Category: Witness

Trump, White America, and Our Humanity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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: ,

A Pandemic Reminder: The World Is One

If we have ignored this reality, the present pandemic is a reminder: the world is one. A virus that began in Wuhan, China, is now global. It will increasingly effect every part of our global community. We are all in this together. What has been moving rapidly across the northern hemisphere will do the same in the southern hemisphere. What we have shared with those to the south will come back to the north from the south. It will move in every direction finding many various ways to spread.

Of course, this virus that knows no boundaries does not make us interconnected; it makes it harder to ignore our interconnection. We are one world, no matter how many boundaries or barriers we erect: physical, social, national, ethnic, class, etc. We affect one another across boundaries and by means of the barriers we erect: the wealthy here, the poor over there.

Those who are poorest among us, having the fewest resources, will experience greater devastation from this virus—the result of the inequality we have built within our nations and the global community. The poor do not simply choose to be poor. Poverty is produced by greed, racism, nationalism, fear; by the loss of love and compassion. As Augustine said, “The superfluities of the rich are the necessities of the poor.” We cause the divisions and breakdown of our one world. And yet the reality of the one human race is primary. We are one world. The coronavirus is a reminder. It touches us all.

This virus is expected to grow much more rapidly among poorer communities across the world. Consequently, it will be kept alive and pervasive longer because of the barriers we have erected and the oneness we have ignored. We are one world and one human family, but we have acted like we were adversaries in a quest to carve up this globe into kingdoms of wealth and power. Never mind the losers.

It is clear that if we, as a global community, were to address the needs of the hungry and poor among us, especially by addressing the systemic ways of operating that have produced inequities, we would break down barriers to the one world that we inescapably are. It may be that the reality of this pandemic forces us to make changes. After all, we are all helped when the necessities for healthy communities are available to all. The deeper change, however, comes with a change of heart, a movement toward love and compassion.

On this Maundy Thursday, Christians remember and reenact the last meal Jesus had with his followers. We share in a meal at which Jesus is the host. Jesus gathers us from every corner of the global community. The barriers of class, race, nation, and gender are removed. As Paul writes, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” Followers of Jesus are to be witnesses to this reality—witnesses to the true humanity to which all are called, a humanity made in the image of the God who is love.

Filed under: Justice, Love, Poverty, WitnessTagged with: , , ,

Followers of Jesus and War

With the assassination of a leader in another nation, the United States has expanded its warring ways in the Middle East and increased the possibilities of all-out war with Iran. In the face of this reality, the follower of Jesus does not look to see where his or her political party affiliation is on this issue. The follower does not look to a particular ideology or philosophy or the “realistic” response within the framework of global politics. Nor does the follower check with his or her feelings about kin and country, people and nation.

The follower of Jesus listens to the one he or she follows:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. (Matthew 5:43-45)

Jesus, who proclaims that the “reign of God” is near, lets us know that God’s love is near. God’s love is not limited to the love of neighbor and kin. After all, God loves a humanity that has run from God. Paul, in his letter to the congregation in Rome, reminds us that “while we were enemies” (to God), God reconciled us. This love of God, the love that loves enemies, is near and we can open ourselves to it, surrender our lives to it, so that we pray for those who persecute us. So that we do what Proverbs 25 encourages us to do: “If your enemies are hungry, give them bread to eat; and if they are thirsty, give them water to drink.”

This love is counter-cultural and counters the operation of worldly politics. It is to this love that the followers of Jesus must witness. God has a radically different way for us to operate than that of the power-politics of the nations of the world. Within the framework of national sovereignty, security, and national interests, coercive power plays a dominant role. And this love of God that loves enemies, makes no sense and has no place. But that must not keep the follower of Jesus from witnessing to that love. We witness to God’s reign and ways of governing. We call a world back to the source of all creation. It is a call from death to life—to Life Itself.

The seeming futility of such a witness must not keep us from witnessing. It is a matter of faithful obedience to the one we follow—to the living Christ. We must witness in word and action. In the early centuries of the church of Christ, there was a common recognition that following Jesus excluded soldiering. (Second century, Tertullian: “The Lord in disarming Peter henceforth disarms every soldier.”) The “just war theory” came later as Christianity became entangled with the state.

