Category: Society

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: ,

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: , ,

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: , , ,

Pro Life. Pro Choice.

I am pro life. I am pro choice.

(Dear reader, This is the longest post I have ever posted. My hope is that you read it to the end. Thanks.)

I am pro life. I am for life in the womb and out of the womb. I am for nourishing life in and out of the womb. I am for the health of mothers and their children and for women before they become mothers and whether or not they become mothers. I am for a society that cares about life, all life, and supports life with loving compassion.

I am pro life. Therefore, I am against death in our streets, schools, grocery stores, theaters, and for addressing underlying causes of these deaths. I am against capital punishment. I am against war. When my draft number came up during the Vietnam War, I sought a conscientious objector status and was grateful for a nation that allowed me to serve by doing alternate civilian service working with youth.

I am against the huge amounts of money spent on war preparation, funds that could be used to support life, humanitarian aid, learning the ways of peace, and operating justly in the world.

I am pro life. I am for the care of the other creatures who share our earth home. I am against the disregard for these creatures and the choices that lead to their extinction.

In almost all circumstances, my wife and I are not for choosing to end life in the womb. At what point that life becomes a human person, I do not know. I know that it is potentially a human person. The first speck of life on this planet was potentially human in the evolution of life. I think of what happens in the womb as something similar. I am quite simply for life, for being.

I am pro choice. I am for facing the choices before me and making a decision. Sometimes the choices can be very narrow. For example, whether it is time to enter hospice or not. Nothing can take the act of choosing from me. Even in prison, there are choices.

Of course, the kinds of choices I make are affected by the choices others make. Some people have a wider range of choices than others, and one person’s sphere of choices limits another’s. White supremacy, patriarchy, classism, etc. affect and limit the choices available to others. (And affects the choices of those caught up in White supremacy, patriarchy, classism, etc.)

Laws can narrow the choices. Laws and governing bodies historically have limited the choices for women and especially women of color. Men in power (White men), by the means of laws, have exerted control over women’s lives, and more so with women of color. Of course, laws can be defied. The civil rights movement is a powerful example of choosing to defy laws in order to bring about change.

Lawmakers make choices that affect our choices. They make choices from many different life experiences, motivations, attitudes, commitments, and agendas. They make just choices and unjust choices.

I have taken part in many actions and demonstrations over the years witnessing against unjust choices, laws that have brought about the mass incarceration of people of color, laws that have treated drug abuse as a crime rather than a health problem, laws that do not prevent banks from creating predatory loans, laws that diminish various human rights, etc. I have demonstrated against our nation’s wars. Still, our government has decided for one war after another and brought great suffering and loss of life across our globe.

Nevertheless, I view government and lawmakers as necessary and capable of doing good. Government is capable of providing laws that regulate health and safety, address environmental concerns, and respond to inequalities and injustices that are present, if it would.

But government is also very limited in providing help for our personal decisions and adds much to our confusion and breakdown. From a place of solemn silence, Thomas Merton viewed the governments of the world:

“It is necessary to be present alone at the resurrection of Day in solemn silence at which the sun appears, for at this moment all the affairs of cities, of governments, of war departments, are seen to be the bickering of mice.”

There are critical limits to what bickering mice can provide us in the way of help for our choices. The decision of the Supreme Court concerning Roe v. Wade now moves to Congress and to state governments where discourse often breaks down into power plays, disingenuous appeals to culture issues in order to hold onto power, grandstanding, dishonesty, and self-righteous moralism, ways of operating that are not conducive to decisions that encourage life and love. Lost are the experiences of real human beings who cannot simply be forced by law into a decision, particularly when there exists other pressures, circumstances, and life situations. Many women will still feel constrained by circumstances and life experiences to seek an abortion regardless of laws passed by legislators.

Like others, my wife and I have a faith stance and a view that gives form to our choices. Other people have their own stance and view, as well as circumstances—often of an intense and complicated nature—that give form to their choices. We make decisions based on what we see and others do the same. We each must make our own decisions without judging the other. Adding the power of government (the bickering mice) to decide for women only complicates and aggravates the choice they have to make for themselves.

