relationship with Palestinians. War is not the answer. Justice is. “There can be no peace without justice.”

And the United States will not have helped Israel by continuing to arm it and refusing to call for a ceasefire and taking steps toward peace.

”Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.”

Jesus

This remains true. Violence begets violence.

And Palestinians will not achieve justice by violent actions, but rather injustice will be added to injustice. The Civil Rights Movement in the United States points to a way: peaceful, sustained, active resistance. “There can be no justice without peace.”

“Let us then pursue what makes for peace.”

St. Paul

Doing justice makes for peace. Love that takes up the cross (that enters into the suffering of others rather than adding to it) makes for peace.

In our commitment to dominate others, in our commitment to our own security over others, the United States, along with Israel and the other nations of the world will keep going to war. Throughout most of our history, the United States has been at war somewhere in the world. And we have spent trillions of dollars on armament, monies that could be used for peace and for the uplift of those in need and therefore for justice.

We remain blind to what makes for peace.

So, Jesus weeps over us: “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”

Filed under: Grief, Justice, Poverty, WarTagged with: , , , ,

Preparing For War In A World That Goes Hungry

“On March 9, 2023, the Biden-Harris Administration submitted to Congress a proposed Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 Budget request of $842 billion for the Department of Defense (DoD), an increase of $26 billion over FY 2023 levels and $100 billion more than FY 2022.”

U.S Department of Defense

“We need $40 billion dollars per year to feed all of the world’s hungry people and end global hunger by 2030.”

U.N. World Food Programme

Consider it: $842 billion for war preparation versus $40 billion for ending global hunger.

At this point in human history, we have so excelled at preparation for war that we are capable of ending life on this planet in a great conflagration. War preparation, itself, daily contributes to the loss of life. In our fixation on ever more effective ways of killing, we ignore men, women, and children who are dying of hunger. We do so by spending obscene amounts of money on implements of death and on preparing men and women to end life, money that could be spent to save life. This commitment to war as a solution is one of the few major issues that receives bipartisan support.

There is an alternative:

Tertullian (155-c.-240 AD), reflected on Jesus’ words to Peter: “Put your sword back into its sheath.” He wrote, “The Lord in disarming Peter henceforth disarms every soldier.” When will we believe this? When will we choose life? And not be selective about it? All life is precious, life in the womb and outside the womb, young and old, saint and sinner, broken and whole.

But we would have to believe that Jesus, in disarming Peter, disarms every soldier. We would have to believe that Christ opened the way for fullness of life. (“I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”) In a world that believes in the power of death, we would have to believe in the power of resurrection. We would have to believe in life: trust in life to overcome death, peace to overcome war, love to overcome hate, faith to overcome fear, hope to overcome despair.

What if we replaced the Department of Defense with a Department of Peace? What if we specialized in peacemaking rather than war-making? What if we studied war no more? What if we loved our enemies and prayed for them? What if we did justice and showed mercy?

Yes, such a change would take a complete reorienting of our lives, a recentering at the core. It would mean our spirit would be moved by the Holy Spirit. And yes, it is hard to imagine this on a societal and global scale. We know that, in this age, there will be “wars and rumors of wars,” and that “nation will rise against nation (Matthew 24:6-7).” The human condition, without a spiritual revolution, demands it.

No other response to military aggression can be conceived—except by the kind of spiritual vision we encounter in someone like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who at an ecumenical conference in 1934, raised the question of what might happen if peace were dared, “What if one nation should meet the aggressor, not with weapons in hand, but praying, defenseless, and for that very reason protected by ‘a bulwark never failing’?”

Of course, Jesus spoke, not of nations, but of his followers as a “little flock” and indicated that few would respond to God’s call. Few could imagine something so outlandish as trusting in God in the face of military might and crucifixion. That being true, start with that truth:

Little flock, take up your cross and follow. Jesus, in disarming Peter, disarms you. Having been disarmed, do not sign up to be armed again. Instead, choose to do justice and love mercy and do the work of peacemaking. Witness to the new life, the life that comes from being reconciled to God and to one another.

