Category: Love

Healing For Divisions

How do we cross the divides? Whether cultural, social, or political, where do we find common ground? How do we recognize our common humanity?

Divisions reveal the breakdown of our humanity. Our divisions surface from the hollowing out of our humanity. A humanity meant to manifest love loses its humanity when it ceases to love.

For the dividing walls to come down, we must recognize our inhumanity in light of our humanity. And there must be a renewal of our humanity and a renewal of love.

Until we acknowledge that we are to “love our neighbors as ourselves,” we will rationalize our behavior. We will legitimize our divisions. We will treat our inhumanity toward others as necessary and love as impossible.

Change comes when we seek quiet moments of interior reflection in which we allow ourselves to recognize the loss of our humanity in our stinginess, belligerence, unfairness, dishonesty, prejudices and unloving actions. We acknowledge our inhumanity in our refusal to love our neighbor, especially our neighbor who does not think or operate like us or who we have viewed as an enemy.

In the silence of introspection, we may hear the still small voice calling us to love our neighbor. Rather than throw back at another what they have thrown at us, we take a step toward love by forgiving them. And then we look for what else love can do. We may even see that Jesus is right when he tells us to love our enemies. We were meant for love, and it is possible to love another who does not love us. It is possible to look beyond another’s brokenness and see their need.

The divisions in our society are only addressed by a love that sees beyond the inhumanity of the other to their humanity. The image of God stamped on our humanity may be effaced, but it is not destroyed. So we find a way to speak and act in recognition of the humanity of others, whether we experience their actions as humane or not.

There is no recovery from our divisions if we remain focused on another’s inhumanity, on their cruelty, hate, distorted values, fears and prejudices, and treat them as unredeemable. By words and actions we must call one another back to humanity: Speak against inhumanity and for humanity. Act against hate and for love.

At times that may mean speaking hard words of love that call out the inhumanity of one toward another, so that the inhumanity of one can be seen for what it is and the one who is being harmed be recognized in their injury. (Love is not the same thing as being nice.)

This is what I recognize Jesus doing when he called out religious leaders who “tied up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and laid them on the shoulders of others, but were unwilling to lift a finger to move them.” He called them back to their humanity when he addressed what they had become: “You are like whitewashed tombs….On the outside you look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” Love speaks hard words when necessary.

God, the source of love and our true humanity calls us back to our humanity as children of God. Only as children of God empowered to love do our divisions lose their power and break down.

Filed under: Compassion, Healing, Love, SpiritualityTagged with: ,

Lawlessness and the Law of Love

The lawlessness of the president of the United States has often been noted as he has ignored the United States Constitution, its laws, and the legislation passed by congress, in order to increase his power and press forward with his agenda which has included avenging himself against his perceived enemies.

Beyond the laws of a nation, however, their is a deeper law that binds us together. It is the law of our fundamental humanity. St. Paul expresses it: “The whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Galatians 5:14)

Jesus speaks in a similar way when asked what is the greatest commandment: “The first is…‘you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Matthew 12:29-31)

The love of neighbor is powerful for healing our divisions.

Jesus is asked, “Who is my neighbor?” So, Jesus tells a story of a man who “fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and took off, leaving him half dead.” Two very religious people, who see him lying to the side of the road, pass by on the other side, afraid to get involved. But a Samaritan comes upon this wounded Jewish man (there was enmity between Samaritans and Jews) and is “moved with compassion” and “bandaged his wounds” and “took care of him.” Jesus asked who “was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” The hearer of this story, answered, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” (Luke 10:29-37)

Recently, in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago, ICE agents raided an apartment building overnight, breaking down doors, and removing people from their beds along with children. The apartment occupants were zip tied and forced into waiting vehicles. A witness across the street said, “she saw agents dragging residents, including kids, out of the building without any clothes on and into U-Haul vans.” A 67 year old man tried to reason with the ICE agents, telling them he was a US citizen and asking if they had a warrant for breaking into his apartment. He was left outside in zip ties for several hours before they let him go. (WBEZ Chicago)

When we move away from love and compassion, we become capable of all kinds of inhuman acts. If any of those ICE agents could see their own children in the children that they put into vans, it is hard to imagine they could operate in the way they did. That is true also for everyone who oversaw the action and those who were the policy makers for such actions.

It is because of this distance from our true humanity rooted in love that Jesus calls us to repent, to turn to back God. Rather than operate as if we were the gods of our own lives (and the lives of others), Jesus tells us to relinquish our lives to God. He tells us to lose our lives and we will find our true selves, and we will find the love of God poured into our hearts by the Spirit.

The movement into loving our neighbors as ourselves is a spiritual movement. It is a movement of the Spirit of God who enables us to let go of our lives to God, so that we become available to God for the work of love in the lives of others.

Paul writes of the Spirit of God at work in us to bring us to our full humanity as children of God. He lists the kind of fruit that the Spirit produces in us when we let go, and let God. We come to bear fruit that the Spirit produces.

