Month: November 2020

Nothing Has Changed For Faith

Joe Biden replacing Donald Trump as president of the United States is a welcome change for many of us. But nothing has changed for faith. We expect a positive change in the rhetoric coming from the White House, the treatment of children arriving at our southern border, and the policies addressing the disparities in our nation. These changes, of course, will be relative to what has gone before and what is envisioned for our future. Many of us will be disappointed by the smallness of these actions. Which is why it is important to recognize that nothing has changed for faith—for faith in God and the actions flowing from faith.

The trusting relinquishment of our lives to God keeps us rooted in and growing in love and reality, whatever may come. Dependence on God for our very being sustains and grows our vision. Our ultimate dependence is not on a particular form of government or political party or president or congress but on God and God’s reign. By faith, all governments and all who govern are critiqued by God’s ways of governing. All actions are seen against the backdrop of God’s reign where the servant is leader, the last first, and the humble exalted. Nothing has changed for faith. God has always been the all in all, whatever the circumstances. When we have been anxious about our circumstances (a pandemic and a president), it has been faith that has kept us and will keep us, whatever we face. By faith, we have found that we can cast our anxieties on God who cares for us, sustains us, and guides us through it all.

Nothing has changed for the changeless center of all things. Faith, hope, and love abide. By faith in God, we see visions and dream dreams. By hope, we stretch out for the realization of those visions and dreams. By the unconditional love of God, we are enabled to act. The love of God poured into our hearts by the Spirit gives us the actions that are true to our humanity made in the image of God and to the visions of the Spirit. This love is merciful and forgiving; it sees beyond ours and others’ faults. It does not judge, nor is it demeaning toward others but rather is manifest in works of healing and deliverance, justice and peace.

By faith, we are clear-eyed about the corruption of humanity, the self-absorbed divisiveness, enmity, greed, and lust, the self-inturned ways of a broken humanity. By faith, therefore, we are not given to magical thinking, no matter how sophisticated and intellectual. We are not into ideologies or rational programs for fixing things. We know that our fundamental problem is spiritual. Jesus’ good news remains the answer: “Repent and have faith, for the reign of God is near.” “Turn to God, who is the source of your life, and surrender your life to God’s reign.”

Nothing has changed for faith. An election has not changed our fundamental problem, nor its solution. We need God. We need to be centered in the One who is the center of all things. Nothing else will solve our divisions. Every division has a wrong center. In God, we live and move and have our being. Trust in God frees us to truly embrace each other.

Nothing has changed for faith. Faith in God continues to look to a future beyond our brief history. It reaches out for the end and goal of history in Christ, who is our true humanity in union with God. In its stretching out, faith works through love with the goal in mind: All things will be made new in “a new heaven and a new earth,” all finding their home with God.

Filed under: Faith, Love, SpiritualityTagged with: , ,

Trump, White America, and Our Humanity

After all that Donald Trump has done, all the misery he has caused, all the racism he has aroused, all the immigrant families he has destroyed, all the people who have left this life because of his mismanagement of a pandemic, still roughly half of the country voted to extend this horror show.

White people—both men and women—were the only group in which a majority voted for Trump. (Charles M. Blow)

I have thought of Donald Trump as a mirror by which we could see ourselves as a nation. After all, we had managed to put him into the office of the presidency. My hope was that, after four years of looking in the mirror, we would not like what we saw. I had not expected Trump to grow his base by several million voters. Apparently, many looked in the mirror, saw themselves, and liked what they saw.

Many, who have been the opposition to Trump, have been alarmed by the breaking of democratic and institutional norms, practices, and mores; the narcissistic, demeaning, dishonest, and immoral behavior; the utter lack of leadership and care for the real issues of our time. We have an incredibly self-absorbed human being heading our government. He is a mirror of self-absorption. In fact, Trump has mirrored our ability, as a people, to be absorbed with our most narrow interests, to see not far beyond our personal issues and those of people like us. When Trump has expressed grievances, prejudices, and fear of others different from us, we may have seen ourselves in the mirror. When Trump has demeaned those viewed as the opposition or “not us,” we may have seen ourselves, having craved their demeaning. If we have been a part of the opposition to Trump, we may have seen ourselves in the mirror of those who have demeaned Trump and his supporters.

It is apparent that we can look into a mirror that represents something of ourselves and be blind to the defacement that is present. We need a different mirror. We need the mirror of Christ, the mirror of our true humanity, a humanity turned outward to others, not merely looking out for its own interests. In Christ, we see compassion that recognizes the needs of others and reaches out with healing and liberation. We see mercy that enters into the lives of the “least” of the human family, those marginalized by our inhumanity towards others. In Christ, we see justice that works to make right what is wrong. In Christ, we see one who loses his life for the sake of the world. We need to look into the mirror of the humanity we see in Christ. This humanity—which is compassionate and merciful—is near, as near as God is to us, the God who is in all things. But we must turn from our false humanity to our true selves made in the image of God.

If we look into the mirror of Christ, the mirror of compassionate humanity, we will begin to see truthfully. We will see the disfigurement of our humanity by sin, the spiritual roots of our blindness. We will also see that neither Trump nor support for Trump is an aberration. As Jamille Bouie expresses it, “The line to Trump runs through the whole of American history.” Trump mirrors our history. Whatever our democratic ideals, ours is a history of the degradation and subjugation of people, of native Americans and people of African descent and others. Ours has been a history of White supremacy—what many have called our nation’s original sin. The majority of Whites voted for Trump. He represented them more than the alternative that at least expressed the desire to address racial disparities and injustices and to stop the mistreatment of children and families at our border. When we look into the mirror that is Trump, we see White supremacy. And White supremacy has supported him.

White evangelicals, who saw in Trump a protector of “Christian values” or, at the least, “religious freedom,” need to turn to Christ, who said that if we seek to secure our lives, we will lose them, but if we lose our lives for Christ’s sake, we will gain them. Only when we relinquish our lives to God will we be witnesses to Christ, rather than witnesses to our fears and self-absorption and White nationalist values that exist under a guise of “Christian values.”

Dear reader, if you are finding your true self in Christ, you know that you are called to be a witness to what is on the heart of God whose image you are. We are to be witnesses in a world plagued by inhumanity. We are to be witnesses before a false Christianity. We join with others who are discovering their true humanity. They may not call it Christ, but they are increasingly living from that humanity, and we recognize them by their compassion and share with them a common labor to do justice, love mercy, and live faithfully.

Filed under: Humanity, Justice, Racism, Society, WitnessTagged with: , ,