What White Grievance Looks Like

Something is being snatched from them and it’s not just money or jobs or security or even the White House. The common refrain is a fear of an America where white privilege is challenged and whiteness as the gold standard of beauty or power or value or provenance is no longer the automatic default.

Michele L. Norris, Washngton Post

The rioting in the Capitol building was not a surprise, though the lack of security was. The mob that breached security, trashed the halls of Congress, and brought death was not a surprise given the virulent White supremacy that has supported Donald Trump and has been incited by him. That there was a noticeable “Jesus Saves” sign among protesters was not a surprise either, given the blending of White nationalist values and culture with Christian rhetoric. If we let go of our rhetoric and actually follow Jesus, we may recognize our nation’s similarities to the Roman empire that crucified Jesus. As with the Roman empire of Jesus’ time, America’s empire-building tentacles reach out globally. America’s way of doing peace (maintaining order in the empire) is not so different from the “Pax Romana.” The followers of Jesus are called to proclaim God’s reign over against the empires of this world.

Much has been made of White grievance in the news, often without unpacking the nature of the grievance. Are we surprised by the ferocity of it? Are we blind to White supremacy, not merely as an ideology, but as an attitude, expectation, and aspect of White culture? As our nation becomes more diverse on its way to becoming a nation of minorities, are we surprised by the increasing backlash, given our racist ways?

White Americans do not have to claim White supremacy or understand themselves in those terms to be supremacist. All we have to do is to think that our view of ourselves, our nation, its history, and its values are who we are as a nation. When we are able to think of this nation as our nation without really thinking about anybody else but ourselves, we are White supremacists and are likely to think of ourselves as the real Americans. Then the history of this nation that we tell is the history of our ancestors—a White history of a White nation. The history that Native Americans and African Americans tell is quite different from the history of those of us who are of European descent, and yet it is real American history. And it fills in what a White-centered history leaves out. I grew up learning from history books that were grossly incomplete and slanted. Only in receiving the history of others have I found a corrective. We must provide our children with a true and diverse history of our nation, not downplaying its sin and brutality, while, at the same time, lifting up the powerful movements for justice that largely have come from those who have been oppressed.

I remind those who call themselves Christians and who are caught up in a White nationalism: Jesus came from a subjugated and minority people in the Roman empire, and he sided with outcasts. He did not attempt to be seen as one of the “winners.” He did not side with the elite, whether their elite status was in wealth or position or in an ethnic group (being Roman). He calls all to come down from whatever perch we have put ourselves on. He tells us to lose our lives, to let go, and to follow him as he leads us out of our false allegiances to live under God’s reign and be light in the world and to love others (even our enemies) with the love of God.

Those who stormed the Capitol had no real mission or purpose. They did not come with a vision for a “more perfect union.” They came to take back America for themselves. You could hear it in their words, “This is our house.” Never mind that representatives of a great diversity of United States citizens were gathered in that place.

St. Paul wrote of grief that is godly. Some grief or grievance is ungodly. Grief that is godly, is grief that brings repentance and change. It turns away from what demeans and destroys others and works for loving transformation. It does justice, loves mercy, and walks humbly with God.

Filed under: Grief, Justice, Racism

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.

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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: , ,

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: , ,

Donald Trump and White Nationalist Christianity

At Dordt University, a Christian college in Sioux Center, Iowa, in January 2016, Donald Trump said to a group of Christians, “Christianity will have power. If I’m there, you’re going to have plenty of power, you don’t need anybody else. You’re going to have somebody representing you very, very well. Remember that.” (New York Times)

Eighty percent of self-identified White evangelical Christians remembered and voted for Donald Trump. He was the one that White nationalist Christianity chose for its president. Donald Trump, however, is not a Christian president nor a president for Christians, but a president that appeals to a White nationalism that has the veneer of Christianity and uses Christian language and a theology that shelters White supremacy. A Christianity that finds in Trump a protector and provider is far removed from the life and teaching of Jesus and our participation in his death and resurrection (dying to the old life and rising to the new).

What kind of Christianity looks to Trump to give it power? An idolatrous Christianity. The roots of its idolatry go deep, to the beginnings of a nation established as a White nation for Whites built on the free labor of enslaved Africans and the genocide of Native Peoples of the land. A theology was developed (some of it ready-made for the task) that justified, supported, and reinforced White nationalist values and commitments. This theology has remained, in one form or another, through Jim Crow and the new Jim Crow. While no longer providing a rationale for slavery, it remains White supremacist. Rather than being a blatant, ideologically framed White supremacy, much of it operates hidden (especially to participants) and persistent. As Ibram X. Kendi has so clearly pointed out, the opposite of racist is not “not racist” but antiracist.

A Christianity that follows Jesus is active in doing justice. It works to make right what is wrong. It seeks to dismantle in order to build a just society. We have a mission like that which was given to the prophet Jeremiah “to pull down” in order “to build and to plant.” In its most subtle forms, White nationalist Christianity simply overlooks or diminishes the racism, disparities, and injustices experienced by people of color and seeks to maintain a White supremacist status quo. It will not acknowledge this, but its denial is seen for what it is when it supports voter suppression (while calling it something else) and dismantling affirmative action (as if it were no longer needed), opposes true reform of the criminal justice system, and works against initiatives to address disparities in health, education, and housing.

