Category: Spirituality

A Good Place To Be

When a person says they cannot see the way forward anymore, when they can’t figure a way out of their situation, when they feel powerless, the message they most need to hear is “You are in a good place.” They are in a place of need and poverty of spirit. Jesus’ words apply to them: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the reign of God is theirs.”

We have different ways to talk about this “good place.” (Never mind that it does not feel good.) We speak of someone reaching the end of their rope. Their life is in pieces. They have nothing to stand on. They are at a loss. It has become clear to them that they need help beyond themselves. Self-help is not helping anymore.

We may be tempted to encourage them by saying that things are not that bad. They just have to be strong. With such words, we turn them back upon themselves with their poverty and helplessness. Of course, they expect this kind of encouragement. The world around them speaks this way and they try to speak to themselves this way but to no avail. They have reached the end of their resources. They are despairing of themselves, of their ability to fix their lives.

Good news, for them, has to come from someplace other than their ability to lift themselves up. They are going to have to see that the place they have come to is rich in possibility. They are in a good, fertile place. It is a place of blessing. God’s reign is near and it is for them.

Jesus said to the self-sufficient and self-righteous religious leaders that the sinners and outcasts of society were entering the reign of God ahead of them (Matthew 21:31). God’s reign, God’s healing, liberation, and restoration are available to the poor in spirit, to those, who in their brokenness, reach out beyond themselves to the Source of life. Their insufficiency meets God’s sufficiency.

Paul learned this. He discovered that “whenever I am weak, then I am strong” and that God’s grace is sufficient whatever the “weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.” The God who is present and active in all things is our hope, the ground of our being, our all in all.

Filed under: SpiritualityTagged with: , ,

Reflections On Lent

We have difficulty admitting weakness. We tend to cover up our fears and feelings of vulnerability, not only before others but within ourselves. We all put up fronts before others and ourselves, in one form or another. Some put forward a front of confidence and strength. Others put up a front of neediness in order to get something from those who appear strong and self-sufficient. In either case, we attempt to control and manipulate situations and others, as if we were the source of our lives. In this denial of weakness, we run from our fundamental need which is our need for God.

The truth is that we are profoundly powerless, helpless, and weak. That we are these does not mean that there is no power, help, and strength for us. But denying this reality of helplessness (or acting like all we need is the strength someone else appears to have) cuts us off from our true power, help, and strength—the “grace that is sufficient” and “the power that is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)

One of the aspects of Lent for Christians is the experience of silence and self-examination that puts us in touch with our weakness. We take a step toward our true selves when we acknowledge our cover-ups and our brokenness. We take another step when we willingly share our weaknesses and fears with others. It is at that point that we truly meet one another. We find that we are all in need of God’s grace.

In the season of Lent, we draw near to the cross of Christ which is both the symbol of our brokenness and of our deliverance. At the foot of the cross, we find true fellowship with one another. Gathered around the one who, in dying, took our sin upon himself, our cover is blown; our weakness is exposed. And we find that we all share the same condition. We are a fellowship of broken, needy people, needy for God and God’s liberation through Christ.

Lent is a season for getting in touch again with our weakness, that in our weakness we may discover strength and help and the empowering that is ours in God. We discover that “God is our refuge and strength a very present help in trouble.” (Psalm 46:1) The wording of this psalm does not have God giving us strength, but rather that God is our strength. It is in union with God that we experience power. Acknowledgment of weakness and loss opens the door to the power of God available through Christ. Baptized into Christ, we are united to Christ’s weakness, loss, and death. In Christ, we die to our attempts to be strong in ourselves apart from God, and we are released into the power of God, raised with Christ, and made alive to God and God’s will. Thanks be to God.

Filed under: Faith, Grace, Spirituality

Witness Amid False Christianity

What does witness to the Christ reality look like in the midst of so much that is false to Christ? This is an issue for followers of Jesus who care about witness to Christ. We see a distorted, destructive Christianity. Some expressions of "Christianity" are downright scary: We expect violence. Many of us viewed a video of a man, who had broken into the senate chamber, praying a prayer of thanksgiving to God. He was involved in the insurrection and claimed a God-given victory. These actions, of course, have nothing to do with the "reign of God" that Jesus proclaimed. Nor do any of the nationalist, ethnocentric, and racist blends of Christianity.

