Faith & Politics

Churches everywhere need help with faith and politics these days.  On the one hand, partisan perspectives seep into our faith communities without us looking.  There’s really nothing we can do about it.  The animosity between “liberals” and “conservatives” is part of our culture.  (I put them in quotation marks to remind us that these are labels, not people.)   It’s impossible for “independents” and “centrists” to even state their politics without them.  The opposition inherent in partisanship defines how people speak, think, and interpret any political statement or issue.  It’s nearly impossible to navigate faith and politics without it.

Pastors and leaders can try to mitigate the tensions by reminding members to leave politics out of the pews and pulpit.  They can try to keep church a safe place, reminding parishioners that the Gospel is neutral or knows no single party.   And, to some degree, this is partially right.

The Gospel doesn’t align with any one party or political ideology exclusively.  One way to interpret the history of Israel in the bible is to see it through this lens.  Proper worship and faithfulness to God’s covenant can’t be reduced to one form of rule or ruler.  Likewise, to allow God’s Word or will to be reduced to any one party, candidate, or ideology is equally objectionable.  It would amount to idolatry.

The second commandment is clear that we’re allowed no images or representations for God…as if they were God.   The effect of this commandment is far reaching.  For people of faith, there no place the prohibition of images makes more sense than in the realm of politics.   It holds theological truth and wisdom.  No idea, image, or representation of God can replace the mystery of God and humility before faith in a living God.  Reducing proper worship of God to belief in a political party, candidate, or ideology ultimately betray God and the heart of faith.

On the other hand, no disciple of Jesus can cooperate with the belief that the Gospel is not political.   This is simply wrong scripturally, theologically, and historically.   The Gospel is political and always was.  Christianity has much to repent for in its politics.  But, simply erasing its political dimensions and calling is not acceptable or desirable.  The deep mystery of Christian spirituality and truth of faith in Christ only make sense when understood in political terms.  Faith and politics are something every Christian must wrestle with like Jacob and the angel (Genesis 32:22-31).  Jacob emerged from this wrestling as Israel, the name given to the people of God.  (He was also in a bit of pain.)   Faith cannot escape its relationship with politics, and it shouldn’t try.

There is great temptation in Western Christianity to “spiritualize” faith, which essentially has meant to erase its concrete political, economic, and social meaning.  But, this is nearly impossible.  Terms like “Lord,” “Kingdom of God,” “Prince of Peace,” even “Christ” make little to any sense without understanding them in their historical political context, and understanding them explicitly as political terms.

The term politics is related to polis, which is the ancient Greek term for the city-state.  This is where the term get its meaning for belonging to a people and land, and living under a rule or form of governance.  Western politics is deeply influenced by political concepts that permeate biblical scripture such as the rule of law, sovereignty, and freedom.

The question is not whether Christian faith is political.  Rather, the question is how is it political.  What kind of politics does God require?  What kind of politics does the Gospel make possible?   How do we interpret the Gospel’s invitation to live under the Lordship of Jesus as our true ruler and King?  How do we interpret scripture regarding the purpose and fulfillment of creation – including all human relationships?  What does Jesus’ life, ministry, death, and resurrection as Christ reveal to us regarding the way Christ’s community worships, lives, witnesses, and engages the world around it?   These questions go to the heart of the Gospel and its politics.

Ultimately, answers to these questions are not finally answerable.  What I mean is that these are not abstract questions with answers that are frozen – once and for all – in time.  Rather, these faith questions are essential for any disciple.  Asking them and answering them is a faith-task that is ongoing.

Any church that proclaims Jesus Christ or his community on earth must ask and answer these questions as a simple matter of discipleship.  In addition, Christians must ask them and answer them in the context in which they live their faith.  Political issues surround us, which call for the church’s witness.  The church must live out its own unique politics where it is.  This is the call of the Gospel and Christian discipleship: to be Christ’s community in the world and witness to what God has made possible in the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In the end, faith is not separate from politics.  Quite the contrary, they two are intimately related to one another.

Christ’s community is called to cultivate its own politics.  The church’s politics will be unique and related to, but ultimately different from, the world around it.  Why?  The church’s politics are founded on its best understanding of the Gospel.  The Gospel, simply put, is the God’s revelation of love and grace for the world  (this world).  This is the proclamation of the Kingdom of God in Jesus Christ.  In him, all can be reborn to see the truth of themselves, what new is life possible, the fulfillment 0f creation and reconciliation of human relationships.   This is the Kingdom of God’s love and justice which the world has yet to fully know.