Nations will continue to operate in the way they always have. Egotism, arrogance, and hegemony will reign—and be supported by false religion. In the world as it is, witnesses are needed. Jesus calls forth those who will be light in the world. He calls them to be witnesses “to the ends of the earth,” so that all might know where unconditional love and wholeness is to be found, and where true peace and justice reside.

In being witnesses to what God is doing through Christ, we prepare for the “age to come” when “the wolf shall live with the lamb; the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the lion will feed together, and a little child shall lead them (Isaiah 11:6).”

Filed under: Discipleship, Peace, War, WitnessTagged with: , ,

Ethnonationalist Christianity

In 1932, a year prior to Hitler becoming chancellor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a letter to his grandmother in which he gave expression to the coming struggle:

It is becoming increasingly clear to me that what we are going to get is a big, völkisch [ethnic] national church that in its essence can no longer be reconciled with Christianity, and that we must make up our minds to take entirely new paths and follow where they lead. The issue is really Germanism or Christianity, and the sooner the conflict comes out in the open, the better. The greatest danger of all would be in trying to conceal this.

Bonhoeffer, Theological Education, 11

We, who are Christ people in the United States of America, face the same danger Bonhoeffer pointed to, a danger that has long been with us. The issue is Americanism or Christianity, idolatry of nation or worship of the “living and true God” (A phrase St. Paul used to contrast the worship of God to the idolatry of ourselves and our imaginings (our false and therefore dead gods). This issue has been especially true of a White American Christianity with its roots in European American religous history entangled with the establishment of a nation. One of the the outgrowths of this entanglement has been an ethnic nationalism in Christian garb. Beyond the American experience, to one degree or another, the history of Christianity has been a history of ethnonationalism.

In our idolatry of nation, we confuse and subjugate a form of Christianity to nationalist values and agendas. Historically, this has meant that scripture and Christian rationales have been used to support all manner of national decisions and positions: establishment of slavery, removal of indigenous peoples from their land, going to war, who can vote, etc.

A Christianity, subordinate to nationalist ideas, ends up with a distorted usage of its own concepts. As an example, Christians have often mixed American notions of liberty with Christianity. What does it mean, after all, that “if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” The clear meaning of the New Testament is that we are freed to love. In Christ, we are being freed from arrogance and egotism, so that we can experience and live out the unconditional love of God.

Freedom in Christ is not “freedom to do our own thing” in the sense of operating out of our attitudes, prejudices, lusts, and misplaced values. It is the freedom of the love of God which moves us out to others. Among other things, it moves us to care about the freedom of others to live out their own callings and purposes. This liberating love brings healing and deliverance to individuals and societies. It is about compassion (which means to “suffer with”) and mercy (which makes us available to the needs of others).

This unconditional love of God does not bully others. There is no looking for a political “strong man” to side with us. This love has us operating in quite the opposite way, as in St. Paul’s words, this love “is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth (1 Corinthians 13:4-6).”

This love does not judge and condemn others. Jesus, “God’s Anointed,” said he did not come into the world to condemn but to seek and to rescue the lost. He comes revealing God’s love for all.

A Christianity that worries over its own rights rather than the rights of others and seeks a dominant place in society that excludes others is not the Christianity of Christ. It is not expressive of Christ who goes out to all and ministers to all in whatever condition he finds them.

It is hard to imagine that Christ sought to have followers who would spend time trying to secure positions for themselves from which they could dominate and silence the voices of others. And yet this is the way of an ethnonationalist Christianity, for it simply borrows from the ways of a nation with a White supremacist history. Of course, it often does so without recognizing or acknowledging it. Sin incorporates blindness; it chooses blindness.

Far from having a special position and recognition in the world, Jesus let his followers know that (when they are truly following him) they would experience many trials from a world that runs from the God who is Love, a world that forms into clicks, parties, nations, and alliances that prepare for war. In the New Testament, Christians are called out of this kind of world and way of operating.

A Christianity that seeks dominance in the world joins itself to the way the world operates. It takes on the idolatries of the world and its nations. It loses spiritual discernment and therefore loses a witness to Christ. It ends up witnessing to the power of egotism and bullying. It gloats in having supremacy over others rather than serving others. And it adds to the divisions. Rather than, in Bonhoeffer’s words, being a “people for others,” it becomes a people for itself, its religion, and underlying that, its ethnicity.