For those who have little experience with churches or Christianity other than what they receive in the news, there must be bewilderment at the dizzying array of Christian institutions, forms, practices, theologies, and values. Those that have read Jesus’ teachings in the Gospels may have recognized the distance between Jesus and many who lift up his name. There is much Christianity that operates in ways distant from the "reign of God" that Jesus proclaimed and his actions of mercy and compassion.

So, what does witness to Jesus Christ look like in the midst of so much that is false to Christ? Where do we see it? What forms does it take? Here are characteristics of a true witness in the midst of false Christianity:

  1. Actions Come First. Many, for good reason, are turned off on Christ-talk and God-talk. Witness to Christ, therefore, is seen first in acts of love. It simply manifests Christ in the world by action. It acts from the reality of the Spirit of Christ. Therefore it does justice, loves mercy, and lives faithfully. The love of God is made concrete and practical. It responds to actual needs with compassion. Actions proclaim the Christ reality. With loving actions there may also be opportunities to witness with words.

  2. Speak to Human Experience. When the opportunity to speak is present or necessary, Christ people must declare the message of Jesus without formulas and doctrines and with humility. We must operate like the first followers of Jesus: We must respond to people at the point of their need and with words that speak to their deepest humanity. We must speak to spiritual reality, rather than moralize. Our witness must come from a life rooted in the Spirit and able to discern the things of the Spirit. We may speak to spiritual realities long before we name Christ. Our words will engage with individuals’ spiritual journeys. Therefore, we will spend much time listening and receiving from their experience as well as sharing our own. If we see that the name “Christ” alerts them to be cautious because of their experience with people who do a lot of Christ talk without a Christ life, then we may, at first, speak of the Christ reality in terms that are more available to them. We may speak of our true humanity which, in its infinite depths, is rooted in God. After all, Christ is the union of God and humanity. He is our true humanity. People who have found their way to their true selves, have implicitly encountered Christ. They have come into a dying to the false and rising into their true humanity. The reality of Christ, even without the name, is never far away.

  3. Encourage Faith. Our primary message is the same as Jesus’ message: “God’s reign and purpose are near. God is near. Turn to God, the source of your life and identity.” We must encourage others to relinquish their lives to God and discover the Christ-life. When they let go of their lives to God (which is what faith does), they do so through Christ. As St. Paul puts it: We become right with God through the faith of Christ; his faith becomes ours. Faith is the gift of God in Christ. As we come to participate in this Christ reality, the word is: “Go on in him. Learn to live by an ultimate trust in God and in community with others.”

Filed under: Society, Spirituality, Witness

The Year That Exposed Our Ignorance
And Gave Us Work For The New Year

The disparities have always been there: the inequities in health care, education, housing, city services, job opportunities, and the injustices of the criminal justice system. In the year 2020, many Whites were awakened to these realities by the reporting of disparities in infections and deaths from COVID-19 among communities of color, and by the video of the death of George Floyd at the hands of a White police officer. But the disparities and injustices have always been there. Ignorance has been there as well.

At this end of 2020 and as we make plans for 2021, let us make the commitment to address the disparities and injustices. This will mean that we acknowledge our ignorance of what others suffer and are open to change.

Scripture is revealing in the way it treats ignorance. Ignorance is an aspect of a broken humanity and society in which we all share (Ezekiel 45:20). It is an expression of our alienation from God and is coupled with hardness of heart (Ephesians 4:18). Ignorance is not only a lack of knowledge but an act of ignoring what we ought to pay attention to. It comes from the breakdown in our relationship with God. We ignore God and God’s will. We are distant from what is on the heart of God for humanity. We are self-absorbed and do not see what God sees.

God said to Moses, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians.” Then God engaged Moses in God’s work of deliverance. As with Moses, God continues to call us to turn from our self-centered ways and observe what God observes, and then to let God engage us in God’s work of liberation and justice.

This means that we repent from ignoring the experience of others (the others who are not kin or friend or “like us”). It means that we get to know how others are affected by our attitudes, decisions, priorities, and the kind of policies and legislation we vote for and work to get implemented. How do our actions affect the lives of others, especially those who have been marginalized by racism, poverty, or incarceration? With the help of God, we can repent and turn to what we have ignored and become intent on getting to know the lives of those who have been largely out of sight and out of mind because of our ignorance. Because we have ignored them.