I share with other Christians the concern for the life of the unborn, but I also believe that being pro-life means care for the life of the born and therefore health care for all. I oppose the taking of any life and therefore, as with the early church, oppose capital punishment and cooperation with war. I believe that following Jesus includes doing what he told Peter to do and that was to put down his sword. It is hard to follow Jesus in loving and praying for our enemies while killing them. Jesus calls us to be witnesses to God’s reign, not to the nations of the world and their security solutions.

Now, I do believe there are evangelicals (and other Christians) who voted for Trump that know and love God and have experienced God’s grace. There are all kinds of reasons people get caught up in various belief systems and do not recognize the inconsistencies with their new life in Christ. And, of course, God comes to us where we are and has us on a journey. We begin a journey that brings us out of many false, hurtful beliefs. For Christians, this happens by following Jesus daily. We expect transformation and growth. Increasingly, we become responsible for exercising discernment, with the help of the Spirit—discernment regarding leaders and teachers in our lives. The greatest responsibility, however, goes to leaders. James says that not many should be teachers for they will be judged more harshly. The greater the responsibility, the more required. And Jesus says, “Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling block comes!” (Matthew 18:7)

What, at times, happens is that a person “accepts Christ” in a genuine desire for a life change, perhaps from a drug addiction which is the immediate idolatry or obsession that they are aware of, from which they need deliverance. God is gracious and they experience healing from their addiction as well as help with other personal struggles. At this point, in their spiritual journey, theirs is a malleable Christ. (If only we would be malleable to Christ.) The guidance they receive is critical. What they may receive from an available pastor is a theology shaped by nationalist values and ideologies or that does not question these (which is fine with the person who holds them). The only way out of this false religious bubble is to actually follow the Jesus of the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, and the New Testament. Let Jesus’ teaching challenge, disrupt, and “take every thought captive to obey Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5) Above all, this means that we do what Jesus tells us to do: Count the cost of following. It goes beyond initial acceptance. Jesus says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves [including their present commitments and ways of thinking] and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)

Filed under: Discipleship, Justice, Leadership, RacismTagged with: , ,

Gifts in a Time of Pandemics: Knowledge

At this point, in human history, there is an astounding accumulation of knowledge, along with many ways to access this knowledge. We do not need to be experts in infectious diseases to make our way through the present pandemic. We simply need to be open to receiving and learning from others.

Communally shared knowledge is a gift in a time of a pandemic. Experts in the field of infectious diseases, who are on a learning curve with a new virus, share their knowledge, observations, and proposals with one another and the public. We experience this knowledge as a gift when we listen to someone like Dr. Anthony Fauci. We are given steps to take.

As with all gifts, however, knowledge must be received and acted on. In the midst of a new virus that continues to spread, the knowledge that wearing masks can help us is a gift. But this knowledge can be received or refused. It may surprise us when people refuse to wear masks under our present circumstances, but all of us have the capacity to reject knowledge.

On the one hand, we are creatures that are infinitely open. We open out to the universe. We open out to the Mystery of the universe, to the incomprehensible God. This openness makes all knowledge possible. On the other hand, we are able to close in upon ourselves and close ourselves off from knowledge. We get sidetracked by our addictions and obsessions. Our fears, prejudices, hurtful dependencies hinder our openness. Here are questions we can ask ourselves: What goes on inside us that would get in the way of receiving and responding to much needed knowledge in this time of a pandemic? What keeps us from being open and receptive to knowledge?

As important as empirical, scientific knowledge is for responding to a pandemic, self-knowledge is especially critical. Interior knowledge of ourselves, the awareness of our motivations, attitudes, feelings, and commitments helps us to discern what gets in the way of receiving knowledge, why we avoid particular subjects, and why we rationalize behavior.

When we recognize and relinquish that which has us closed and allow ourselves to be open and receptive, we do not have to do battle with science or any form of knowledge. We are freed to change our lifestyles in order to address the realities of a pandemic. A loving openness to others will have us wearing masks not only for our own sake but for the sake of others.

Our responses to the surges of COVID-19 infections and deaths have demonstrated how closed we have become and sidetracked by our idolatries and false allegiances. I saw a video of a man raging against wearing masks. He saw mask-wearing as an offense against his “freedom.” The words on his tee-shirt said it all: “Selfish and Proud of It.” Without relinquishing his idolatry of self, he will be incapable of wearing masks for the love of others.

Loving openness frees us to receive from others—not only for addressing a coronavirus pandemic but for addressing the much more entrenched pandemic of racism. Many have been helped toward a degree of openness by a virus that has shone a light on the disparities and injustices in our society. But, of course, those injustices have always been there available to be seen by a loving openness. The video of the death of George Floyd and the actions of the Black Lives Matter movement have brought a sustained focus on what has always been there. These actions have gained the attention of Whites who are willing to be open and who have turned attention to their own racism and the systemic racism of our society. What will maintain this focus and bring about work for change will be a growing openness. Without such openness, we remain in darkness. And remaining in darkness hurts us and others.