In addition, the church’s witness of faith draws it into the world of politics.  In other words, God’s love for the world draws Christ’s body today into the world’s political issues.  This includes its partisanship with all its tensions.  Here, the church’s call is to the witness of Christ’s peace and justice in the work for a new humanity.  This means the transformation of human relations and communion with the earth.  In Christ, ethnic and racial differences, differences in station or class, even gender and sexual differences are no longer (Galatians 3:23-29) decisive.  Likewise, partisan differences aren’t either.

What is decisive is the world God has made possible.  For the prophets, just like for Christians, that has everything to do with politics.  If Christian faith means anything today, it will find its expression in human politics.  That’s the call and witness of the Good News.

The Sadness Beneath

Sadness is so easily pathologized.  When it pops up unexpectedly or has no obvious reason, it can be quickly explained away as lurking depression or rejected as misplaced emotion.  Sadness, however, may also be spiritual.  Sadness is a regular, even healthy, part of life and companion of grief.  Grief can be all around us in hurt relationships, lost values, declining communities, stress, elusive success, or deep-seated heartache from the past, which haunts our everyday life.

For me, the hard part of deep sadness is not the idea of embracing or exploring it.  It’s finding the right environment – meaning the right relationships – to let the grief or sadness unfold with dignity.  There’s also the simple challenge of the time it takes.

Sadness and grief are not efficient.  They demand their own way and their own time.  The path grief takes is not always predictable.   Therefore, it often seems easier to repress sadness and push it away.  It’s certainly more efficient and rational in the short term.  In the long run, however, suppressed sadness can haunt one’s sleep, daily interactions, and consume one’s creativity.  This is when the spiritual aspect of sadness and grief makes itself known.  Sadness, when it lives inside of us, has a nagging, even irruptive, quality; it seeks not only its way and expression, but the connection it needs to see light of day.  Sadness and grief integrate us, and make us human.  They remind us of our essential relationality, and seeks the blessings of community.   It’s a reminder of our inescapable humanity, and humility.

Lamentations is a book of the Hebrew bible that we usually spend little time with.  It’s a five chapter poem of grieving before God over the fate of Israel.  Interestingly, in Lamentations, the prophet makes clear that both God and Israel are to blame.

What’s also remarkable about the text is that its writer – attributed as Jeremiah – doesn’t give up on Israel or God in the face of absolute ruin.  Rather, God remains his  interlocuter, i.e. his audience, in his grief.  It is a long song of sadness, laced with dark visions of death and desolation, that instigate complaining and pleading over the absolute loss.  Following the covenantal theme of Israel as bride and God as bridegroom, Lamentations laments the broken relationship of God and Israel – and its effects – in personal terms.  Here are the last four verses:

19 You, Lord, reign forever;
your throne endures from generation to generation.
20 Why do you always forget us?
Why do you forsake us so long?
21 Restore us to yourself, Lord, that we may return;
renew our days as of old
22 unless you have utterly rejected us
and are angry with us beyond measure.

Lamentations doesn’t end with, “And they lived happily ever after.”  Because of that, I find solace and company in the prophet’s words.  Sadness is its own spiritual place.  It exists to have its way…and show the way.

While we modern folk look for a way out of grief and ways to mitigate the trouble and heartache of sadness, I find comfort in knowing that profound sadness and grief lie at the heart our relationship with God.  Sadness and grief reveal our humility and helplessness, and this ultimately is what makes us human.  Moreover, they draw us into a spiritual journey of surrender that is best lived in relationship to others.  This restores a sense of our common humanity.  For the prophets, it was precisely out of such sadness and grief that hope sprang forth for the Kingdom of God.  It was out of ruin that they imagined God’s return to human affairs.

A Walk with Jeremiah 6.1

I’ve not posted for some time.  But, Jeremiah called me back again.  I needed some time for meditation.

Once I start reading Jeremiah again, I was reminded how scripture continually calls us back.  This morning, I needed to connect to human experiences much older than my own.  I’m picking up my walk with Jeremiah with chapter six (6).

Who hasn’t felt madness listening to American politics?  It doesn’t matter which party or ideology you ascribe to.  The partisan nature of our political scene and the circus that money and media have made of public opinion and national feeling can leave anyone with this sense of grief.  Jeremiah apparently felt that way, too.