As it is, the issue of abortion is complicated by a culture that makes much of individual choice and little of life—a problem for those on the right and the left. They each have their favored freedoms and rights. And they each have their varying attitudes toward life.

Many in the pro-life movement support war and capital punishment and tend to minimize society’s responsibility for equitable sources of nurture, health care, and resources that support life. While making much of personal responsibility, many do not exercise responsibility for changing the societal context of people’s circumstances and decisions. The pro-life movement undermines its message by its anti-life stances in relation to life outside the womb.

Many in the pro-choice movement undermine their message when they diminish the significance of the choice. Simply having a choice (a right) is not the fundamental issue (although, when we do not have the right, it certainly moves to the forefront). It is what we decide in every situation that is critical, whether the available choices are many or few or very hard.

With every exercise of a right, with every choice we make among the choices available, we are deciding about ourselves and what we are becoming. We are deciding what kind of a society we, along with others, are building. We cannot escape making choices about life in one way or another.

We decide to love or not to love and how we are to love others and how to love ourselves, at times in the midst of great trials. We decide whether or not to undergo struggle or suffering in order to lovingly serve others. We decide for life and wholeness or decide to find a way out of making the hard choices (the life-changing choices) that life and wholeness require. And we often make choices based on what we think we are capable of, not realizing that with God we are capable of far more.

But the cultural reality is this: In a society that accepts some laws almost unanimously (laws against murder and theft), a majority of Americans see a place for abortion, at least within limits. This fact (among other issues, including suggestions above) tells me that, with abortion, we enter an area where laws are incapable of addressing this issue. In the end, each of us must make our own decisions; we must each engage questions of right and wrong and the ways of love and life.

We all have many ethical choices to make without norms set by civil law. This appears to be one of those kinds of choices. Like most choices this one has to be left to individuals to make in times of “solemn silence” and in consultation with their doctor, their families, and those they choose to go to for guidance.

Furthermore, as a society, we can address some of the underlying reasons women have for choosing abortion. For example, we can ensure that all have a living wage—a wage that can support a family. We can ensure that child care and health care are available to all equitably. We can also provide, at the least, a thoughtful “comprehensive sex education” for youth (who are bombarded by sex through various mediums of communication and often left without guidance). Faith communities can offer a holistic spirituality that provides a foundation for healthy decisions and healthy relationships as well as providing a community of support.

Finally, those of us who are pro life must be more persuasive, not by our talk, but by the lives we live, by our compassionate care for all life: for the weak and the vulnerable and the dependent (which is all of us). And by doing justice, loving mercy, and living faithfully. We may find that what the law cannot do, a change in our culture can.

Filed under: Decision, Justice, SocietyTagged with: , , ,

A Spirituality for Ending Gun Violence

You do not need guns. It is possible to live without them. And yet you are very possessive of your guns. You feel that you cannot give them up. But that is an addiction, a false dependency. As an addiction, it looms large in your life. It constrains you to give yourself reasons why guns are necessary and to fight for your right to own the guns of your choice. But you do not need guns; you need a Higher Power.

We can live without the second amendment. Other nations do. It has not made us a better or more exceptional nation because we have it. We can live without it; we cannot live without Love.

Our children can grow and flourish without guns and without violent video games and entertainment; they cannot grow and flourish without Compassionate Love.

Weapons of war will never secure us. They have only added to our insecurity, whereas, the One in whose image we are created holds our lives together, even in the midst of trial and tribulation. Rooted in God, our true center, we find that, rather than live in fear of others, we can enter into the suffering of others in order to serve them in love—even in the face of death.

By the love of God, we can grieve with those who grieve. We can grieve in a way that is true to grief, to the way the Spirit of God grieves. We can grieve with compassion that engages others, not with platitudes, but with repentance and change that moves toward healing.