If we allow ourselves to be open, we will change. If we go back to our same old rationalizations, we will go on losing our souls, and knowledge will escape us. It makes no difference whether we call ourselves Christian or view ourselves as enlightened. Openness to knowledge brings true change. Above all, love makes us open. The good news is that knowledge and love are not far away when we are open. And God will help us to be open. Therefore, Jesus says, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find.”

Filed under: Mindfulness, Racism, Society, TruthTagged with: , , ,

Gifts In A Time of Pandemics: Anger

Anger follows hurt. We experience pain, then anger. We expect fairness. We expect welcome rather than rejection. We expect to be seen, to be acknowledged, and our basic needs recognized and affirmed. We expect our lives to be valued. Our humanity expects these things. At the heart of all these expectations, we expect love—to be loved and to love. From love flows mercy, justice, and faithfulness. Our humanity is trampled upon when these are not present. And we respond with anger and a desire and a need for what is wrong to be made right, that “justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” We cannot go on under conditions devoid of justice without taking action.

When Jesus came into the temple, he saw the injustice. He saw that what was meant to be a house of prayer had become a “den of robbers.” In anger, he made a “whip of cords” (John 2:15) and “drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves.” (Matthew 21:12-13) In the streets of our cities, police cars have been overturned.

We learn what replaced the selling and the buying and the money changers, in the next verse (Matthew 21:14): “The blind and the lame came to Jesus in the temple, and he cured them.” Envision for our present moment: Police violence against black and brown bodies replaced by acts of healing.

Anger, of course, can simply lash out and accomplish little more than additional pain. And those on the outside of the pain can simply judge its futility. But if the pain underneath the anger is received with compassion (rather than with judgment and self-righteousness) healing is available. I think of the judgment that gets directed at looters and those who damage property when openness to the pain would provide another view. (Take a step toward being open and the help for being open will be there because the Spirit of God is about opening our hearts and giving us eyes to see.) Rather than simply seeing the destructive behavior of individuals, we will see a society that has been crafted and structured by white supremacy and racism, from slavery to Jim Crow to the present “new Jim Crow.” We, who are white, will see our racism rather than be fixated on broken store windows. We will see the racism and greed and indifference that have historically robbed people of ownership within our society, disenfranchised them, cut off opportunity, brought death, and provided a framework within which destructive action makes sense. I saw a video clip of a couple of protesters, seeing a man with a bat in front of a store window, go over to the man and gently lead him away from the action he was contemplating, and then put their arms around him in an act of understanding and solidarity. Compassion has an altogether different mode of operation from that of self-righteous judgment.

When compassion responds to and takes up misdirected anger and redirects it, healing and liberation happen. A little compassion, like a little faith that can move mountains, is powerful. God is in it.

Love can use anger in powerful and purposeful ways. It can help focus on and target what needs to be addressed. Anger is a strong and urgent emotion carrying within it the pain from which it arises, and harnessed by compassion zeros in on the present moment with imperativeness. It takes what love clarifies and gives it emotional urgency. Love—caring enough to attend to the depth of the problem and to gain knowledge—gives rise to solutions. Anger presses us with “why we cannot wait” for the solutions. Change must come now! Jesus saw the temple turned into a den of robbers and immediately acted.

A police force (along with carefully manufactured laws) that historically has been used to “dominate” (using our president’s term) black lives, must be dismantled. It needs to be replaced with that which can truly serve. I am grateful for those who have been rethinking what makes for public safety, who are “dreaming dreams and seeing visions” for something radically different from what we have now. “Defund the police” puts before us, with urgency, the kind of change that must happen: Defund the present police organizations with their militarization and their “us against them” mentality and their opposition to reform. Funds freed up by decreasing police functions become funds for social services, mental health care and housing for the homeless (rather than have police break up their encampments), treatment (rather than criminalization) for those with addictions, and health care, education, job training, community organizations, and community mediation. My local grocery store was one of the few grocery stores on the southeast side of Chicago that was not looted. It was not the police that stopped the looting, but neighborhood residents who essentially talked potential looters out of looting. And this was going on with other stores, as well. They were saved from being looted by the mediation efforts of the community. Contrast this with what we have come to expect from police in such situations, with their oppositional relationship to the community. It is time to defund the present “public safety” institutions and build and fund something more holistic and compassionate and embedded in the community.

For those who would immediately dismiss “defunding” as an impossibility, a sign of hope came from the Minneapolis city council when they voted to dismantle the police force. They decided that the “current policing system could not be reformed.” They pledged “to begin the process of taking apart the Police Department as it now exists.” (New York Times)

The pandemics of the coronavirus and racism have both brought forth anger, in different ways. In either case, we are helped by becoming aware of the pain underneath the anger, acknowledging it, and recognizing where that pain is actually coming from, so that we do not misdirect our anger. Love of ourselves and others helps us with that. The freedom of love gives a healing, liberating direction to our anger as we address the causes of the pain.

Filed under: Grace, Justice, Love, RacismTagged with: , ,