Follower of Jesus, witness to God’s love that reveals itself most powerfully in the love of enemies and acts by making peace where there is discord. Encourage the community of faith of which you are a member to operate in solidarity as a witness. Join with others to call this nation away from war and warring ways. Call it to the ways of peace. The security of this nation will never be in its power over others globally or in its expanding and maintaining its “interests.” It will be in doing justice and its care for the needs of others. Its oppressive and unjust actions in the world pave the way for its destruction. We must witness to those oppressive ways, for our nation and its leaders are in denial and operate blind to this nation’s own forms of terror unleashed upon others.

As witnesses, we are called to prayer and action. In a world that gravitates to war, we are to do those things that make for peace: Do justice, love mercy and live faithfully. Jesus says to us, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

Filed under: Discipleship, Justice, Love, Peace, War, WitnessTagged with: , ,

The “Gospel” That Supports Trump

Pastor Robert Jeffress, an evangelical supporter of Trump, was interviewed for an opinion essay in the Washington Post. He provided us with his (and many Evangelicals) main reason for supporting Trump. He tells us “that regardless of what happens in Washington, D.C., that the general trajectory of evangelicalism is going to be downward until Christ returns.” He explains that, as he understands Scripture, things “get worse and more hostile as the culture does.” Things get less and less “evangelical-friendly or Christian-friendly.” He sees “the election of Donald Trump as maybe a respite, a pause in that. Perhaps to give Christians the ability and freedom more to share the gospel of Christ with people before the ultimate end occurs and the Lord returns.”

This is an amazing statement from someone who purports to be a Christian leader. Why is he focused on a downward trajectory for evangelicalism rather than a downward trajectory for the world (given the state of the world)? At the heart of Christian good news is that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” Jesus says that he did not come into the world to condemn the world but to liberate it, and he trains his followers for the work of deliverance and healing.

And Jesus does not look for respite from the emperor or provincial leaders. When he is told that King Herod is out to kill him, he says, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.” In effect, Jesus is saying that he does not have time to pay attention to King Herod, much less cozy up to him. He has a God-given mission that concludes, as it often does for prophets, in being killed. His focus is on the world, on hurting and broken lives. He is about healing and deliverance directed outward to others. He tells his followers it has to be the same way for them: “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the good news, will save it.”

Jesus does not entertain a “Christian-friendly” environment. Rather, Jesus tells his followers to expect persecution and that, therefore, they must “deny themselves, take up their cross (their suffering and death) and follow him daily.” They are not to seek to secure their lives (their Father in heaven will do that); they are to lose their lives for the sake of others receiving the good news. When they get anxious, they are reminded that their Father in heaven cares for them, and they are directed to seek first God’s reign and purpose and leave to God the kinds of things that they tend to get anxious about. They are set free to focus outward to the needs of others, even unto death.

Pastor Jeffress gives an alternate vision in which Christians, astonishingly, have to count on someone like Donald Trump to give them a respite, while Trump’s actions and that of our government, cause great hurt and death to others. This view eliminates the true mission and witness of Jesus’s followers. And an alternate “gospel of Christ” gets promulgated.

So, what is this alternate gospel? What kind of gospel seeks a “respite” for ourselves while putting up with degrading, demeaning language directed to others, often to the most vulnerable among us? What kind of gospel provides personal respite while allowing children to be separated from their parents at the border? What kind of gospel makes room for the consistent demeaning of people fleeing from great danger to seek asylum? What kind of gospel has nothing to say to the racist actions of a president who sets a tone for the country? What kind of gospel provides respite for white followers of Jesus while making room for demeaning, dangerous language directed to black and brown people? What kind of gospel has us so absorbed with our own condition that we minimize the impact of the rhetoric and actions of this president on others, or simply do not care enough to pay attention to the effects of his actions on others? What kind of gospel does not call us to confront the lies and deceit and injustices?