Love constrains us to act. It will have us act in concrete ways that align with true needs. Love does not pit one addiction against another. Love does not pit one kind of politics against another, one ideology against another, one set of beliefs against another. Love responds to the needs present in a way that is timely and real.

With the love of God, we are freed from trying to force others to conform to our way of thinking (or to our addictions). As St. Paul says, “Love does not insist on its own way.” Love does not have us fighting others over beliefs and values as if they too were addictions that we cannot live without. Rather, love will simply direct us to the actual needs of the moment and will have us work for true life-giving change.

The change we desire for our nation, the end of the stream of mass shootings, will make little progress without the relinquishing of our addictions, our political tribalism, and our insistence on having our own way—surrendering these (and ourselves) to the God who is Love. Let love act! Do what love directs us to do!

Filed under: Healing, Love, SocietyTagged with: , ,

A Young Man and His Nation

My heart goes out to the families and the community grieving the loss of 10 African Americans murdered in Buffalo by a young White man, murdered by White supremacy. I also feel the deep brokenness of a nation in which such violence is fomented and released—and of which I am a part.

The 18-year-old White man who walked into a grocery store with the intention of killing Black people operated from both an inner and outer landscape to his life. Within himself, he made choices that allowed hate to take root, and he decided to act on what he had received into his life. But there was also an outer landscape to his life, a breeding ground for what entered into him and eventually took over his life and took the lives of others.

It is this outer landscape that we are all responsible for: our decisions, our actions, what we say and do deposit love or hate into the world. Justice or injustice, mercy or judgementalism, compassion or complacency, trust or fear are woven into the fabric of our society by our choices and actions.

Our news sources and social media bubbles, our indifference, and our choosing escapism over participation in the struggle for justice rob our society of the compassionate change it so desperately needs. Our ignorance, our ignoring of what love would have us pay attention to, contribute to a landscape devoid of true knowledge and love (they go together).

We allow White supremacy to remain and grow. We, who are White, when we refuse to acknowledge our supremacist history and attitudes and the “privileges” racism has given us, contribute to the landscape of our society what we have hidden from ourselves. When we allow our fears and prejudices to choose our leaders, we add to the fertile ground for hate and violence.

Because there is a receptivity to the idea, politicians are able to spout a “replacement theory” (the idea that people of color are going to replace White people). This idea is part of the landscape and breeding ground for division and hate. The truth is that there is one human race, one human family made up of a beautiful diversity, and yet, we can choose a lie and choose division and choose leaders who feed us the lie and division.

We are tempted by both the inner and outer landscapes of our lives. (St. Paul writes of the temptations of the flesh and the world.) Consequently, spiritual discernment and true self-awareness are necessary for real change. The terror, pain, and death unleashed in the grocery store in Buffalo come not only from the actions of one young man. They also are the outcome of years of White supremacy felt, thought, lived out, allowed, reinforced, and also expressed in the leaders Americans choose.

Jesus says, “Every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.” Every society bears fruit. The fruit that is borne tells us something about our society and ourselves: the good and the bad.

A major theme in the New Testament is one of dying. We must die to a false self and falsehood and the loss of love. So Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit.” The fruit that Jesus has in mind is the fruit of justice and compassion which bring healing and liberation. We have much to die to, much to turn away from that is destroying us.

Filed under: Justice, Racism, SocietyTagged with: , ,

Christmas Reflections 2021

Jesus came into the same world we live in, with the same pressures and fears and brokenness. He was born in an occupied land, a province of the Roman empire. Like us, the nation in which he was born was occupied by oppression, injustice, and violence. He was born as an outcast. There was no room for him in the inn.

We who have come to know Jesus, who have become his followers and have a taste of God’s reign, are not surprised by how the Messiah and Savior came into the world, how he came to us vulnerable as an infant born in a stable. Everything about his birth points to his life as a whole. He came to outcasts, to the poor, the broken, the sick, the leper, the deaf, and the blind. He came to those that the self-righteous put on their list of sinners. He did not come to condemn people, but to seek and to save the lost.

