Author: David Lowry

Discerning the Signs of the Times

Speaking to the religious leaders of his day, Jesus said, “You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky [whether fair weather or threatening weather], but you cannot interpret the signs of the times (Matthew 16:3).”

Religion does not enable us to discern the signs of the times. Laws, morals, and principles to live by do not enable us to discern the signs of the times. Philosophies, theologies, and ideologies (conservative or progressive) do not enable us to discern the signs of the times. The most helpful of our theologies and ethics speak in generalities and may provide some help in broad strokes, but offer little help for discerning the signs present in the specific situations of our lives and times.

Discernment for what is happening in our world and for the actions we are to take is ultimately a spiritual activity with a prophetic element.

The Pharisees and Sadducees, to whom Jesus was speaking, had a well-developed and rational theology and moral philosophy that made sense within their systems of thought, but they were blind to the signs of their times.

There is much religion and moral thinking that operates within closed systems of thought. Religions often operate with the assumption that from their theologies and ethical thinking they can speak to virtually anything. Religious leaders can give the impression that they speak for God as they give answers from their particular theology or ethical philosophy.

People who make decisions from a particular theology or set of moral principles may feel secure in their theology, morality, and decisions. They may also be self-righteous and judgmental toward others who do not share their way of thinking. The morality of moral people can blind them to their own immorality. Paul writes of those who judge others: “In passing judgement on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things (Romans 2:1).”

It is possible to say we live by the Bible (or some other sacred text) or act from a clear set of moral principles but, in actuality, live far from the truth—all the while judging others who do not share our views. For all our moralizing and reading the Bible and having a theology, we operate blind. As with the religious leaders of Jesus day, we do not discern what is happening around us (or in us).

Discernment is a spiritual activity. Having a well-developed theology and morality will not help us discern the signs of the times. We cannot discern the signs without discerning God’s will. (Of course, we have to pay attention to the times, to what is going on around us, but paying attention has a spiritual aspect as well.) We must discern God’s will in order to discern the times in which we live.

Paul gives a very succinct description of what is involved in discerning God’s will. He tells us to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice” (relinquish your lives to God) and “do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God (Romans 12:1-2).”

Having a morality or principles to live by (no matter how we got them) will not enable us to discern. Spiritual discernment comes with submission to God and therefore to God’s will and therefore excludes conforming to a world caught up in arrogance and self-absorption. It involves allowing ourselves, our ways of thinking and deciding, to be transformed by the renewing work of the Spirit. It involves the leading of the Spirit.

Only then can we begin to discern the signs of the times.

Furthermore, we cannot turn over the exercise of discernment to others: to religious leaders and “prophets.” There have always been far more false prophets than true prophets. We cannot give over to others the discernment that we are responsible to exercise. We must, each, submit our lives to God and grow in openness to God’s will, so that we “are no longer children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming (Ephesians 4:14).”

Jesus would have his followers discern the signs of the times, so that they may speak and operate from that discernment. He would not have us secured by and bound to a theology as the Pharisees were, but rather open and still before the living God, waiting for the still small voice.

Prayer becomes critical for true discernment—prayer as submission to God and God’s will. Prayer does not consist in the practice of providing a list of things for God to do for us that we believe will make our lives better. Prayer is submission of our lives to God for the leading of the Spirit, for eyes that see and ears that hear.

There is no substitute for the contemplative life, for life open to God, open for truth in the inward being. We are called from the noise of our world, including the religious noise. We are called to a letting go of ourselves, or, as Jesus says, to a losing of ourselves that we may gain our true selves, selves that are open and discerning and therefore receiving direction.

Filed under: Prayer, Society, SpiritualityTagged with: ,

Grief, Healing, and Action

Many of us are grieving the reelection of Donald Trump to the office of president of the United States of America. We have seen his cruelty. We remember his separating children from their parents at the border. We have seen how he demeans and taunts others. We have seen his racism, sexism, and xenophobia. We have seen how he hooks into people’s fears, grievances, and prejudices. He manipulates and abuses human weakness for his own purposes.