To whom shall I speak and give warning, that they may hear?  See, their ears are closed, they cannot listen.  The word of the Lord is to them an object of scorn; they take no pleasure in it.  But, I am full of the wrath of the Lord; I am weary holding it in.  (vs 10-11a)

Most of us hold to our political perspectives with the same fervency Jeremiah did to God’s word and its clarity.  There is a reason why religion and politics equally offend in today’s dominant norms of decency.  Jeremiah’s religious language gives some of us a false sense of difference.  Forget that this is the bible.  Remember that Jesus hadn’t been born yet.  Remember, prophets were mouthpieces for the covenant of God’s people with God.  That is the contract that birthed their nation.  Jeremiah is explicitly talking about his political point of view, which he sees in relief of God’s vision for reality.

For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely.  They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace…[H]ear, o nation, and know O congregation, what will happen…(vs 13-14)

It struck me that the angst and helplessness we feel for the direction and politics of our nation, even communities, is ancient.  It doesn’t matter if you see our foundation as the word of God, the Constitution, universal human rights, or Locke and Rousseau’s social contract.  Who hasn’t grieved over the injustices and corruption they see?  Who hasn’t felt the fear from signs of instability, irrational decisions, and the plight of those powerless to rise up and correct inequities?  I hear this grief from both liberal and conservative.  Each has their definition of injustice.  Each has their definition of rationality.  Each has their definition of inequity.  Each has their scapegoat and theory of inequities.

As a Christian socialist and/or social democrat, I, too, fall on this spectrum.  And, I see the folly of our partisan blame-games.

They are all stubbornly rebellious, going about with slanders…(vs 28a)

In response, Jeremiah offers a strangely prophetic counsel:

Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it an find rest for your souls.

What are those ancient ways?  What, exactly, is this crossroads?  My soul seems to know without argument or passion.  Perhaps, a still small voice might say it this way:

It’s the humble way.  Neither self-righteous nor divided, the good way is neither silent nor partisan.  It is where justice entwines you and I in a common welfare.  It is where peace is waged for the sake of the most vulnerable, among which are each others’ elderly parents and youngest children.  It is where our trust merges in the form of a covenant, in which our wealth and welfare is not in competition, but where the only win is win-win.

I’m reminded of Community of Christ’s Doctrine and Covenants 163:4a-c:

God, the Eternal Creator, weeps for the poor, displaced, mistreated, and diseased of the world because of their unnecessary suffering. Such conditions are not God’s will. Open your ears to hear the pleading of mothers and fathers in all nations who desperately seek a future of hope for their children. Do not turn away from them. For in their welfare resides your welfare.

The earth, lovingly created as an environment for life to flourish, shudders in distress because creation’s natural and living systems are becoming exhausted from carrying the burden of human greed and conflict. Humankind must awaken from its illusion of independence and unrestrained consumption without lasting consequences.

Let the educational and community development endeavors of the church equip people of all ages to carry the ethics of Christ’s peace into all arenas of life. Prepare new generations of disciples to bring fresh vision to bear on the perplexing problems of poverty, disease, war, and environmental deterioration. Their contributions will be multiplied if their hearts are focused on God’s will for creation.

A Walk with Jeremiah 5.1

In Chapter 5 of Jeremiah, the central theme moves from grief to judgment.  There is a sense Israel and Judah are on trial.  The emotions of anguish and anger that seem to drive chapters 1-4 begin to distill to negotiation and reason.  There’s a reason to be angry.  Again, theology – or making sense of God – accompanies makes sense of circumstance.  The Book of Jeremiah was likely compiled while God’s people were already in Babylonian exile, as a witness and memory for the nation.  In other words, it was compiled not in real time but after the fact.  This means, the compilers have to make a sense of the people’s fate.  Jeremiah’s prophecies, in this context, make perfect sense.  He was right. It makes sense that Israel and Judah fell and were plundered because the nation had become corrupt.  Verse 1 comes right out and says it:

“Search its squares and see if you can find one person who acts justly and seeks truth—so that I may pardon Jerusalem….How can I pardon you?  (Vs 1, 7)

The theological thinking of Jeremiah’s time doesn’t differ too much from the logic driving public opinion today.  Who would worship a god that allowed the corrupt, unjust, and willfully arrogant to prosper at the expense of the poor, the disadvantaged, and basic human fairness?  Who would vote for a politician who would do the same? Should those with willful disregard for the law, others, and basic consequences reign unchallenged?  This seems the issue.