There clearly is a conflict between an ethnonationalist Christianity and a Christian identity that is being formed in Christ. Growing “in Christ” increasingly frees us from the idolatry of nation, ethnicity and dominance. It frees us to serve others across all self-serving, fear-creating boundaries, for we have entered a life, in Christ, which chooses love over hate, mercy over judgment, peace over war.

Furthermore, in Christ, we have come to acknowledge our broken condition, a condition we share with all humanity. As we grow in this knowledge, we realize we are in no position to be self-righteous and condemning of others.

We also know that nothing about this radical brokenness we experience changes without the transforming grace and mercy of God and that, while we undergo a spiritual conversion, we remain broken. We are on a path of being healed with the knowledge that God is not through with us.

We also recognize others who are undergoing this foundational change and spiritual reorientation. We join with them that we might grow in this reality together. (Some may have no explicit relationship to Christianity whose encountered forms they may have had good reason to flee, but who nevertheless experience the “Christ reality” of “letting go” and trusting themselves to grace and love.)

With this change in our lives and knowing the source of the change, we realize that we must acknowledge and witness against a false Christianity—one we may have been caught up in. We must confess the sin of an idolatrous White supremacist and nationalist Christianity. In Christ, we are coming to know it by its fruit. And, in Christ, there is forgiveness and a new way to walk in.

We must bear witness against this false Christianity, not only for the sake of those who know little or nothing of the Christ reality, but for the sake of those who have come to be in Christ, but who are attached to churches that have radically melded together a form of Christianity with an idolatry of nation and race.

We encourage siblings in Christ, in the nationalist churches of our land, to exercise discernment regarding their church leaders. They will know them by their fruit (which includes their messages). The Spirit will help them recognize what is of Christ and what is not. The Spirit will help them to recognize what messages appeal to their own idolatries and what messages liberate them from their idols. We are all responsible for exercising discernment empowered by the Spirit.

We must discern and then give witness to what God reveals to us.

Filed under: Love, Spirituality, WitnessTagged with: ,

Unattractive Religion

Unattractive Religion Type 1: Repulsed by what is false.

There is much religion that must be fled, if we care about reality. It is one of the reasons many leave churches. They do not find truth there. They do not find life-giving reality. They do not experience the reality of love—a love that is welcoming and supportive and includes all.

Some are repulsed by a church’s bondage to dogmatism and legalism, by the central place given to doctrines, principles, and morals, and the roles that categories play in defining its members. They feel that the experience of humanity’s depth is missing, the experience of the Spirit, of Holy Mystery, and of grace and freedom.

There are many who are repulsed by the eroding of Christian experience by that which is foreign to the Christ reality. There is something terribly false about a White nationalist Christianity that makes an idol of nation and whiteness, or a prosperity Christianity that displaces the will of God with our prosperity. There is something critically false about a legalistic Christianity that has left grace and mercy behind in judging and condemning others.

Many global religious traditions began with an enlightenment or revelation or experience of Holy Mystery that opened, freed, and deepened our humanity. Their beginnings were like a spring of fresh, inviting water bubbling up on the side of a mountain, fresh at its source, but then picking up various debris as it traveled down the mountain side.

It did not take Christianity long to pick up ingredients foreign to its beginnings, becoming conformed to cultural and political values, taking on forms of “worldly” power and dominance, making its doctrines the thing that had to be protected—even by violence, rather than (with Christ) losing its life for the sake of the world. Early on, in the New Testament and with Jesus, there were warnings about false prophets and false religion.

What is true for Christianity has been true for other religions as well, at times with horrific results: Religion becoming simply a mask for evil.

As with other religious traditions, Christianity can be critiqued from within its own tradition. Simply go back to the source, the fresh spring. From the source we begin to recognize the debris that has accumulated over time. We discern what about our Christianity has simply become a cover for our cultural commitments and values instead of being the spiritual reality that critiques our ways of operating in the world and restores us to our true humanity.