So we grieve. We grieve the state of our union, our relationships to one another, our divisions.

Joe Biden has often said “That is not who we are,” when speaking of the kinds of actions and attitudes expressed by Trump. And yet the extent of our embrace of Trump makes him a mirror that reflects us as a nation. He certainly is not the only mirror, but he is one that reveals something of what is valued and pursued in our nation and how we view one another.

The truth is we are all broken. We need healing. We need deliverance. From anger. From self-absorption. From fear. From grievances. From the way we view and judge one another. We need to be freed from the hooks that a Trump can hook into.

We need to love one another. Those of us who are followers of Jesus have learned from Jesus that we are to serve one another with compassion and to witness to the love that is near and available.

When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. (Matthew 9:36)

Harassed and helpless describes the human condition. In our helplessness, we need compassionate action in our lives. When we have come to know that compassion, we must share it. We must exercise it.

Compassion does not judge others; it does not write them off. But it does discern. And it does not remain silent. We must speak the truth in love. We must speak to the underlying egotism and self-absorption that alienates us from one another, alienates us from knowing or caring about what others are going through, confines us to our own felt needs and agendas and views of the world. Alienates us from Love. We must speak deliverance.

And then the compassion we experience must continue to move us outward in doing justice. When, for example, Trump starts rounding up millions of undocumented people, putting them into internment camps, separating them from spouses and children, in order to process them out of the country, we must stand in the way. We must speak out. We must call others to give witness to the injustice and work to make right what is wrong. Rather than add to the darkness, we must be light in our society.

Filed under: Compassion, Healing, Love, Serving, Society, WitnessTagged with: ,

What I Look For In A Leader

I am a follower of Jesus, so what I look for in a leader is some semblance of what Jesus declared is essential to our true humanity created in the image of God. Here is what I want to see in a leader:

Compassion for those who have been pushed to the margins of society and who carry heavy burdens.

When he saw the crowds, Jesus had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. (Matthew 9:36)

A desire to serve rather than exercise power over others.

Jesus said to them, “The kings of the gentiles lord it over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather, the greatest among you must become like the youngest and the leader like one who serves.” (Luke 22:25-26)

Able to show mercy.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. (Matthew 5:7)

Committed to working for justice.

Let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5:24)

Shows humility.

Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:4)

Makes peace rather than stirs up division.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. (Matthew 5:9)

Demonstrates faithfulness and honesty in exercising responsibilities.

Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much, and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. (Luke 16:10)

Demonstrates love for all people, without distinctions.

Love is patient; love is kind; 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. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)

Filed under: Humanity, Leadership, SpiritualityTagged with: , ,

Obama On Unity, Division, and Politics

All across America, in big cities and small towns, away from all the noise, the ties that bind us together are still there. We still coach Little League and look out for our elderly neighbors. We still feed the hungry, in churches and mosques and synagogues, and share the same pride when our Olympic athletes compete for the gold. (Barack Obama)

In his address to the Democratic National Convention, Obama points beyond our political divisions to aspects of our humanity that bind us together. He calls us to embrace our common humanity and reach out to each other beyond the fault lines of our politics. From our common ground, we must listen to each other for the concerns and needs that are beneath our various political positions.

He also shares what he sees as some of the causes of our divisions:

We live in a time of such confusion and rancor, with a culture that puts a premium on things that don’t last – money, fame, status, likes. We chase the approval of strangers on our phones; we build all manner of walls and fences around ourselves and then wonder why we feel so alone. We don’t trust each other as much because we don’t take the time to know each other – and in that space between us, politicians and algorithms teach us to caricature each other and troll each other and fear each other.

Obama calls us to go beneath our politics to the underlying causes of division. He names money, fame, status, approval. He implies that we put a premium on protecting ourselves from one another. From a spiritual viewpoint, he is naming pursuits that we have made central to our identity and that put us in competition with or in fear of others. We therefore tend to isolate ourselves. We “don’t take the time to know each other” or trust each other. We are ripe for manipulation from “politicians and algorithms.”