“When I fed [your children] to the full, they committed adultery and trooped to the houses of prostitutes.  They were well-fed lusty stallions, each neighing for his neighbor’s wife.”  (vs 7-8)

“They have spoken falsely of the Lord and have said, “He will do nothing.  No evil will come upon us, and we shall not see sword of famine”  (vs 12)

For scoundrels are found among my people; they take over the goods of others.  Like fowlers they set a trap; they catch human beings.  Like a cage full of birds, their houses are full of treachery; therefore they have become great and rich, they have grown fat and sleek. They know no limits in deeds of wickedness; they do not judge with justice the cause of the orphan, to make it prosper, and they do not defend the rights of the needy.  Shall I not punish them for these things?”  (vs 26-29a)

Apparently God is neither abusive nor vengeful at this point, at least not in the prophet’s mind.  Israel and Judah can lay their fate at the feet of God.  God has done what was justifiable.  The nation, or at least a critical mass of its people, had become deeply corrupt.  Of course, the tragedy of corruption is that it makes victims at the moment of its inception, regardless of later actions.  This is where God becomes grieved and, as a God of Salvation, must make sense of it all. This is the prophet’s job. Jeremiah testifies of a God that is Holy, even beyond reproach.  But, Israel’s God is not the kind of God to act flagrantly or take advantage of the fact.  At least politically, God’s actions are metered and reasonable.  The prophet opens us up to the logic of it all.

“Shall I not bring retribution on a nation such as this?” (vs 29b)

We don’t have to let the question sit there, as if it’s rhetorical.  We can answer it with good theology and our personal perspective.  But, if we judge God harshly, let us also judge ourselves.  Let us judge our nation, its own sense of justice, our own sense of retribution, our own limits of tolerance and intolerance, and do so with the same judgment we judge the God of Jeremiah.  Consider your position on war, the role and use of violence, and the death penalty.  Perhaps, you believe an eye-for-an-eye.  Perhaps, you believe in justice and mercy, basic fairness and compassion.  If so, do not forget its cost.  Otherwise, we risk being just romantics.

A Walk with Jeremiah, 4.1

I grew up hearing all the concern about the Old Testament’s angry and vengeful God.  This is certainly an important theological question.  Theology should be questioning the nature of God.  With all the emphasis on power and authority among many Christian preachers and believers, the nature of that power and authority is also important to consider.  Who wants to worship a God who threatens you whenever He doesn’t get what he wants?  (This kind of of God is almost always, certainly, a “He.”)

But, if one actually spends time with Old Testament scriptures, one can read the prophet’s encounter with God a different way.  This is the reading I’ve been searching for, and am finding.  Chapter 4 of Jeremiah is a good example of what I mean.

Sometimes, our wrestling with God’s anger is not about wrath or punishment.  It’s about natural or reasonable consequences.  As human beings, no one is so free, so entitled, or so endowed that they are exempt from life’s consequences – earned and unearned.  We reap what we sow.  And, often, we aren’t aware of all that we sow because we are not mindful of how deep our actions shape our world.  Verses 18-19 paint such a picture.  God says,

“Your ways and your doings have brought this upon you, this is your doom; how bitter it is!  It has reached your very heart.”

And, God speaks of himself.

“My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain!  Oh, the walls of my heart!  My heart is beating wildly; I cannot keep silent; for I hear the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war.”

Israel and Judah are recounting their conquer and invasion.  They are remembering the events that lead up to their exile from the promised land.

This is the question:  After release from Pharaoh, generations in the desert, God’s covenant with us and Solomon’s Temple, how does a nation – a people! – make sense of their own disaster and ruin?  This seems like an everpresent, relevant, and legitimate question.

There is an answer.  In the time of the prophets, the people believed what happened on earth reflected the realities of heaven.  If there was famine, God withheld the rain for a reason.  There was some divine cause.  A relationship was broken.  If there was war, those who occupied the heavens were also at war.  Faithful and more powerful God’s prevail.

What’s going on in heaven when Israel and Judah are conquered?  Prophetic theology provides an explanation.

“For my people are foolish, they do not know me; they are stupid children, they have no understanding.  They are skilled in doing evil, but do not know how to do good… Because of this the earth shall mourn, and the heavens above grow black; for I have spoken, I have purposed; I have not relented nor will I turn back.”  (vs 22, 28)

If we read flatly, God is just punishing Israel and Judah.  This is natural to believe because the ancients believed God was the protagonist of history.  God propelled time’s events.  However, if we appreciate that theology makes sense of circumstance, we can appreciate a richer, more relevant and provocative interpretation for us today.  As human beings, no one ever grows so free, so entitled, so powerful, or so endowed that they are exempt from life’s consequences.  Would that be just?   Are some more entitled to grace and fortune that others?  Should we not reap what we sow?  Perhaps, something in Israel and Judah had gone off the rails.  Perhaps, there was injustice, growing inequities, and many people’s hearts were turning away from the Law which taught truth, justice, equity, and peace.