A “gospel” that puts up with so much pain and hurt at the expense of others while providing “respite” for Christians, has hidden idolatries that “accepting Christ” apparently does little to disclose. This “gospel,” rather than calling for repentance, carves out a place for the idolatry of nation and race, as well as other idols our culture worships such as our comfort, pleasure, possessions, and power. It allows for a form of “Christianity” whose message, in many aspects, is nationalist and often implicitly white nationalist. It is idolatrous. Oblivious to the idols that enslave us, we enjoy our worship and our thoughts about God’s grace toward ourselves while maintaining all manner of self-righteous and destructive attitudes toward others. We may even disregard repentance altogether. This “gospel” may leave us “unaware that the kindness of God would lead [us] to repentance.”(St. Paul) We may go around saying, “I accept Christ. I accept Christ,” as if that were the end of the matter.

The truly good news that Jesus proclaims is that the reign of God is near and is a gift and is available to all. Therefore, Jesus tells us to turn (repent) from our idols (our allegiances that are false to our true selves) and enter into God’s reign. Under God’s reign, we receive the freedom of the children of God—the kind of freedom we see in Jesus, the child of God. In Jesus, we see freedom from being directed by fears, including the fear of others; we see freedom to show mercy, to do justice, to love others. When we begin to experience God’s reign, we discover a very different kind of governing from that of the nations of the world, and we become witnesses in word and action to God’s ways of governing. We are witnesses by our compassion and mercy toward others, our welcome of those different from us, our work for justice, and our being instruments of God’s healing in the world.

Filed under: Grace, Justice, Love, Society, WitnessTagged with: , ,

The Coming Collapse

Hanns Lilje, a Lutheran pastor in Nazi Germany, in his book, The Valley of the Shadow (1950), shares his experience with arrest, interrogation and a trial that ended with his being sentenced to death. (Before the sentence could be carried out, however, communication broke down and the Allies gained control of Germany.) One of his observations in this book was that the Nazi regime was collapsing from within. He sees the collapse in the faces, features, and actions of guards, interrogators, and judge.

He views young men whose lives were “empty,” who “were forced to be brutal” which “caused them to crumble inwardly.” He describes the judge’s face, at his trial, in this way: It “had originally been a good one, almost noble, with clear-cut and intellectual features, but it had decayed (as it were) from within, and all his features bore signs of a terrible inner decline.”

Of tyrants, like Hitler, Lilje writes: “God allows the tyrant to follow his way blindly, to the end, until nothing remains.” Evil sown reaps the decline and fall of the evil-doer.

We are reminded of Paul’s words: “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow.” (Galatians 6:7)

Evil sown carries its own demise within it. Sin is like a parasite. It eats away at truth, compassion, justice, mercy, and faithfulness until it has nothing left to feed upon. St. Augustine says, “Sin is nothing and human beings become nothing when they sin.” Sin always robs us of reality. The “nothing” that is sin produces no love; it undoes love. It shows no compassion, no mercy. Where justice is required, it is unjust. And it is untruthful: It takes away from and distorts the truth.

We experience this undoing personally, and we see it taking place all around us. None of us are without sin, and we all experience the breakdown sin causes in our lives and relationships, whether from our own sins or the sins of others against us. We see this corruption on a social and global scale. We see the loss of compassion daily in the mistreatment of human beings at our border, in our warring ways, in the gangsterism on our streets and in corporate boardrooms, in sexual assault and harassment, and in all forms of inhumanity towards others: the injustices in our criminal justice system, discrimination in housing, health care and educational resources, and in the neglect and hurt of the most vulnerable among us.

We see the disintegration of truth and compassion among those who are placed in positions of leadership. We currently have a man in the office of the presidency who has lied or made misstatements, according to fact-checking, more than 11,000 times in his presidency. Many have become numb to this situation. We have leaders who disparage and demean various ethnic groups and religions among us and leaders who show little regard for future generations as they refuse to address the issues of climate change, seeing such actions as disadvantages to their wealth and power.

But what we are seeing is not only the great hurt being perpetrated on others but the steady breakdown and destruction of the perpetrators themselves. They are unwittingly sowing the seeds of their own demise. Their corruption is eating away at branch and root. It is not surprising that our present government has had a steady flow of those who have had to leave their positions.