As we enter 2021, let us do so in prayer, turning our hearts to God to see the way God sees, with the love of God poured into our hearts by the Spirit. And let us hear again God’s call to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly. Let us surrender our lives to God and to the leading of the Spirit for the concrete actions that God calls us to take, each of us with our individual abilities and ways of serving. Let us turn from ignorance to understanding and action, so that in the freedom of God’s love we work to make right what is wrong.

Filed under: Justice, Racism, Spirituality

Christmas Reflections 2020

Thus he has given us…his precious and very great promises, so that [we] may become participants of the divine nature.

2 Peter 1:4

The good news of Christmas is that God is with us and is present with liberation and transformation. God desires a relationship with us, coming to us in Christ Jesus. We become participants of the divine nature through the one who is the Participant of the divine nature. The Word (God’s self-expression) became flesh and dwells among us. In creating, God did not fling us away into infinite silence, but became united to creation and speaks into it life and healing. The Word became flesh, became matter, so that God is intimately near: God is “above all, through all, and in all.” (Ephesians 4:6)

God is in creation. God is in our humanity and relationships. God is in all of the situations and circumstances of our lives. God is present to us and for us in the midst of a pandemic. God can be found there. God is in the darkness as well as in the light. God is in the world as it is, not in a world of make-believe. We experience this when we relinquish our lives to God, living from the source of our lives.

In the midst of the pandemic, we may have run to various coping mechanisms for relief from anxiety and stress. We may, for example, have tried binge-watching streaming videos. In this way, we managed a little escape for a while, but binge-watching lasts only so long before we must escape it as well. And then, we must face our anxieties again. The good news is that God is in all things with deliverance for us. God is in a world going through a pandemic. We meet God in the midst of our present situation. By trust in God, we can face our anxieties and find release. “Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:7)

Our coping mechanisms serve a purpose until we surrender ourselves to God, which is a daily activity of faith. Our coping mechanisms allow us to carry on with a degree of sanity. They are necessary because of our experience of alienation from God. I think of them as symbolically expressed in the Genesis story of humanity’s fall into sin where God makes for Adam and Eve a covering, something that they had not needed before their break with God. Without God, we need ways to cope in the same way that Adam and Eve needed a covering. It is only as the reality of God’s presence deepens that we are increasingly freed from having to cover over our anxieties. We can start to face them.

Coping mechanisms are both a covering and a bondage. They are habits similar to addictions. They offer no freedom. Our freedom is in facing our anxieties in Christ. This is why we experience prayer as so critical to our lives, prayer understood as the surrender of our lives to God in the midst of present circumstances.

The coronavirus pandemic has been experienced in many different ways. For many it has meant isolation from loved ones, loss of employment, and survival concerns. For some, it has meant death and grief. It may also have meant the acknowledgment of our vulnerability, a deepening of trust, and finding God in the midst of it all. The good news of Christmas is that God is with us. God is near and available with forgiveness, mercy, welcome, peace, healing, and freedom. Therefore, we can turn to God no matter what we are presently facing. With grateful hearts, we celebrate the one named Immanuel, “God with us.”

Filed under: Faith, SpiritualityTagged with: , ,

Nothing Has Changed For Faith

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We Choose Our Bubble

Much has been made of the influence of Fox News and social media for the continued support of Donald Trump by 42% of the electorate. There is little question that if you got someone off a diet of Fox News, it would likely affect their views. But there is a reason why people are drawn to Fox News. And there is a reason why Facebook gives its users the kind of news they seek. People choose the bubble they live in.

A White woman, in an overwhelmingly White suburb of Milwaukee, described herself as a Democrat concerned about climate change and health care who was voting for Biden, until the police killing of George Floyd and the massive protests around the country. Now she is going to vote for Trump and law and order and safety. She has depicted the Black Lives Matter movement as a guise for looting and burning. What is particularly revealing to me is that she started listening to Black conservatives and managed to find a Black commentator who portrays White privilege as a myth. We choose our bubble.