Perhaps talk about an angry God is talk that tries to make sense of all this.  Perhaps it’s an attempt to put reason to what has come to seem unreasonable.  Perhaps the role of the prophet is to find God midst God-forsakenness, social brokenness, and pain.

A Walk with Jeremiah 3.1

If I continue to look through the lens of grief between estranged lovers, Jeremiah chapter 3 reads like a grief process.  There’s anger over betrayal, as well as the bargaining associated with coming to terms with a loss.  The bitterness comes through naming Israel’s and Judah’s whoredom.  Whoredom is the main theme of the chapter.  Jeremiah begins there:

“If a man divorces his wife and she goes from him and becomes another man’s wife, will he return to her?  Would not such a land be greatly polluted?  You have played the whore with many lovers; and would you return to me?” (vs 1)

Interestingly, the Tanakh adds the nuances of the Masoretic text, the authoritative text Rabbinic Judaism, “Saying, If a man divorces his wife” or “I have to say, if a man divorces his wife.”   This nuance helps remind us that the prophet, speaking for God, is thinking in metaphor.

The metaphor is riddled with patriarchal assumptions, however, and that is disturbing.  It’s not that God isn’t Holy, nor that God should be wholly understandable.  Our relationship with God is not.  The problem is that the patriarchy of the metaphor is so understandable.  Is God really ranting like a schmuck who lost his lover to another man?  Should I hold God to a patriarchal male standard, as if God’s a man’s man who always gets what he wants?  Is God the head of household who should be able to control his woman, his personal possession?  Or, is God lost in grief for the conditions of the people, with little means to express it?  Is the text grasping at ineffable, unspeakable mourning.

The reader has to critically think, listen to the text by dwelling with it, and decide.

God obviously wants reconciliation.

“I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.” (vs 15)

Maybe its a matter of God bearing more of God’s heart.  Maybe Israel’s and Judah’s infidelity to God is a matter of nurturing and ignorance, or lack of understanding.

What’s going on with us when we lose our hearts to lesser things?

No matter the reason or explanation (as if true love often has any), the grief process moves to deeper understanding.  Both God and Israel (along with Judah) are suffering in shame.  The prophet speaks the voices of both God and Israel in chapter 3.

“I thought you would call me, My Father, and would not turn from following me.  Instead, as a faithless wife leaves her husband, so you have been faithless to me.” (vs 19b, 20)

The reality of the situation is also becoming apparent to Israel.

“Let us lie down in our shame, and let our dishonor cover us; for we have sinned against the Lord our God, we and our ancestors, from your youth even to this day; and we have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God.”  (vs 25)

Perhaps the parent-child metaphor is better.  Both father-child relationships and bride-bridegroom relationships are haunted by patriarchal assumptions.  But, the parent-child relationship can be more inclusive, and it explains the relentless presence of grief much better.

Having a child is like having your heart run around outside yourself.

A Walk with Jeremiah 2.1

God obviously needs us.  And, apparently, we need God.

Chapter 2 of Jeremiah reads like a letter from a bitter lover – a lover who’s been taken advantage of, cheated on, then abandoned.  Many of us have been there.  Lost in love and mutual happiness, then something happens and it all falls apart.  The memories of rapturous fulfillment are still palpable, but something’s changed.  The relationship’s broken.  Your lover doesn’t need you anymore…of they don’t think they do…or they never did.

Consider God’s words to Israel through the prophet:

I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride…Israel was holy to the Lord, the first fruits of his harvest…What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they want far from me, and went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves?  (vs 2b, 3a, 5)

But, somehow, this abandonment God feels is more than just losing love.  Love between God and Israel isn’t limited to the metaphor of matrimony.  At least from the prophet’s perspective, there’s something wholly illogical and unjust in Israel’s infidelity.  It’s political, and goes to the heart of what it means to be in communion with one another and with God.

“[My] people have changed their glory for something that does not profit…Also on your skirts is found the lifeblood of the innocent poor, though you did not catch them breaking in.”  (vs 11b, 34a)

In pursuit their own lusts and their own wants, they turn on each each other, including the poor.  Their lifeblood has stained their garments, though the poor are innocent.  This is also their turning from God, and it is self-defeating.