The New Testament book of James says, “Not many of you should become teachers…for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” Not many should become leaders. Judgment awaits. What has been sown will be reaped. If we have sown to destruction (the destruction of compassion and justice and mercy), we will reap destruction. We will reap our own inhumanity with its consequences in the hollowing out of our lives and our eventual collapse. Yes, we will leave carnage in our wake, but we will also lose our own souls.

We see this debilitation in the leadership of our government. It is a sickness unto death. That does not mean that we can simply sit, watch and wait for it all to fall apart and then attempt to pick up the pieces. That would mean more affliction on the most vulnerable, and it would mean our own disintegration. People of faith know that they are called to be witnesses. We are to witness from the grace, compassion, and justice we have experienced. As we learn to live from the Source of love, we know that we are under a call to speak to the corruption by witnessing to God’s compassion and justice. We are to join with others to call for compassion, justice, and mercy and do so by addressing the specific injustices of our time, working to make right what is wrong. We are to do justice. We are to be channels of the kind of love that effects actual change.

To those who continue down the road of destruction, who have committed themselves to that road, we will be viewed as subversives. To those who hold onto power for themselves (and “their people”) over against others, we will be called radicals. But then love, care for the truth, and doing justice are radical; they go to the root (radix) of being the humans God calls us to be.

Filed under: Evil, Humanity, Justice, Society, Spirituality, WitnessTagged with: , , ,

Getting Real About Racism

In response to recent racist tweets from President Trump, many of his supporters have reiterated his claim that what he was communicating was not racist. Trump tells us that there is not a “racist bone in his body.” Even though Trump’s racist expressions are blazingly obvious, he and these supporters operate in denial.

Anyone who has become increasingly aware of their own dishonesty, will not find this denial surprising. If we have become mindful of our inner life, our feelings, attitudes and motivations and have been willing to examine and confront fear, envy, jealousy, selfishness, prejudice, lust, greed, and so on, we have recognized also how hidden these things are until we are willing to be self-aware. The more we grow in mindfulness, the more we see that to which we were previously blind. We find ourselves on a journey of coming out of denial.

Racism, like any sin, hides until we are open to the Spirit of truth and willing to confront it. In the same way that no one escapes sin, no one escapes racism. Growing up in a racist society, we are all under the influence of and affected by racism. We may be affected in different ways (dependent on whether we grew up white or as a person of color), but we are all affected. Coming to recognize our own racism, or how racism has hurt and diminished us, happens as we are increasingly aware of our inner selves.

Our inner life, of course, affects our outer actions. If we do not recognize racism in ourselves, or its effects, we will still act out of that inner reality and rationalize our actions. When we do begin to see, and as our insight grows, we gain clarity with what is occurring, not only within us but, around us. We see with increasing clarity and subtlety the racism in our society. We become open to hearing from those who have been affected by racism. We seek those who give voice to their experience. We find that we need the voices of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib. We need what they see from the vantage point of their experiences in the United States of America.

We need not, however, be surprised at the degree of blindness present in our society. How can we be surprised, when we ourselves have had the experience of going from blindness to sight (a journey on which we must continue). If we do not recognize that gaining insight into ourselves is a gift—a matter of grace, then we become self-righteous and judgmental, unable to reach out to others with our witness. We write them off as if they were incapable of change. (We can be grateful that God does not write us off.) If we have changed we know that change is available to others as well.

To put this in the language of recovery from addiction: If we are recovering racists, we go to other racists with something like a 12 step program which starts with coming out of denial: “We admitted we were powerless over racism—that our lives had become unmanageable” when it came to seeing the needs and hurts of others and having empathy and compassion. And we “turned our will and our lives over to God,” to the Source and Mystery of our lives, to the gracious Presence.

Paul, in Romans 8, reminds us to be mindful of the Spirit. “To set the mind on the flesh (disoriented attitudes, desires, and values) is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” In the Spirit there is oneness. The dividing walls come down. We cannot simply continue to justify our divisive attitudes and rationalize our motivations of fear, resentment, and prejudice. We can no longer construct a religious facade over these elements of our inner life, nor give support to them in our social life.

