Loving Freedom

 
"In the Sermon on the Mount and in other places Jesus is asking his followers to see that the way to more abundant life is the way of love. We are to love one another, and this love is to be more comprehensive than our love for family and friends and tribe and nation. We are to love our neighbors though they may be strangers to us. We are to love our enemies. And this is to be a practical love; it is to be practiced, here and now. Love evidently is not just a feeling but is indistinguishable from the willingness to help, to be useful to one another. The way of love is indistinguishable, moreover, from the way of freedom. We don't need much imagination to imagine that to be free of hatred, of enmity, of the endless and hopeless effort to oppose violence with violence, would be to have life more abundantly. To be free of indifference would be to have life more abundantly. To be free of the insane rationalizations for our desire to kill one another - that surely would be to have life more abundantly" (Wendell Berry, The Burden of the Gospels, pg. 62-3).

It is for Freedom that Christ set us free; it is because of His Great Love that He gives us the Freedom to choose. I want to grow in this unconditional Love.

a lot to learn

Madeline L'Engle is one of my favorite authors. She is challenging and approachable, easy-to-understand and deep. One thing she taught me was that any and all persons can teach me something. I put myself at a disadvantage by prejudging them based on religion, socioeconomic level, lifestyle, political beliefs, sexual preference, characteristics, or life experience.

The faithful of any religion can teach me because they are still created in God's image. I need to remember I can learn from anyone. Each person has unique gifts and experiences that I don't have. Their perspectives of life can teach me deep and universal truths that break down walls/barriers between us. The focus then switches to what we have in common instead of our differences. Then we really start doing the work of the Kingdom.

Although I am most comfortable with people who are similar to myself, it is not in their company where I grow the most. I need to regularly encounter others who think/act/believe differently than I do - to grown and learn from them. If I surround myself only with people like me, I will be in danger of thinking I'm correct all the time because I don't hear any dissension from my opinions.

In Habitat World Magazine, Sept. 2010, Eboo Patel, founder of Chicago-based Interfaith Youth Core underscores Habitat for Humanity's ability to engage people of many faiths around the positive outcomes of affordable housing for our shared society. "[By partnering together], these interfaith [groups] increase civic participation through service; they build better relations between diverse religious and secular communities; and they address an important social need."

Although it is more challenging, more exhausting, more difficult, I pray for the openness to receive all who cross my path - and to ask God to give me His eyes to see them with.

beautiful girl

I don't know her, but she is in my prayers - Jennifer.

I saw her picture at the coffee shop yesterday - she's missing.

Perhaps she ran away; perhaps she was tricked; perhaps she was taken.

According to this article, "One out of every three teens on the street will be lured into prostitution within 48 hours of leaving home."

She is precious - every person is precious.

God help her. God forgive us for living in a society that allows this to happen. Let's get to work.

God Knew

My church is studying Ephesians this Autumn. The most amazing part of Eph. 1:1-10, this time, is where Saint Paul asserts that God chose us to be adopted before He created anything (v4-5). He didn't begrudgingly adopt us after He saw there was no other way or after we made such a mess that He had no choice but to fix us. God knew before anything else existed and He still went through with everything! God knew we would fail. God knew His Son would have to sacrifice, suffer a painful death and separation from the Father – something Jesus never knew until the day he died - yet, he still said 'Yes' to his Father and to us. God knew we couldn't do His work alone. God knew He would need to step in. God proved He was Faithful, knowing the cost and choosing us anyway. Amazing Love, how can it be?

I think that is the part of God's nature that is very foreign to my human nature. I often don't continue in a direction if I know what will happen, especially if it involves pain. I work so hard to avoid pain, even if it is short-term pain that will bring about great gain in the long-term. God is so different than I am. And I am so grateful.

A Hole In Our Gospel: Chapter 8 (1 of many)

I read A Hole In Our Gospel by Richard Stearns earlier this year. I found it insightful, challenging and thought-provoking. Even before I finished, I realized that it wasn't sinking in, and I really wanted it to. So now I'm re-reading it. I will be posting here some of my favorite quotes and other related thoughts as I journey through again. Unfortunately, I'm getting to blogging about it a bit late in the game (at Chapter 8), so that's what you get first.

In Chapter 8, Stearns references a speech made by Jimmy Carter, which serves for us as a late introduction of the problem that is the primary focus of A Hole In Our Gospel. President Jimmy Carter was bestowed the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. His acceptance speech, made just a little more than a year after the events of 9/11, concluded with a striking statement:

At the beginning of this new millennium I was asked to discuss, here in Oslo, the greatest challenge that the world faces. Among all the possible choices, I decided that the most serious and universal problem is the growing chasm between the richest and poorest people on earth. Citizens of the ten wealthiest countries are now seventy-five times richer than those who live in the ten poorest ones, and the separation is increasing every year, not only between nations but also within them. The results of this disparity are root causes of most of the world's unresolved problems, including starvation, illiteracy, environmental degradation, violent conflict, and unnecessary illnesses that range from Guinea worm to HIV/AIDS.