“[Where] are your gods that you made for yourself?  Let them come, if they can save you, in your time of trouble; for you have as many gods as you have towns, O Judah.”  (vs 28)

Jeremiah writes when Jerusalem was under threat of being ceased.  Judah and Israel were to be conquered.  There is no greater failure of you or your gods than when someone outside comes in and takes over.  Freedom, but more specifically sovereignty, is the greatest political prize.  But, by the time the book of Jeremiah was compiled, Israel and Judah had already lost both.  This is the story Jeremiah tells.

“Why do you complain against me?  You have all rebelled against me?”  (vs 29)

Still, there’s more than a cold sense of punishment about this loss and betrayal of God by God’s people.  If Jeremiah, the prophet, speaks for God, his voice mourns.

“Can a girl forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire?  Yet my people have forgotten me, days without number.”  (vs 32)

Midst the scorn, there is also sorrow.  Beneath the deepest anger, there is almost always grief.  Grief is pain and loss.  Perhaps God’s needs us more than we realize, and we need God.  We just don’t really grasp that until we’re in trouble.

A Walk with Jeremiah, 1.1

For the next little while, I plan to be reading Jeremiah.  I’m doing it for my own study.  My plan with this blog is simply to post simple reflections based on my reading.  At this point, I don’t plan this to be an in depth academic study, but more impressions and reflections.  At times, I may input commentary information or wonder off in a long thought about something.  But, overall I simply hope to jot down the passages, themes, metaphors, and impressions that come to the surface.  I hope, for someone, the reading is worthwhile.

Chapter 1

The first chapter covers Jeremiah’s call and commission as prophet.  Thinking about it from an experiential point of view, verses 4-5 and 17 stick out.

vs 4-5:  Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

vs 17:  But you, gird up your loins; stand up and tell them everything that I command you. Do not break down before them, or I will break you before them.

Feel the contrast.  At first, we read of God’s providence and Jeremiah’s call.  There is a sense of fate in Jeremiah’s calling.  “I’ve consecrated you”; “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.”  These sentences parallel lines of Psalm 139.  Read the comforting verses of Psalm 139:13-14

¹³For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. ¹⁴I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.

These passages early in Jeremiah easily leave me with a feeling that Jeremiah was destined to be God’s prophet and mouthpiece.  He will successfully speak for God to the nations.  God’s intentions give a sense of security and assurance.  But, by the way:  “Don’t break down before them, or I will break you before them.”

Like a gut punch.

Most of us, today, probably want to run to the gentle Santa Claus God we often don’t intend, but inadvertently create with our expectations.  We don’t want to feel uncomfortable when we think of God, or fear God’s presence.  We don’t know what to do with a God who threatens.

This mix of promise and warning, of assurance and terror, seems to characterize all of the prophets.  It’s, as if, a life with God is a life at stake.  Things matter with God, especially when involving the lives of people.  Maybe there’s good reason for God to feel a bit a pressure.  Maybe God’s hearing cries of anguish and suffering, the way Exodus describes.  Maybe God sees injustices that would anger anyone.  Maybe God needs Jeremiah for a reason.

All awhile, we take the line out of context – “Don’t break down before them, or I will break you before them.”  Like relentless movie critics, we turn our attention on God’s personal character and judge with our middle-class social expectations.

Instead, I remember my own reactions to what I think are injustice. I remember what I think when I feel indignation, and feel the pressure to make a difference.  Perhaps, circumstances dictate that God needs Jeremiah.  Or, the writer of Jeremiah needs God to make a difference, so s/he invests God with power.  I’m not sure we can know.

But, the mix of warning and promise is familiar.  It’s reminds me of taking life seriously.  When I watch the news today, my own thoughts move from anger to hope.  Maybe, that’s what Jeremiah is dealing with.

Christian Freedom, or Love

This longish post was written after a painful argument with a loved one.  Hurting, I went searching for what love meant in my context.  I felt the need to take care of myself, which may mean ultimately closing myself off to this person.  My soul searching came through this reflection and reminded me about what love is, and what being free to love really means.  That’s true freedom.  And, without God, for me it’d be impossible.

If you want to understand the freedom Christ offers, turn to Galatians 5.

Of course, there is more to a Christian understanding of freedom than one chapter of Paul’s writings.  Paul expounds on freedom in relation to the law much more in Romans.  More importantly, you can’t really understand freedom in Christianity without, first, spending time with the importance of freedom in Judaism.  The Exodus and the prophets’ word to the Jews in exile provide a much-needed backdrop to understand the depth of freedom as a central theme of Old Testament and New Testament theology.  But, taken in one sitting, Galatians 5 provides quite a bit on its own for what freedom in Christ means.  That’s what I write about.