The unexamined self is capable of a great deal of ignorance and hurt, and without the Spirit of truth, we operate unaware of what drives our actions. We operate blindly and full of our rationalizations (all of which appear good to us). As we read in the Gospel of John, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” (John 16:13) With the Spirit, there is openness and receptivity for what is true and real. We are given eyes to see and ears to hear, which is where all change starts. The Spirit (and this openness) will lead us to be witnesses and agents of change in our society.

Filed under: Healing, Mindfulness, Racism, Spirit, WitnessTagged with: , , , ,

“Deliver Us From Evil”

In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” Evil only produces death. God, who comes to us in Christ, gives life.

When I hear people urge us to war, when I hear leaders talk easily—again!—about preparing for war, I see evil at work; the thief is at work to maim, destroy and steal lives away from mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, wives and husbands and children. When a leader provides us with his “brilliant” rationale for regime change by military action, I do not hear brilliance or reasonableness or wisdom or knowledge; I hear evil stealing away heart and mind, compassion and love. The thief is present to do the only thing evil does: steal, kill and destroy.

Evil takes possession of our minds. It has us think that we have a reasonable approach to a problem, when, in reality, we have a plan that produces maimed bodies, traumatized minds, and death. Evil has us in a cycle of sin and death. Because of war, we have seen (and are presently seeing) hundreds of thousands killed. We have seen children left without parents, hundreds of thousands flee in terror, become refugees, displaced and hungry. We have seen the growth, rather than the diminishment, of terrorist organizations. And our bombs and weaponry terrorize, leaving death and destruction.

Possessed by evil, we think war makes sense; evil even has us think that we have understood the problem for which we have decided war is the solution. Some may question my use of the word, “possessed,” here. But, the word is descriptive of our experience, as we keep doing the same massively destructive activity, thinking that we will get different results. It is apparent that we cannot free ourselves. St. Paul writes of our being “captive to the law of sin.” We suffer from a form of possession. Christians have learned to confess this captivity in the words of a prayer of confession: “Most merciful God, we confess that we are captive to sin and cannot free ourselves.”

With confession, we no longer deny our condition. We are at the starting point of change. We acknowledge our bondage (as the prayer continues) “in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone.” Our thoughts and words have entangled us in destructive, harmful ways which we have rationalized. With confession, we acknowledge that we have been unable to stop going to war and justifying our actions.

The prayer of confession continues, “We have not loved you (God) with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.” Now we get to the root of our warring ways: not loving, being alienated from the God who is love. This prayer of confession ends with these words, “Forgive us, renew us, and lead us, so that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways, to the glory of your holy name. Amen.”

This prayer moves us to return to the source of our lives where we experience mercy, renewal, guidance, and delight in God’s will for humanity. As we discover life lived from Love, we become witnesses to love and peacemakers. We become, in St. Paul’s words, “ambassadors of reconciliation,” issuing the call to others to be reconciled to God and become at peace with one another. In response to the call, others join the movement to make peace and stand against war. They unite in a movement that works for change in heart, mind, and action. By our words and deeds, we affect the nation in which we reside, so that it may not so easily go to war, but rather become a more just society that acts justly in the global community. Acting justly is conducive to peace.

Filed under: Evil, Justice, Peace, WitnessTagged with: , ,

Listen and Testify

“For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” (John 18:37)

Jesus testifies to the truth, and those who are committed to the truth listen to what he says. But before Jesus testifies to the truth, he listens to the truth: “I do nothing on my own, but I speak these things as the Father instructed me.” (John 8:28) So Jesus listens and then speaks.

And Jesus is our example for listening and speaking. He is our model for what it means to be truly human as God created us to be. We, like Jesus, are to listen to “the Father.” We are to live from the source of our being. And then we are to testify to what we receive. In a world of lies and deceit, we are to testify to the truth.

Of course, that means that we have to turn from lies and deceit to the truth. Above all, we have to turn from the fundamental lie of our human condition, the lie that denies our creatureliness, that would have us operate as if we were the source of our existence—as if we could come up with our identity apart from God.

Jesus calls us back to reality, to the source of our true selves that is never far away. God is near and the word of truth is near. It is, as Saint Paul reminds us, on our lips and in our hearts, when lips and hearts are surrendered to God, when we worship in spirit and in truth and are open to the Spirit of truth. And “when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.” (John 16:13) The Spirit guides us into who we are to be and what we are to do.