Again, from a spiritual viewpoint, our pursuits have left out love for one another. We have lost our true center in Love. Our divisiveness and our inhumanity toward others is rooted in the loss of empathy and compassion.

With love, we are able to enter into the lives of others and be open and welcoming of others whose cultures, histories, and views may differ from ours. Love is not put off by differences. Nor does it seek superiority over others or pride of place. Rather, it makes us available to others.

Jesus spoke of love in radical terms when he said, “Love your neighbor as yourself” which requires us to put ourselves in the place of our neighbor, which further requires us to listen to our neighbor. It does not necessitate agreement, but it does mean we do not write off another person. Love transforms us and others—if we let it.

When it comes to leadership in our nation, we need persons who have empathy and compassion toward others without which we will only have further divisions. Those who show compassion are those who are aware of their own brokenness, who are no longer running from their own pain or providing a cover for their own insecurity.

A man who is unable to acknowledge weakness and vulnerability is dangerous in a position of leadership. If he has a practice of denying his own weakness, he will manipulate the weaknesses of others. A man who says he never asks for forgiveness has little basis for a true relationship with others. A man, who carries past hurts and grievances and lashes out, bullying and belittling others, needs healing. He does not need to be put in a position of leadership.

Donald Trump, as president, is dangerous not only for our nation but for the world, and especially for those who have been marginalized. If we know this, and as the election approaches, we must share our views of leadership with one another. Where love is the foundation of our relationships, we are able to do this without ridicule or putting down others. Love makes it possible to share from the deeper reality of our common humanity and from our most basic needs and concerns as human beings living in community.

If we have come to know love as the basis of our relationships, we must share the truth we know and do so in love for others and for our nation.

Filed under: Compassion, Humanity, LoveTagged with: , ,

Nations Become What They Decide To Be

The decisions we make manifest themselves in what we become as human beings. If we decide to get back at others for what they said or did that hurt us, and make a habit of such reactions, we become someone who operates from hurt and anger. On the other hand, if we decide to act from a place of love for others, regardless of how they act toward us, we become lovers of humanity—yes, of a broken humanity. If we have a habit of doing what Jesus instructs his followers to do, “turning the other cheek,” “loving our enemies, “praying for those who persecute us,” we are on a path of growth into our true humanity as children of God.

Our decisions determine what we become. We decide for our humanity or inhumanity. We decide to be lovers or reactors. We decide to give to or to get back at another human being. We decide what we become.

Nations decide what they become. In our nation, a congress, a president, a supreme court, and “we the people” decide what we will be toward each other and the world.

As a people, we have opportunities to decide what kind of nation we will be. We can be tribal in our decisions, reacting against others (owning the libs, or detesting MAGA people). We can make decisions from grievances and the despising of others or we can make decisions from a vision of wholeness and compassion.

In a democracy, even a partial democracy like the United States, the decisions of “we the people” regarding who and what kind of leadership we want, in some measure, provide us with the nation we have. The less we are an autocracy and the more we are a democracy, the more clearly “we the people” are responsible for what we get.

We are responsible for choosing a government that seeks justice for and the uplift of those marginalized or a government and nation that marginalize. We know that it is possible to decide for a government that annihilates a people as the Nazis did. Or, as we did, decide to institute slavery and then, with its abolition, decide for the continued marginalization and oppression of a people by implementing Jim Crow laws and by terrorizing a people with lynchings as the South did or by establishing racist policies, actions and mores as the North did.

Of course, if we care little for anyone beyond ourselves, our family, “our people,” our religion, then we will give little attention to the effects government and societal decisions have on people other than ourselves. We will not spend time trying to understand how others are affected by laws, policies, mores. We will, by our support, ignorance or simply not caring, keep in place laws and mores that maintain the oppression of others outside our circle. (Slavery remained for 250 years, Jim Crow laws for 70 years through a combination of support and/or apathy from a majority of Americans.)

However we think about our decisions as a people and a nation, we see what we have decided by what we have become. Germans must come to terms with the nation they became, a nation that was responsible for killing 6 million Jews. Many, at the time of the Holocaust, may have excused themselves by saying they were not voting for genocide, but the truth is the seeds were there in the rhetoric of Hitler and others.

