The People Who Are Wrong

June 15, 2009 at 21:07 · Filed under Church ·Tagged , , ,

In my better moments, I appreciate the people with whom I disagree. This sentiment is especially true in the Church, but holds in the course of all of life. When somebody disagrees with me, regardless of that person’s intelligence (large or small) or moral character, there is a reason that the person came to his or her point of view, and it is almost never simply to spite me. I sometimes take the time to ask, either of that person or of myself, why has this disagreement arisen?

Sometimes I can summarily dismiss the point of view of the other, though this is seldom a healthy course of action. Even if the other person holds a position that I know to be faulty, it is a valuable use of my time to remember that God walks people along at different paces; I have changed my mind and will do so in the future, and I appreciate the grace that is offered to me when those wiser than I let me gently correct my way. I am given a very special chance to see God’s mercy when I am able to see the error in others’ points of view and let them change without my foolish tongue.

Then there are the people who see things in a way I cannot reject out of hand, nor am I able to accept. Pretty much all of my Christian brothers and sisters fit into this category to a greater or lesser extent. Because they are a big target, I’ll pick on my Catholic friends as an example. The Catholic Church, as I understand it, holds on to a number of beliefs which grate against my senses — including their understanding of Mary and the position of the Pope. Yet I have found a deep well from which to draw upon God’s Spirit in the Catholic traditions. The rich understanding of liturgy and sacrament, the diversity of insight from the monastic orders — these are things which the rigid house of Catholicism has grown to flourishing. The Catholics have a view of God which Protestants ignore to their own sorrow.

But likewise, the other branches of Christ’s vine have richness to share. The Vineyard taught me about the charisma of God’s Spirit, the Calvinists taught me about the universality of the Gospel’s theology, the liberal mainlines taught me about the cry for social justice. In each tradition, God has planted something of which the others ought to learn.

Even beyond the body of Christ, in the religions, spiritual practices, and even non-religious moments of other cultures, God has hidden pieces of Himself. I have scarcely scratched the surface of them, but I see pieces of truth in Buddhism, Sikhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, and Islam. Even in the pseudo-religions, such as neo-Paganism and Wicca, there are trails of truth. If one goes further outside, even to the reaches where God’s existence is denied in the stretches of philosophy or atheism, still, there has God rested some insight into Himself.

I try to understand those who disagree with me because I cannot find the piece of God’s wisdom hidden in them unless I understand where they come from. I think that the diaspora of Babel was not simply with regard to language, but it extended to God’s revelation, as well. Although I fully embrace God’s covenant with the Jews and the new covenant through Jesus, it is clear in both testaments that God’s revelation is not exclusively in either one. The Jews are the Chosen People and Jesus is the Son of Man — of that I have no doubt — but God can teach me about Himself just as easily through an encounter with a homeless drug addict as with another Christian. None of us has a lock on truth, save God alone. Even Jesus deferred to His Father.

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Abraham’s Promise

June 14, 2009 at 12:41 · Filed under Church ·Tagged , ,

Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.

God promised to Abraham that Abraham would be the father of a nation, that his offspring would be harder to count than the stars in the sky. This promise was made when Abraham was 75 years old, and his wife was 65 years old. This promise is iterated five more times in the next eleven years, when Sarah thinks she has figured out what God meant. Sarah and Abraham agree that God’s promise was to be fulfilled through impregnating a slave woman, which results in Ishmael. Thirteen years later, as Abraham nears 100 years old, and Sarah 90, God lays out the covenant of circumcision — the unbreakable bond between Him and the people of Abraham, and again says that Sarah will conceive a child. A year later, Isaac was born.

I find it easy to accept the vague or obvious promises of God. When He says to obey your parents so that it may be well with you in the land, I can recognize that peace and understanding between children and parents brings blessing to the world around them. When I read that I am to trust in the Lord with all my heart so that He will make my paths straight, I take that as a staple of my faith. These promises are easy to believe because they do not require any faith, but only a basic understanding of how God has placed us in the order of the world.

A promise like Abraham’s, on the other hand, requires faith. Remember that scene in the Last Crusade where after getting through the death traps, Indy has to cross an invisible bridge? That was supposed to be a visible act of faith, akin to Peter’s walking on water. Such an act of faith requires an instant of courage to start, and maybe some more to keep going, but it ends fairly quickly. Abraham’s faith is of a different kind, one in which he must persist in believing a promise God gave to him long ago. I have trouble remembering what I ate for lunch yesterday, let alone remembering the promise that God has given me. But the instruction of Abraham is that he believed, and it was credited as righteousness.