If we have experienced God’s grace through Messiah Jesus, if we who were lost are now found, we know this is the way God is. We are not surprised that the Savior’s birth is announced to shepherds in the field, rather than to those in positions of wealth and power or to religious leaders who make much of their righteousness and talk down to others.

Shepherds were among those at the bottom rung of society and as far as the religious leaders were concerned, they were ritually unclean. The announcement of the Savior’s birth is made to them. Is not this the way it is with God our Rescuer? God proclaims good news to those who have been marginalized. Our Liberator comes to us in our brokenness and need.

Shepherds in the field “keeping watch over their flock by night” are told that “this will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” The sign that this child is the liberator the world needs is that he is wrapped in rags and lies in an animal trough. And this is good news for us!

God our Savior, who comes to us in Jesus, comes where we are, in our low places, when things have gone wrong, when there is no room for us, when everything has broken down. In fact, when we are at our most vulnerable, most broken, we know, right then and there, that rescue and liberation is present for us.

Of course, when we are full of ourselves and thinking we have it together pursuing life on our own terms, our salvation is still near, but we hardly know it or experience it—until we are knocked off our high horse and perhaps blinded like Paul on the road to Damascus. He went from being full of himself and his self-appointed mission to being vulnerable, broken, and open. At that point he started to let God his Liberator direct his steps, and his mission completely changed.

Jesus described this spiritual reality. He said, “The humble are exalted and the exalted are humbled”—which is good news for both the humble and the exalted. The Savior meets us where we are. God will bring us down from our high horse in order to get us to a place where we will receive what God gives. And when we have hit rock bottom, God will raise us up. Either way it is grace. God’s grace is sufficient in every situation and time of need.

Because God has come to be with us in Christ Jesus, we are finding that we can rejoice in all circumstances. God our saviour is near, whatever we face. With the shepherds on that first Christmas eve, we join “a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!'”

Filed under: Grace, Mercy, Society

Gracious God, You Know Daunte Wright

Gracious God, have mercy on us. Help us. You know Daunte Wright—another Black young man killed by a White police officer. He had been stopped for an expired registration tag. You know the pain of his family, today, and are with them in their grief. They join so many other families who have had a loved one snatched from them by the actions of those called to “serve and protect.”

Gracious God, you see how we treat one another, how we hurt, maim, and kill one another. You see our addiction to guns and our powerlessness over our addiction. We call our guns our “protection,” when you alone are our Protector. We put these guns in the hands of those we have called to “protect” us, without truly acknowledging the attitudes of White supremacy and bullying that are present. We refuse to see the racism that drives so many of our actions, lethal actions, police actions.

Gracious God, you see the racism embedded in our system of policing; you see the disregard for human life, for Black life. You see our blindness to this racism that is endemic to our society and its institutions. Help us, gracious God. Enlighten the eyes of our hearts, so that we get a glimpse of what you see of our sin, our brokenness, and our dehumanizing ways, and so that we might also come to know the lavishness of your grace that liberates and transforms us.

Help us, gracious God. Give us eyes to see and, then, free us from our bondage and inaction. Help us to turn from our idolatry of race to embrace each other as sisters and brothers of one human race. Break down the hardness of our hearts toward each other and toward you who are merciful and compassionate. Help us, gracious God, to surrender our lives to you who are Love, that we might love one another as you love us.

Free us and help us, gracious God, to work for change. Help us to dismantle what is destroying us and to build what brings life. In Christ, many of us have discovered the power of dying and rising (not only rising but also dying). Help us to die in order that we might live. Help us to let go of policing as we know it. Help us to envision a life-giving way to serve and protect. Help us to be willing to do what you called the prophet, Jeremiah, to do: “to pluck up and to pull down…, to build and to plant.” Guide us by your Spirit, the spirit of love, to make right what is wrong. Amen.

Filed under: Grief, Justice, Racism, SocietyTagged with: , ,