Jesus speaks to the heart of his movement when he says that others will know his followers by their love, which he calls the central commandment: Love God above all things and love your neighbor as yourself.

When we move away from this reality, repulsion to what we have become can be the beginning of coming back to what is true.

Unattractive Religion Type 2: Repulsed by what is true.

Jesus said, “The truth will set you free.” But there is that, in us, which runs from the truth, especially inward truth which will have us facing up to what is false in us, false to our true humanity created in the image of God who is Love.

Jesus called us to a recentering of our lives which involves the relinquishing of ourselves to God. Jesus said, “Lose your life and you will find it.” His was a call to trust the whole of ourselves to Holy Mystery. All true religion calls us to let go of our lives in order to find ourselves.

Our egocentric selves revolt against this “letting go.” Our egocentric values revolt. What we have built of our lives apart from God, revolts. Our false self wants to hold on to what it has been building and therefore is repulsed by anything that would take its place. Our false self refuses to recognize a self created in the image of God for love.

Our false self is repulsed by what is implied of such a true self, a self that loves enemies, forgives those who persecute us, loves those who hate us instead of hating them back, a self that relinquishes its idols (the centering of its life around its own control, power, pleasure, riches; its own nation, people, and political party).

People were repulsed by Jesus because he spoke truth to power—to self-centered power. He told his followers that they could expect the same repulsion from others and be blessed for it. He said, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of justice.”

It is no wonder that we will craft a religion of our own making, one that fits our idolatries and values. Repulsed by the truth and desiring a god who is on the side of our idols, we make for ourselves a religion that our false ways can be comfortable with.

Or we decide it is simply easier to have no religion or at least one that does not need a god. (Atheism can be such a religion.)

Being repulsed by what is false in religion opens the possibility of being open to what is true. Being repulsed by what is true calls for a turn to the truth wherever it is found, but especially to the truth of ourselves, the truth of our inward reality.

The Spirit will help us come to the truth of ourselves, so that we distinguish the false from the real through the relinquishing of our lives to the Source of all reality. Jesus tells us that if we continue in the truth, the “truth will set us free.” We will be on a journey of getting real.

Filed under: Humanity, Love, SpiritualityTagged with:

The Present Age and the Age to Come

St. Paul writes of the “the present evil age.” Jesus speaks of the “age to come”—as Paul does also.

We experience the present age as evil. We experience violence, mass shootings, road rage, all kinds of rage, deep divisions in our society, breakdown in relationships and families, mental health struggles with our youth, racism in police departments, politicians motivated by personal power rather than a holistic vision, and, of course, the roots of our problems in the selfishness, arrogance and greed that are a part of the human condition. We live in an evil age.

The flip side of all this, of course, is that it is our experience of the goodness and beauty of creation, including of humanity made in the image of God that enables us to see the starkness of evil. It is human compassion, mercy, care for justice; it is human beings forgiving one another and being reconciled to one another that puts the existence of evil into sharp relief. As we grow as children of God made in the image of God, we increasingly recognize what we have lost of our humanity. We recognize something of the depth of evil in this age, and we long for a time when everything will be made right.

When Christians celebrate the resurrection to eternal life, they look, in part, beyond the present evil age to the age to come when we will know the fullness of our true humanity in God.

In this present age, we get a taste of this resurrection life. In Christ, we have the experience of dying and rising, dying to a false self and becoming alive to our true humanity in God. But we remain in a battle. We are up against “spiritual principalities and powers of darkness.” We are in a great struggle, and so we look forward to the day when the battle will be over and all things will be made right.

We stretch out for that day. We view what we are going through in this present age with a vision of the age to come when “God will wipe away every tear from our eyes.”

St. Paul kept hold of this vision which sustained him in the midst of the evil of this age. He was able to face battles because he believed in the resurrection. Paul made it clear that this belief enabled him to put himself in danger. He was able to fight, in his words, “wild animals at Ephesus” where a crowd came against him. He was able to face the mob and jail and beatings because of the resurrection from the dead. He could freely face death because it was not the end.

When I think of movements toward justice, I think of those who have kept the future before them—a future with hope that makes present action possible. It is a vision of what could be, what ought to be, a vision of a world where justice reigns that sustains present action for change. The most expansive vision for such action is that of the age to come when everything will be made right.