Americans must come to terms with what we became, a nation responsible for the genocide of millions of Native Americans through displacement and massacre, and the death of millions of Africans who died in the Middle Passage and millions who were brutalized as slaves. Of course, coming to terms with our past means acknowledging the truth of our past. Our oppressive actions locally and globally remain, unless we acknowledge our wrongs and repent. Trying to rewrite or ignore these aspects of our history only binds us to past decisions and future acts of oppression.

We continue to decide what we become—especially by our decisions toward those who have been marginalized, excluded, pushed aside in our nation. Of course, what we become as a nation comes from the decisions of a cross-section of the electorate. What many of us would like to see is not even on the ballot, but must be lifted up and worked for though doing justice, loving mercy and living faithfully. Therefore, Jesus calls the children of humanity, who are also children of God, to be light in the darkness. We are to be witnesses to what we have come to know of the love of God.

Jesus spoke of the age we live in as an “evil age.” In this age, we are to witness to what we have seen and have come to know of our true humanity created in the image of God. Like yeast, we are to have an effect on the whole; we are not to force something on others, but to effect the decisions of others and our nation by our witness to the love of God that is good news for the oppressed, heals the brokenhearted and welcomes all.

Filed under: Decision, Humanity, Justice, WitnessTagged with: , ,

The Ten Commandments, Separation of Church and State, and Cultural Change

Louisiana passed a law that mandates the Ten Commandments to be hung in every public classroom in the state. On the face of it, if you exclude the first four of the ten commandments, the other six express what most people would regard as ethically desirable: Honor your parents, do not murder people, be faithful to your spouse, do not steal, do not bear false witness against your neighbor, and do not covet what belongs to your neighbor.

The first four are of a more religious nature. The first two call us from idolatry (the worship of images, extensions of our imaginations, and therefore of ourselves). The third has to do with not taking God’s name in vain and the fourth with keeping the seventh day holy by making it a day of rest.

The first four commandments clearly make this a religious document, that and the fact that these commandments are expressions of the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is disingenuous to treat them otherwise in a nation that calls for the separation of church and state. It does not work to define the Ten Commandments as an historical and foundational document in the formation of the nation. They remain an expression of ecclesial traditions.

Furthermore, it is clear from the comments made by the mandate’s supporters that the intentions behind this law are directed to infusing a particular Christian worldview into the culture of the state. Clearly, there is a problem with the state espousing a particular religious view. It is a problem for the state and for the religion. We have had a nationalist Christianity from our nation’s inception which was capable of supporting slavery and the dispossession of the land from people indigenous to it. This was a Christianity without Christ—a civil religion, supportive of nationalist goals, and wrapped in Christian rhetoric.

Also, the idea of mandating or forcing a particular Christian view onto a nation and culture has nothing to do with the ways of Christ. This mandating of laws as a way to reform culture was not the way Christ operated. He proclaimed the nearness of God, of God’s reign or governance, and called people to turn to God. He called them to trust their lives to God. He focused on the first commandment that calls us to turn from idols to serve a living and true God. (Along with common idols such as power, money and pleasure, we can make an idol of the Bible, our particular beliefs, our forcing our beliefs on others, our self-made-righteousness, etc.)

The other commandments, within Jewish and Christian scripture, mean very little without the first. Jesus said the central call of God, as the Hebrew Scriptures express it, was to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind and our neighbor as ourselves. From a place of trust in and love of God everything else about being truly human, made in the image of God, follows.

The reality of Christ and of God’s presence come not from politicians crafting legal mandates but from those who are light in the world. To his followers who were coming to know the reality of God’s presence, Jesus said, “Let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven” (from whom all good works flow).

Jesus reserved his harshest judgment for religious leaders who hammered people with their laws. He said, “Woe to you experts in the law! For you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not lift a finger to ease them.”

Jesus represents an entirely different approach to people and to personal and cultural change. He said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Jesus operated by invitation, not mandates.