In a world that is deceived about our essential selves and callings, we are sent to be witnesses. We are to testify to what we hear, we who are growing into listeners of the truth. In this way, we are light in the darkness. It is a high calling, being listeners and testifiers to the truth. It is a calling we receive in Christ. As we are conformed to the one who is the Listener and Testifier, we become listeners and testifiers.

Our world, our society, needs those who receive and declare truth, the truth of being human and being community—the truth that demands the commitment of our whole selves, the commitment to love and have compassion for one another, to live as one humanity in God, sharing in all of creation’s oneness with God.

Our societies and the world need the witness of those who receive the Spirit’s guidance for the situations of our time and for the unfolding future, people who hear what the Spirit is declaring in the present. The world needs to hear something other than that which comes from the political and moral ideologies of our time or from the entrenched ways of a false humanity that operates as if it were its own source of being.

Gracious God, give us eyes to see and ears to hear. And then give us the courage to speak and to act in this time in which we live.

Filed under: Faith, Prayer, Spirit, Truth, WitnessTagged with: , ,

What To Do About the Caravan

Five to seven thousand men, women, and children, in what has been called a “caravan,” are moving slowly from Central America to the Mexican-U.S. border with hope for help and asylum. Their movement has become a political stratagem in the rhetoric of the president of the nation of which I am a citizen. As we move toward midterm elections, the idea of this caravan is used as a hook into fear. In order to enhance the fear effect, our president throws middle-easterners and gang members into the caravan fantasy he is producing. Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times reminds us that “more than 1.4 million foreigners immigrate to the United States each year. If, say, half the caravan reaches the border, and half of those people actually enter the U.S., they would represent less than one-tenth of 1 percent of this year’s immigrants.” It seems there are other much larger problems facing the American people.

In any case, I am interested in looking at this issue as a follower of Jesus. I am able to set aside the geopolitical arguments of various political persuasions because they are not mine. And Donald Trump’s hooks are not hooks for me. What I have to say concerning those who come to the border of my nation is quite simple and straightforward: Love them. Welcome them. Respond concretely to their needs. They are reaching out for help, therefore, help them. Do unto others as you would like others to do unto you. “Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.” (Jesus)

Know that when you respond to their needs, you are responding to Jesus and the One who sent him: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” When did we do this? “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:33-40)

Jesus told his followers to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them. This love of enemies is the love that is from God, who while we were enemies to God, God reconciled us. (Romans 5:10) The kind of love that can love enemies is a love that changes all our relationships. It enables us to see (past our fears) the needs of others and respond. Jesus keeps it simple: Love people. But, of course, simple is not necessarily easy. This love requires action. Often, in the face of fear and hate, it demands our time, energy, and resources. Love is the hard, narrow road that leads to life. Jesus says that it requires us to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him in a world that does not understand this love. This kind of love requires that it be poured into our hearts by the Spirit of God. (Romans 5:5)

Do I expect my nation or the nations of the world to operate this way? Not without a great deal of repentance, that is, change. Our relationships within and outside our nation would have to become just. We would have to stop building, maintaining, and selling arms globally. The reality is that all administrations have supported war, including war to simply maintain our hegemony. Recent administrations—whatever the party—have sold arms to Saudi Arabia and supported its war in Yemen, which has brought about massive atrocities, hunger, starvation, and refugees. It is hard to imagine the change of heart and mind that would be necessary to stop killing and to truly embrace needy people at our border and within our nation. But, as Jesus says, what is impossible for human beings is possible for God.

Followers of Jesus are called to be witnesses to God’s love and God’s ways in a world hostile to those ways. I am speaking here of those who follow. There is clearly a difference between going by the name “Christian” and following the one who is being named. We are to be salt, light, and yeast in the world—change agents. I am grateful for the witness of churches offering sanctuary for undocumented persons and for the various immigration and refugee services of churches. And the witness of other peoples of faith and their communities. And people who do not see themselves as people of faith but embrace humanity. If we truly welcome our humanity and that of others, a humanity made in the image of God, we cannot be far from God.

Filed under: Fear, Justice, Love, Mercy, WitnessTagged with: , , , ,