Getting out of our bubble begins when we choose to leave it. That is why Jesus says, “Repent for the Reign of God is near.” We do not have to remain in any bubble. We can enter the freedom of God’s reign. Under God’s rule of love, we begin to be liberated from our racism, xenophobia, and nationalism. We are being delivered from the ways we make an idol of our “blood and kindred,” our security, comfort, pleasure, power, money, etc. We are empowered to turn from these idols to serve the living and true God and to become a people for others.

Conversion from lives centered in ourselves to lives increasingly centered in God is the basis for deep, foundational change. Our fundamental bubble is the self-centered bubble. Spiritual conversion (which is an ongoing experience) is the way out. We come to this experience by grace. It is a gift of God who is our Liberator. Without spiritual conversion, we remain stuck, merely working around the edges of our bubbles or exchanging our bubbles for others, perhaps bigger bubbles, but which have us equally trapped.

In the Spirit, we become open to our true selves and to others. In the Spirit, there is an infinite openness that enables us to see our bubbles for what they are, one bubble among many others—bubbles of our making. In the Spirit, we are brought into the broad expanse of God’s reign of love and mercy. In that openness, we are made able to see others and to listen and receive from them. We experience the call outward and the desire to move out from our inturned selves into the lives of others. This becomes the basis for our seeking to understand and to know more of what others, different from ourselves, experience and contend with. It also allows us to examine our own hearts and our decisions and actions and their effects on the lives of others. For those of us who are White, this openness will have us stop defending ourselves with “I am not a racist” to become antiracists working to change laws and policies and the way our society has been structured by White law-making, practices, and institutions—in other words, by White supremacy.

I pray for a spiritual awakening in our nation—for the foundations upon which we have built our lives to be shaken and that we reach out for our true selves and for true community in the One in whom “we live and move and have our being.” It is in this way that we can begin to truly come out of our bubbles and meet each other and build a life together.

Filed under: Justice, Racism, SpiritualityTagged with: , , ,

When Does “Do Not Be Afraid” Help?

Joe Biden quoted Pope John Paul II, who quoted words from Scripture: “Do not be afraid.” I became interested in how many times that phrase is used in the Bible and did a search. I found that it is used 68 times, 76 if the Apocrypha is included. Mostly, this phrase is a word of the Lord spoken through a prophet or in a vision or a dream. These words are also on the lips of Jesus. What is apparent from the occurrences of this phrase is that most often our fear is a fear of others or a fear of an individual with power:

Be strong and of good courage. Do not be afraid or dismayed before the king of Assyria and all the horde that is with him; for there is one greater with us than with him.

2 Chronicles 32:7

Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.

Jeremiah 1:8

In this time of the COVID-19 pandemic and the racism pandemic that spans our nation’s history, along with the absence of leadership, we need these words. We need to hear God speak these words to us. We cannot speak them to ourselves. When we mutter them, often over and over again, they are generally our attempt to repress our fear or to deny what is happening around us and to us.

When these words are a word of God to us, they are a call to trust in God, no matter what we face. When it is God who says to us, “Do not be afraid,” we are helped. These words free us for action, for doing God’s will.

Left to ourselves, without trust in God, fear either immobilizes us or has us lashing out. Fear of losing the “traditions of his ancestors” had Paul persecuting the followers of Messiah Jesus. An encounter with the risen Jesus turned his life around. He began to operate from the call of God rather than from his self-made righteousness and anger. He was open to hearing God say to him, “Do not be afraid.”

“One night the Lord said to Paul in a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, but speak and do not be silent.'” (Acts 18:9) Paul was in Corinth, at the time, where a community of Jesus followers was being formed. Paul needed these words of the Lord. In his first letter to the church in Corinth, we learn of his emotional state when he came to Corinth: “I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.” Considering what he had already been through, it is not surprising that he came to the city of Corinth in fear and trembling. In Philippi, he had been beaten with rods and imprisoned, and he was driven out of Thessalonica and Beroea. He kept finding himself in, what John Lewis called, “good trouble.” Although it was good trouble (or God trouble), it nevertheless was trouble, and as he approached Corinth, he had every reason to expect conflict. So it was that he came in fear and trembling. That he came despite his fear had to do with the call of God upon his life. As Paul pursued the mission God had given him, he received God’s encouragement to “speak and do not be silent.” God was with him for the work he was to do in that place.