The change we need is a deep change in the human heart that laws do not reach, but which love does. This change cannot be forced. Mandates crafted by politicians, arrogant in their ability to force through legislation, do nothing to heal and liberate. Love and mercy bring true healing and transformation.

Filed under: Discipleship, Grace, Society, WitnessTagged with: , , ,

A Christian View of Christian Nationalism

By “Christian,” I mean a follower of Jesus who has come to view the world from the experience of “being in Christ.”

By follower of Jesus, I mean one who is being led to:

  1. Bear suffering in order to serve others. 1
  2. Serve rather than seek dominion over others.2
  3. Love rather than judge or condemn others.3
  4. Love enemies and pray for them.4
  5. Love our neighbor as ourselves, no matter who our neighbor is.5
  6. Do justice, love mercy and live faithfully.6

By the experience of “being in Christ” I mean that we:

  1. Participate in the reality of the crucified and risen Christ so that we die to the old in-turned self and rise to “walk in newness of life.”7
  2. Participate in Christ’s love.8
  3. Be led by the Spirit, rather than by religious rules, principles and beliefs which the “flesh” (the ego-centric self) loves.9
  4. Operate by God’s grace through faith, rather than legalistic moralism.10
  5. Trust ourselves, others, and all creation to God, rather than act like we are the ones who have the answer.

When Christian nationalism is viewed from the vantage point of following Jesus and participating in the reality of Christ, it is seen merely as nationalism with a Christian facade. It is an idolatry of the nation undergirded by Christian rhetoric, particularly in the form of “Christian” laws and principles.

Those who seek to bring back the “Christian foundations” of our nation hearken back to an earlier Christian nationalism, one, at least in part, inherited from Europe. They hearken to a kind of Christian morals and mores that existed as a dimension of our nation alongside its constitution, a Christian morality that for many included the institution of slavery and the dispossession of the peoples indigenous to the land. In other words, a Christianity far removed from the message and life of Christ—a Christianity quite capable of horrendous evil.

The present Christian nationalism carries forward the elements of this earlier nationalism, above all in its White (and male) supremacy. It downplays our history of racism, oppression, and injustice and discounts the primary roots of the American revolution and constitution in Enlightenment values.

Of course, there has been another much smaller stream of Christianity (which included European American Christians) that engaged in movements for the abolition of slavery, pressed for peace among nations, and sought social justice.

Above all, it has been African American Christians who, from their lived experience, brought radical clarity to the unchristian reality of our nation. Frederick Douglass called the Christianity of the slave-holding South and those Northern churches that continued to support their Southern counterparts as “sham religion.“

Black Christians continue to offer a critique and an alternative to White Christian nationalism. White Christians must listen to their voices—which means we must repent of our arrogance. By listening with open hearts, we will receive from those who experience the oppressive nature of White Christian nationalism.

The call to follow Jesus and participate in the Christ reality is a call to repent from all Christian nationalism, from all idolatry of nation and of whiteness and of ourselves, and all attempts to have dominion over others. Freed from idolatry, we are freed from feeling like we must secure “our Christianity.” We are freed from safeguarding what we have built (our false Christianity) and therefore freed to serve others.

Jesus calls his followers, not to dominate and bully others, but to be salt and light in the world, to be witnesses to God’s love and mercy in word and in action. At the heart of our witness is a welcoming love toward others that does justice, loves mercy and walks humbly with God.

  1. “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” Luke 9:23 ↩︎
  2. “But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you, but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave, just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.” Matthew 20:25-28 ↩︎
  3. “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.” Matthew 7:1 ↩︎
  4. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Matthew 5:44 ↩︎
  5. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Matthew 19:19 ↩︎
  6. “The weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.” Matthew 23:23 ↩︎
  7. “We were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.” Romans 6:4 ↩︎
  8. “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Romans 5:5 ↩︎
  9. “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.” Romans 8:14 ↩︎
  10. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” Ephesians 2:8 ↩︎
Filed under: Discipleship, Grace, Justice, Racism, Society, WitnessTagged with: , ,

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: , , ,