I wonder how God spoke to Abraham. Was it in apparition, as He sometimes did? Was it a voice, as of from the sky? Was it in the whisper of the wind? As the years went on, did the memory of God’s words fade and lose their clarity? In a particular bit of fleshy poignancy, did he taste bitterness after every time he made love with Sarah, and no child came of it?

Or perhaps Abraham, like Mary, pondered these things in his heart. Maybe he looked at each new year as a greater distance from any plausible alternative to the Hand of God when the promised child eventually would come. Maybe he saw that the further towards the grave he went, the more miraculous new life would be. Maybe he saw that Sarah needed to wait on God’s hand as well. Maybe he kindled the flame of God’s Words burning in his heart, and daily renewed his fidelity to them.

Abraham’s promise isn’t like walking on water or an invisible bridge; rather, his faith is like walking into the desert to reach the promised land.

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To be welcome, alone

June 7, 2009 at 04:09 · Filed under Church, Personality ·Tagged , , , ,

It is difficult to be a hermit without being an ascetic. This is a long one, so I’m giving it a cut.

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On loss and love

June 5, 2009 at 23:15 · Filed under Church, Personality ·Tagged , ,

I don’t think that one ever “gets over” the pain of a lost loved one. Instead, one follows a path of coping. Sometimes that path is anger, blame, objectification, and rejection. But one can also work towards coping through healing. Healing from a deep loss is never easy, or the loss would not have mattered. In not rejecting the importance of the lost one, the loss is acknowledged for all that it is — the goodness that was, and the loss of what was good.

A healthy part of grieving is the anger to be felt when the loss is not in due time; this is the vision that something is wrong in the world, and the following righteous anger over the world’s brokenness. The anger is misdirected when it targets the loved one, blaming the loved one for the loss. Even when, in a lost relationship, the actions of the loved one caused the loss, still the problem is the brokenness of this life as it showed in the loved one. The call of God on our lives is to hate sin and love people, which is hardest when the people we most love hurt us most deeply.

To blame the loved one for the loss may seem justified, but it is simply an attempt to stop loving. The pain that is felt over loss is felt because of the deep love. The desire to stop the pain most easily turns to stopping love, because it absolves one of the emotional investment in the other. When we do not love a person, the other is an object which can be used as a tool. An object that hurts one is either a means for masochism or one that is broken and ought to be discarded.

It is precisely because they are the hardest to love that is the most important to love the ones who have hurt us deeply. It is not the people who do right by us, or those who do not affect us who are difficult to love; not even the stranger who hurts us by malice, but the ones who we think have betrayed our love are the hardest to love.

The example of Jesus is that the ones he loved most deeply abandoned him in his moment of need, and, for one, even offered him up to die. His response was forgiveness and continued love, even in full acknowledgment of their betrayal.

The broken promises — spoken and unspoken — are forgiven, and love is continued. This is a message to myself, and to you if you need it.

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On getting older

October 2, 2007 at 02:07 · Filed under Ignorant Political Commentary

Sometimes I wonder about the cycles of life.

This evening, my parents and I went out to dinner and sat in the outdoor dining area. When we were nearly done with our meal, a group of people who were roughly my age, though probably younger, sat at a table nearby. The topics of conversation and the mannerisms of this group made my parents visibly uncomfortable and made me feel separably older than those others. I think that this is one of the first times that I have felt older than a group of adults, and certainly the first time that I have noticed it.

I know that the baby boomers have had serious issues with growing up, and I wonder, will Gen X/Y/Z have the same? What is it about our parents that made them feel as if they were perpetually young, and why do I (we) feel the same? Have those of The Greatest Generation (those who lived through the second world war) never felt this way? Were all prior generations understanding of the fact that people have cycles of life?

Perhaps the baby boomers and later have conflated the ideas of youth and progressivism; so do I stand. It has been near to five years since I have been a teenager, and even more recently than that I have thought that anything against the established order must be in the general social good.

I need to ponder whether the transition away from “youth = progressivism” must lead to “wisdom = conservatism.” What I mean is this: as youths, the general assumption is that people will be liberal/progressive, while as older citizens, people trend towards conservative. Does this happen as a matter of fact? Is it an aspect of the way society has developed us? Or is it an indication that we never really change our ideals, but, rather, that our ideals are redefined from progressive to conservative as the world grows old with us?

Perhaps reincarnation is more applicable to ideaologies more than to people.

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