God’s message, “Do not be afraid,” comes to us when we are responding to God’s call, a response that brings liberation and healing to some, but reaction and trouble from others. When we have decided, by the grace of God, to come out of our comfort zones to respond to the needs of others, God says, “Do not be afraid.” When, in response to God’s call, we turn away from racism and prejudice and fear of the other to welcome the refugee, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, visit the sick and those imprisoned, the words, “Do not be afraid,” give us courage.

We cannot separate the message, “Do not be afraid,” from the speaker. Our fear of a virus or of others will not be removed by telling ourselves not to be afraid, but by turning to God and away from xenophobia, racism, and self-absorption, trusting the whole of our lives to God.

It is to those who are actually following him, responding to his call, that Jesus says, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32) To the “little flock” who are losing their lives for Christ’s sake and the gospel, Jesus says, “Do not be afraid.”

We, who are coming to find our true selves in God and beginning to live in love, know that we are to “speak and not be silent.” We are to protest injustice and work to make right what is wrong. In the face of opposition, God speaks a message of encouragement to us. “Do not be afraid” is a word that frees us for the steps God calls us to take in bearing witness to God’s reign of love. In trusting obedience to God, we are freed to do justice, love mercy, and live faithfully.

Filed under: Discipleship, Faith, SpiritualityTagged with: , ,

“I Can’t Breathe”

“The opposite of ‘racist’ isn’t ‘not racist.’ It is ‘antiracist.’

Ibram X. Kendi, How To Be An Antiracist

George Floyd, a black man, his arms handcuffed behind him, cries out for help with the words, “I can’t breathe,” as a white police officer presses a knee down upon his neck. There are three other officers at the scene. They all hear the cry for help. Bystanders hear and call out for the police officers to help: The man is down and handcuffed; how much more brutality is necessary to demonstrate your power? All of the officers, who are called to “serve and protect,” ignore the pleas. George Floyd dies.

There are many steps before murder: many attitudes, fears, prejudices, demeaning actions, and unjust behaviors. Some talk about a white supremacist police culture, but this kind of police culture flows out of a wider American white supremacist culture.

Often, in the media, white supremacists are depicted as an ideological minority. But white supremacy is an inherent ingredient in the narrative of this nation. The history of the United States is a history of white supremacy in the form of white law-making and actions that created and maintained the institution of slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, the present mass incarceration of people of color, voter suppression, and continued support for inequities in education, health care, jobs, wealth, and power—if not supported actively, certainly by white apathy toward these injustices.

White supremacy must not be seen merely as the ideology of a few. Those of us who are white do not need to have a developed supremacist philosophy to have attitudes, tendencies, and views that keep us from truly understanding and addressing the injustices in our society. White sense of entitlement, along with denial of our racism, allows us to ignore the voices and experiences of people of color.

White supremacy involves us in viewing white ways and culture as the norm and standard by which we judge others. This all happens, of course, implicitly and in an unacknowledged manner. But it allows us to form views without listening as if all we need are the “answers” that our biases and fears provide. We simply draw from what we already think. Where and how our thoughts are formed goes unexamined.

Every aspect of racism, whether blatant or subtle, minimizes the humanity of another human being. There is a link between the apathy that ignores injustices and police officers who act with brazen disregard for the life of a fellow human being. The distance between the two is not so very great.

When we realize this, we are approaching the first step of the Twelve Step Program for Addicts (racism being very similar to an addiction). Step one requires us to come out of denial: We admit our racism and powerlessness and that this way of living has become unmanageable. The acknowledgment of unmanageability means we are recognizing the massive scale of the problem: the deep entrenchment of racism. We feel our inadequacy and realize we need power to change. We need spiritual liberation. We need step three: “We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand God.” We need to be raised up into a higher reality—into the One in whom “we live and move and have our being.” We need to be freed into our true selves that have their source in God.

With the confession of our brokenness and a spiritual turning (repentance) and the grace that brings liberation (steps 1-3), we are released into action. In this spiritual journey, there are further steps that involve a “moral inventory” of our lives. We become involved in inner work, the Spirit helping us to acknowledge the intentions, motivations, and attitudes of our hearts, and the actions that flow from them. We are helped by words of truth that come to us from others and from their experiences. We listen to others, and the Spirit of truth helps us to receive truth.