Stearns notes from Jeffrey Sachs' book The End Of Poverty: Economic Possibilities For Our Time that the per-capita income gap between the richest and the poorest regions in the world has grown from a four to one ratio in 1820 to the seventy-five to one ratio quoted by Carter.

Until the latter 1900's ordinary peoples' awareness of global poverty was limited, but Stearns asserts: "Lack of awareness is no longer an issue. And yet only about four percent of all U.S. charitable giving goes to international causes of any kind."

Stearns goes on to quote Bono, from the foreword to the same book:

...fifteen thousand Africans dying each and every day of preventable, treatable diseases - AIDS, malaria, TB - for lack of drugs that we take for granted.

This statistic alone makes a fool of the idea many of us hold on to very tightly: the idea of equality. What is happening in Africa mocks our pieties, doubts our concern, and questions our commitment to that whole concept. Because if we're honest there's no way we could conclude that such mass death day after day would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else. Certainly not in North America, or Europe, or Japan. An entire continent bursting into flames? Deep down, if we really accept that their lives - African lives - are equal to ours, we would all be doing more to put the fire out. It's an uncomfortable truth. 

For Bono, the key question is (emphases are his):

We can be the generation that no longer accepts that an accident of latitude determines whether a child lives or dies - but will we be that generation? Will we in the West realize our potential or will we sleep in the comfort of our affluence with apathy and indifference murmuring softly in our ears? ...

Future generations flipping through these pages will know whether we answered the key question. The evidence will be the world around them. History will be our judge, but what's written is up to us. Who we are, who we've been, what we want to be remembered for. We can't say our generation didn't know how to do it. We can't say our generation couldn't afford to do it. And we can't say our generation didn't have reason to do it. It's up to us.

I don't know about you all, but these challenges cut straight to my heart. If they don't do the same to you, I suggest you go back and digest those two Bono quotes again. Am I doing everything I can to fight poverty, its causes, and its effects? That's what this book is about. That's the journey I'm on. You're welcome to join me.

Thoughts on "Going Back To Our Christian Roots"

There is an unwavering assertion coming from the Christian Right, arguing that the U.S. should "go back to its Christian roots." A YouTube video came by my inbox today that depicts a Christian tour guide enumerating various religious acts performed by early U.S. presidents. I can't debate the historical veracity of the claims in the video, but I think they completely miss the point.

Many of the actions cited by the tour guide in fact do appear to be clear violations of the First Amendment. To pick one example, a president held church services in the Capitol rotunda, using the Marine Corps Band as worship leaders. Just because it's the president's executive order, and not a law passed by Congress, does that make it legal? A president violated the Constitution (admittedly in a way that didn't seem offend anybody at the time), and just because he was Christian, we Christians are supposed to aspire to that "ideal"?

I think not. Like it or not, the U.S. is not, and never was, a Christian nation. Yes, the vast majority of the founding fathers were Christian. I buy that - though they still held some shockingly different beliefs than their Christian Right boosters of today. Yes, Christian morality and ideals are pervasive in our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. I buy that - though they are by no means completely reflected (never forget the need for the 13th amendment, fixing a gross violation of the ideal that "all men are created equal").

But thank God that the founding fathers also saw the need for religious pluralism, even in a day when the competing religions in America were all basically Christian. They had much clearer memories of the many gross acts of violence that Christians had done to each other when the government did establish Christianity as its religion. (Note that the last of those links describes persecution performed against other Christians by those favorite American Christian ancestors of ours, the Puritans.)

So it is that arguments by folks in the Christian Right that our government should return to its glorious Christian roots always smell to me like "historical snobbery" (one of my favorite C.S. Lewis-isms). History has shown Christian after Christian in power committing acts similarly heinous to those committed by those of any other religious leaning. Who do these people in the Religious Right think they are that they're better Christians than those that have gone down that road before?

Does this mean that Christians shouldn't be in government? Certainly not. But it does mean that we'd be foolish to expect Christians in positions of political power (Bush and Obama) to be any more perfect than anyone else. Does this mean that Christians shouldn't vote as their faith convicts them? Certainly not. But I strongly believe that it does mean that Christians should never seek the establishment of their religion in any government in this fallen world.

God's approved governmental structure is clearly theocracy. He demands unwavering devotion from (and lavishes scandalous grace on) those who choose to be his disciples. And yet he doesn't force himself on us. He woos us, by his truth and goodness that is so fundamental to this world around us. He draws us by the shocking goodness of his own sacrificial exposé of the vulgar baseness of our own human religiosity (yes, we need to identify ourselves with the religious establishment of Jesus' time). Shouldn't we worry more about loving God above all else (including our money, our entertainment, our jobs, and "our America") and loving our neighbor (including the ones on the opposite site of the globe)? Those are the roots that Jesus told us to get back to. I've a lot of work to do myself.