Of course, for Paul, real freedom begins in Christ.  It begins in Christ’s relationship to the law.

Paul’s understanding of the law and Christ is among the most important themes in Christian theology, especially Protestant theology.  Paul first talks about this in Galatians 5.  Paul is writing to a group of early Christian converts who apparently adopted or began teaching that you need circumcision to become a disciple of Jesus Christ.  To know Paul is to know that Paul vehemently opposes this.  Moreover, his opposition to it is central to understanding Christianity for Paul.

Understanding the tension between Christ and the law is necessary to rightly interpret Paul’s opposition of flesh and spirit which follow.  From these tensions rise life in the Spirit and Christian freedom.  What makes Paul’s message so enduring and relevant today is that he knows “the flesh” can not only enslave us by consuming our heart’s desires.  The selfishness of “the flesh,” for Paul, can also consume religion.

For Paul, freedom begins in liberating us from the requirements of any outward law.  Paul’s point comes together in verses 1, 3, and 5.

For freedom Christ has set us free… I testify to every person who lets themselves be circumcised that they are obliged to obey the entire law…[but] in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love.

Here is the kernel of the whole chapter.  Paul is writing to a community of the earliest Christian converts.  Unlike Paul, many early evangelists of Christ’s message taught that to accept the good news and follow Christ, one first be circumcised.  After all, Jesus was a Jew.

For Paul, circumcision entwines someone in the whole of the law and its requirements.  Circumcision is the outward sign of the Abrahamic covenant, from which everything follows.  This meant Gentiles had to submit to circumcision and observe the law in order to receive and follow Christ.  Paul is a Pharisee, a devout Jew.  Ironically, he sees this as completely backwards.  It’s even opposed to Christ and the good news he brings.  For Paul, Christ liberates us to something else – life in love for others and the Spirit.  This is what Paul seeks to single out and life high above all else.

Freedom in Christ does not point to ourselves, whether it’s our own justification, selfish wants, or self-righteousness.  This is where Paul’s judgment on the fruits of the law is so total and profound.  The 613 laws of the Torah were never intended to self-aggrandize the Jews or the individuals who followed them.  Quite the opposite:  The law pointed to honoring and remembering God in all things.  The Law taught to a life of disciplined devotion and humility, self-restraint and sacrifice (literally and otherwise), hospitality to the stranger and love of neighbor.  It is these fruits of following the law that Paul wants to recover.   However, the logic and purpose of the law had become something else.

What Paul could not allow was any self-justification or self-righteousness before God and neighbor.  Nothing could be more antithetical to Christ and what Christ had done.  But, this is precisely what the law had become, especially by separating the righteous and sinner.   If separation and self-righteousness had become the essence of the law, Christ had totally overcome it for Paul.   For Paul, in Christ, Love of God and neighbor became the one overarching gospel that relegated and overcame all others requirements.  This Spirit testified to it.

Verses 4 and 5 make Paul’s judgment of the law clear.  He writes,

“You who want to be justified by the law have cut yourselves off from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.”

Clearly, righteousness no longer comes from the law for Paul.   It comes from grace, through Christ, and by the Spirit.

Faith, therefore, points someone’s trust beyond the law, beyond any justification or self-righteousness that can be outwardly judged or self-expressed.  Faith is required because in Christ, there is freedom.  Love is the eternal law.  Paul reminds us of the original purpose of the law in verses 13 and 14.  He says,

“For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become servant to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Any selfish use of the law for justification or self-righteousness is a perversion.  Love is the whole law, its requirement and commandment.  Outward fulfillment of the law can lead to self-righteousness.  The separation of self-righteousness does not justify.

By distinguishing the law and Christ, Paul theologizes the opposition of flesh and the Spirit.  The opposition of flesh and Spirit is the next step to understanding the freedom Christ offers.  But, it is easily misunderstood and misconstrued.

The Spirit opposes the flesh in the same way Christ frees us to move beyond justification of the law.  If God’s law can become a tool of separation, self-justification and self-righteousness, then it is no better than any other selfish work or way of life.  In such a community, the love between self and neighbor is distorted and grace-less.  This is what happens with religion becomes self-righteous or a religion of separation and justification.  Only life in the Spirit frees us from this kind of life to love God, self, and neighbor.  God in Christ reveals to us what love and self and neighbor really is.  This was the intention of the law and the message of the prophets.  It is now fulfilled in Christ.