He gives examples of this fruit of the Spirit: “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” And then he adds, “There is no law against such things.” (Galatians 5:22-23) No other law is needed, if we are coming to know and live out the law of love in Christ by the help of the Spirit.

Filed under: Compassion, Justice, Love, Mercy, SpiritualityTagged with: , ,

Hope in the Midst of Despair

Hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. (Romans 5:5)

Hope is powerful. It makes both inner peace and outward action possible in the most distressing situations. When we lose hope, we lose peace and the ability to act. When we have hope, true life-giving change is possible.

Hope is not the same as optimism. I find myself looking for signs in our culture and politics that would give reason for optimism. Some days are better than others. One day provides circumstances and situations that give some measure of optimistic outlook only to have the next day’s occurrences shatter the previous days optimism.

Hope is different. Hope reaches beyond all situations and circumstances. It transcends our limited views and actions. It is an aspect of our infinite openness. It finds its source and resting place in God.

Hope is like the faith that moves beyond our personal capabilities to the One who holds our lives together. It is like the love that can have us saying, “I will love you forever” because we experience a forever, unconditional love that looks beyond faults—a “love poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.”

Hope has that same kind of transcendence. That is why Paul names faith, hope and love as eternal. They abide when everything else falls away—or fails.

Optimism, dependent as it is on circumstances, has little power for action and for bringing about change. It can quickly move to pessimism and despair. Hope, on the other hand, is not governed by present situations. It views the present difficulties before the expanse of what could be, of what truly brings life and makes room for love and trust. It comes with vision for a future with hope, for love that reigns in human hearts, and with a faithfulness to a higher calling—the call to our true humanity made in the image of the God who is Love.

When I see people bringing life-giving change, I see people with hope. I also see that they love people, that they exhibit compassion and therefore look beyond others’ faults in order to act for their uplift—and for the transformation of our world situation. I also see trustworthiness. They do not simply talk the talk, but walk the walk. They have the staying power of abiding faith, hope, and love.

The trinity of faith, hope, and love is available to all. It is near to all. It is as near as our true humanity which is as near as the reign of God. Jesus said, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is near.” That is, turn to what is near. Turn to God’s presence and let God reign in your heart. Turn to your true self in the God who is near, and receive a self that grows in trust, hope, and love.

”May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15:13)

Filed under: Compassion, Hope, Humanity, Love, Society, Spirituality

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: ,

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: , ,

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: , , , ,

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: ,

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:

Martin Luther King On Love Over Hate

I read a column in the Washington Post entitled, Hug an election denier. It was a gentle call to see the humanity in the person you believe has left reality behind and has embraced ways of thinking and operating that undermine our society. Given the nature of the article, it mainly addresses “moderates” and “progressives.”

The comments of readers of the article were revealing: Many who see themselves as progressives are not particularly progressive when it comes to seeing the humanity in those they labeled fascists or simply saw as gullible. While the right may tend to demonize the left, many on the left (who tend not to believe in demons) make the right out to be crazy or mentally deranged.

There were, however, also comments from those who understood the importance of loving others no matter their beliefs, actions, or conditions. One commenter quoted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr: “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

These words come from a Christmas sermon in 1957. Here is a fuller quote:

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when Jesus says, “love your enemies,” he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition. Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies—or else? The chain reaction of evil—hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars—must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

Pastor King knew something of what is required of us to “love our enemies.” He lived it, and we saw the power of people marching out of prayer meetings into the streets to face dogs and fire hoses and beatings and jail, and even death. We also witnessed change come to our society.

I recall John Lewis, in his book, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, writing of his experience on the first freedom ride when he was hauled off the bus and beaten. A police officer asked him if he wanted to press charges against the man who beat him. Lewis said something to the effect that the man who beat him was a victim of and a part of a system. Lewis was fighting the system. So, no, he was not pressing charges; he was getting back on the bus in order to bring down the Jim Crow system.

For John Lewis, love was central. He was attracted to the non-violent nature of the movement because it provided a way for love to act to bring about real change. Love allowed him to see the humanity in those who opposed his freedom. He was able to see beyond what they were caught up in. He was able to see what they could be if they let go of and were liberated from their racism.

Along the same vein, Frederick Douglass wrote of how the slaveholder also was a victim. His slave-holding robbed him of his humanity, robbed him of compassion and the ability to love; it deteriorated all his relationships. Abolish slavery and both slave and slaveholder are set free. At least, the slaveholder has the possibility of freedom, if he embraces it rather than seeks to reinstate slavery under other names.

“Love of enemies” is a spiritual reality. It comes from God who loves a broken, hurting, alienated humanity, a humanity that has made itself enemies of God, enemies of Love. We hear this love in the words of Jesus on the cross, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” This love forgives; it looks beyond faults and sees needs. It changes the trajectory of our lives.

This love is a gift from God. It is grace. We can open our lives to it and be changed by it. The apostle Paul says it is the greatest gift. “Faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

Filed under: Justice, Liberation, LoveTagged with: , , ,