In this present age, we journey into mystery toward that future age. St. Paul: “Look, I will tell you a mystery! …. We will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye…. (1 Corinthians 15:51-52).”

There is no blueprint for this journey, for living out our days in this present age, but there is the leading and empowering of the Spirit. And there is the assurance of faith that there is an age to come when we will know fully what we now only know in part: We will know the fullness of the resurrection in the presence of God.

Filed under: Humanity, Spirituality, WitnessTagged with: ,

Jesus and Trans Persons

There has been a plethora of legislation crafted, or in the process of being crafted, by state legislatures across the country, that affects transgender persons and the people who love them. Generally, these laws being considered or already passed affect transgender children, their parents, doctors, and educators. They tend to make life more difficult for those directly affected. They further marginalize those already marginalized in our society.

There are many situations that do not need laws. There are many decisions that need to be left to those who are most affected—who live close to the issues. And there is this reality, also: There are many attitudes present in our society that will support oppressive laws.

Not all societies marginalize trans persons as ours has. There have been societies that have had very different attitudes toward transgender persons than our society. As I understand it, indigenous peoples of the Americas have historically simply recognized the gifts and special place of trans persons in their communities. Their recognition provides an alternative.

Laws motivated by fear, discomfort, and prejudice will end up being oppressive; they will further “disinherit” and put “people’s backs to the wall” (Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited). This is particularly true when politicians, concerned with maintaining power, tap into the fears and prejudices of others in order to gain standing for their next election.

As a follower of Jesus, I tend to ask, “What would Jesus do?” Where is Jesus on this matter of laws that further marginalize people? What do we learn from his life and teaching?

What is clear about Jesus is that he spent his time with the marginalized and outcasts—with the poor, the beggar along the road; the sick, the blind, the deaf, and the lame; with lepers who lived outside the community; with those experiencing mental breakdown. He spent time with those in need, the brokenhearted, and those who were bound. He brought healing and deliverance.

When he was invited to a religious leader’s house and noticed the kind of people who were invited, he said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers and sisters or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind (Luke 14:12).” It is clear where Jesus’ heart was.

When a woman was about to be stoned for adultery in accordance with the law, Jesus did not join the religious leaders (all men) forming a circle around her. He joined the woman.

Jesus’ harshest words came against those with social standing who set themselves over others. Many are familiar with the beatitudes or blessings of Jesus, but not so familiar with Jesus’ “woes”:

“Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep (Luke 6:24-25).”

These words speak to those who have “made it” in society, who have position and influence, and who may also have leadership roles that directly affect the lives of others. Jesus calls all to turn from positioning themselves over others and oppressing others.

He calls his followers to lives of compassion and serving others. He calls us to enter into the lives of others. No more making decisions about others from a distance, decisions that continue to marginalize.

Do not further marginalize. Do not add to people’s experiences of being bullied. Enter, with compassion, into the lives of parents who are raising a child who experiences their gender as opposite to their biological sex. Listen to parents who demonstrate loving acceptance of their child and their child’s experience of themselves. Support them, and encourage teachers who are trying to provide a loving, welcoming space in their classrooms and schools.

Jesus is with the trans child and the trans adult. He comes to them with compassion and acceptance. Like every one of us, trans individuals must make their own decisions about their lives, take the steps they see to take. They will seek guidance from those who love them. They may seek God’s guidance as well.

At the heart of it all is this: we are to love others. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love is open to the other person’s experience. Love listens.

Legislators, if you are not listening to trans persons or the parents of trans children, do not craft laws for them. Do not further burden them with your fear, discomfort, prejudice, or that of your constituents.

What is required of you as a human being is to “do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8).” Justice does not add to the wrongs but makes right what is wrong. Mercy sees the burdens others are carrying and does not add to the burdens but lifts them. Therefore, walk humbly, listen, and be open to the experience of those who are being marginalized. They are in a better position to speak of their needs than those operating from fear, discomfort, and prejudice, or from a desire to maintain power.

Filed under: Compassion, Humanity, Justice, MercyTagged with: , ,