As a matter of illustration, Paul goes on to provide a list of works of the flesh.  It’s a list of rather negative stuff.  What qualifies everything on the list is not that they are all sensuous, bodily, or break some religious moral rule.   Rather, every work of the flesh Paul lists is selfish or self-indulgent.  Works of the flesh serve immediate desires, our selfish reactions, and outward judgments of ourselves and others.  Paul suggests that these are not where the Kingdom of God is at.

In contrast, Paul also provides a list of fruits of the Spirit.  They include love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  What is obvious about this list is that everything on it moves us beyond our immediate wants, reactions, and outward judgments.  Moreover, these fruits are cultivated by loving ourselves and others.

What’s most profound about this list – from a religious standpoint – is these things are good beyond any law or requirement.  These fruits are good in and of themselves.  Paul is explicit:  “There’s no law against these things.”  This is life in Spirit.  We are free from any need for self-justification, religious requirement or constraint.  Life in the Spirit is possible because of God’s grace.  This is what we see in Christ.

This life is the freedom Christ offers.

a moment’s meditation: yearning for more

Since finishing my formal studies in 2010, I’ve been on a journey.   First, I moved from Chicago to Graceland University, Lamoni, IA, to be the Director of Religious Life and campus minister in 2011.  I’ve spent the last three years settling into this position: learning Graceland’s current institutional culture, getting to know the students who come to GU, developing the courses I’m teaching, and finding my alchemical vision for Christ’s mission and Community of Christ’s mission on campus.   These responsibilities, and other denominational activities, have thoroughly absorbed the last three years of my life.

Beginning my fourth year, I can’t say “I’ve arrived.” I’m still navigating these areas and learning things.   But, I’ve come to a place where I have my bearings and some sense of direction.  I’ve identified areas that I think need long-term attention and collaboration.  I better know my circle of influence verses my circle of control.  I find meaning in daily life among students and colleagues at Graceland.  I also have more opportunities to be present with Margo and my two daughters at home.  Katy, my oldest, is a teenager this year.  She’ll be a freshmen in high school a year from now.  Kenzlee, my younger daughter, began middle-school this year.  Both are in sports and playing two instruments.  My best friend and wife, Margo, loves her faculty position in the Gleazer School of Education at Graceland, and has been working on an Ed.D. year-round for three years from Drake University.   Currently, she is writing her dissertation.  Journeying to this point has been exhausting, but meaningful.   As I consider the future and try to navigate work and family, I still have a dull nagging feeling within me.  It’s like the murmuring of a still small voice trying to speak, or the distracting feeling of drips of water landing on the back of my neck.

I believe that living a whole spiritual life means responding to the s/Spirit within us that yearns to give birth to something.   I call it “s/Spirit” because this fountain of life-giving and life-bearing energy is God’s Life and Creativity entwined indistinguishably with our own.  It is a summons to live a life of freedom and creativity.  That s/Spirit within us is the creative energy or vision, impulse of inspiration, and quietude of potential that haunts our working mind and resting moments.  Paying attention to that s/Spirit at work within us leads us to what our spirituality is about.

I don’t point to that s/Spirit, however, to be prescriptive.  This isn’t about giving advice.  You and I have heard enough from the spiritual marketplace and its self-help culture.  We know how much it tells us that we need to express ourselves freely.  We must connect with our inner-child, play and live creatively.  We’re too busy, paying attention to the wrong things.  The voices go on:  blah, blah, blah…..

OK. Fine.  Maybe.

But, spirituality is not just another thing to do. <sigh>

When I stop and pay attention to that “dull nagging” desire in me, I don’t miss the obvious.  I don’t miss the fact that my family and daughters are, quite literally, part of this “birthing” in my life.  They are part of my life’s work.  They call forth my disciplined and creative energies.   Miraculously, Katy and Kenzlee are forming into generous, crazy, obstinate, and surprising young persons right before me every day.

I also don’t overlook that my work at Graceland is creative.  It, too, takes creative energies and inspiration.  It, too, gives life.  But, apparently, there is something more or missing.

The dull nagging or spiritual drip that’s thudding on my neck as I hunch over focused on “today’s tasks” keeps coming.  It doesn’t frustrate me or give me angst.  I think I just need

to try to listen to that small voice, or pay attention to that refreshing drip pooling on me.   The distraction could be life-giving.  To disregard this nagging in the name of busyness, or to appease some insatiable need for productivity, only keeps my life locked in a cycle of deadlines and want for mindless entertainment.   So draining.  Still, “deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls,” Psalm 42: 7 says, “all your breakers and your waves have gone over me.”  Maybe that’s what I’m yearning for.