There are also steps for “making amends,” that is, making right what is wrong. These steps have us moving outward. We become intentional about addressing racism not only in our own lives but in the institutions, laws, and structures of our society. We work for radical change and reform—the reformation of the criminal justice system, the removal of voter suppression laws, and the dismantling of discrimination and inequities of all kinds. We are becoming antiracist. The defensive “I am not a racist” does not work for us anymore. Our focus is outward on understanding the nature and extent of this social disease and equipping ourselves to fight against it.

Formerly, we were not seeking to understand and gain knowledge and wisdom for action—not about racism and white supremacy. But now that we are on a journey of openness and action, we are seeking—and finding. In our seeking, we reach out to others who have a history of being antiracist. We are being liberated into community antiracist action. Together we become agents of change. Or, as Jesus puts it, “salt and light.”

Are you on the journey? If not, this blog post is an invitation.

Filed under: Justice, Racism, Spirituality, WitnessTagged with: ,

Gifts in a Time of Pandemic: The Freedom of Love

Consider two different responses to the pandemic:

  1. A group of people protests in front of a state capital building, some carrying assault weapons providing an image of threat and intimidation. They are protesting the infringement on their “freedom.” Social distancing orders have deeply affected their lives, their freedom of movement, and, for many, their employment. They have framed their losses as bondage.
  2. An elderly man is given a ventilator by people who love him, in a nation where there are not enough ventilators for all who need them. A band of people has found a way to pay for and obtain a ventilator for this man they love. It is a gift to him. He receives it and then gives it away to a young man who also needs a ventilator. He then succumbs to the COVID-19 virus.

Which of these two responses to the pandemic is an expression of freedom? Is freedom found in my ability to do what I want (do my thing) even when it infringes upon the lives of others, disregards their ability to live? Or, is freedom found in the ability to freely give up my life for the life of another?

Freedom is often expressed in terms of our ability to do what we want. But, as theologian Karl Rahner expressed in one of his essays, there are spheres of freedom. When it comes to our freedom of choice, one person’s sphere of choice is larger or smaller than another. Our spheres of freedom impinge on or affect the freedom of others. One person’s sphere of freedom can diminish another’s. Historically, the “privileges” given to white people by racism have limited the choices available to black people (choices regarding schools, vocations, health care, freedom from violence, etc.). The present economic disparities in our nation depict different spheres of freedom to make various choices. Those who are wealthy have many more choices for escaping the effects of the coronavirus than those who are poor.

The only thing that truly begins to address the disparities and injustices is the freedom that is love. Martin Luther King, Jr, understood this with great clarity: “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.” This is true because love enters into the sphere of the other, even when that may mean diminishing one’s own sphere of choices. The elderly man, in giving up his ventilator, narrowed his choices. Again, Martin Luther King: “Love is the active outpouring of one’s whole being into the being of another.”

Love may have us narrowing our choices, but it also may have us expanding them. Love calls people beyond the limitations placed on them by others. It has us pressing forward, expanding our sphere in order to live out our calling in the compassionate use of our gifts in relation to others.

Whether our choices narrow or expand, love freely gives itself. It is the reality that cannot be coerced. We cannot make another person love us and we cannot keep another person from loving us. Even our evil actions against another cannot undo love, for love forgives. (Jesus from the cross: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”) Love, compassion, mercy, justice (making right what is wrong), bring true life-giving change and liberation.

The pandemic that we are enduring calls out for compassion and love. The disparities, along with leadership that ignores the poor and props up Wall Street, cry out for radical acts of love. When we see people answering this call, we see them freely giving themselves for the sake of others. Their actions heal and restore, do justice and liberate. We see genuine human freedom in these acts.

Regarding the two responses to the pandemic that I began with, each has a different feel to it. The first feels like the bondage of self-absorption. It does not feel like freedom to show up with weapons to demand that you get your way even at the cost of others’ well-being. The second feels like freedom, the freedom of giving oneself, one’s life, for another.

The opportunities to love are always there. But, in this time of a pandemic and the new situations it has created, it may be that the call to love—to the freedom that is love—is more easily distinguished from other voices. A gift is being offered to us: the call to love. Therefore, paraphrasing Jesus, “Let those who have ears to hear, let them hear and obey the call.”

Filed under: Grace, Love, SpiritualityTagged with: , , ,