the case for empathy

“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”

 Kurt Vonnegut

“A saint is a person who behaves decently in a shockingly indecent society.”

 Kurt Vonnegut

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It seems like such a simple thing

To be kind

Like such a no-brainer

And yet there is so little kindness

Which may of course merely be a symptom

of something far deeper

and more profound

not so much a societal ill

as a sickness of the soul

something missing at the center

that has left too many souls shriveled

dry and

brittle

without love

and thus without empathy

and thus without kindness

and so it become far too rare a thing

to see “random acts of kindness”

instead we see cruelty

and the casual acceptance of cruelty

we all know the litany of ills

caged children

shot children

hungry children

sick children

we all know the litany of ills

the oppression of women

the abandonment of the ill

the shaming of the poor

this is a very old thing

born out of envy

and resentment

born out of a need to have power

to dominate

to be superior

it is very old indeed

for centuries we have fought this

struggled against this

searched to change this

but now it is nurtured

and encouraged

our dry and tired souls

need refreshing

as the world becomes a wasteland

a wilderness

we need springs of living water

gushing up within us

filling us

with presence

with love

God’s love

Not our tentative and conditional love

But that love that accepts, embraces, forgives

All

We need love that we might have empathy

We need empathy

That we might

Be kind

And damn it,

We’ve got to be kind

A Matter of Congruence

“It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.”

Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

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Jesus said, “God is love”

Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself”

Jesus said, “forgive”

Jesus said, “give”

Jesus said, “turn the other cheek, walk the extra mile, give the coat off your back”

Jesus said, “welcome the stranger’

Jesus said, “let the little children come to me”

Jesus said, “do not despise the little ones (the least of these)”

And yet today

Each day

We see people who claim to love God

Who seem to forget that God is love

But instead act as if God is harsh and retributive

Each day

We see people who carry Bibles (do they read them?)

And wear crosses

And stick fish on their cars

Who do not love their neighbor

Who shout “lock them up” at every opportunity

We horde wealth (while leaving their workers in poverty)

Who seek vengeance, constantly, persistently, aggressively

Who seem to delight in using power on others

Who rejoice in brutality

Every day we see

An essential selfishness destroy and pretension of generosity

We see walls built, and people put in camps

And children denied basic needs

We see programs for the poor gutted

The mentally ill left on the street to suffer and die

Something is wrong somewhere!

Why is it that people default to brutality and cruelty?

Why is it that people so delight in using and abusing power?

I watch the jeering faces, as hate is spewed at

Rallies plastered with red, white, and blue

And my heart hurts

How can people go, so easily to this place?

How can people so totally abandon the way of Jesus

And find nothing in-congruent, about then turning around

Walking into a church

And singing about God’s love?

How is it we make faith all about us?

Our success

Our safety

Our power

Our rights

Our wealth

How is it we can ignore the basics?

Those critical things that are at the heart of the Gospel,

Such as inclusion, kindness, and generosity?

How is it that we can claim God

And still walk the path

Of callousness

And cruelty?

We can’t

Human up!

“Victimhood gives us great moral superiority and entitles us to unquestioning sympathy while exempting us from examining any single one of our actions. A victim is utterly devoid of responsibility or blame. This of course leaves us vulnerable as we will carry on engaging in precisely the behaviour which provoked an unacceptable response.”

Belinda Brown

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Sometimes it’s good to be King

Sometimes it’s good to be the victim

What is crazy is when people want to be both

They want to have the power

They want to use it and abuse it

They want to flaunt it

But the second they don’t have power,

They are victims

Poor me

It’s all so unfair

I am beset and besotted

Even if they are not being abused

Even the if tactics used against them are milder than the tactics they used

When they had the power

The problem is this creates a no win

In relationships

In families

In organizations

And in our government

Here is the thing

You cannot abuse power

And the cry when you lose power and the other side

Uses power to pursue the policies and agenda they would like

You did it when you had the power

If you are “right wing” person you did it with attitude

I have been amazed lately at how much people are willing

To attack others for doing EXACTLY they things they do

Especially the things they do when they have power

There is a moral high place

It is not to be found in bending the rules

Using power abusively

Running

Coming in with guns and threatening lawmakers

Being abusive when you have power sucks

Being abusive, or trying to, when you don’t have power, sucks

If you are a person, or a party, or a president

 Who turns into a victim the instant power is threatened……?

You’ve lost my respect

If you come to the capital with log trucks and guns

(when our planet is burning)

You’ve lost my respect

I know its complex

But as a counselor I know abusers when I see them

I know the games

And the lies

And the manipulations

And the violence

And GOP

I’m looking at you

Here's to congruence

“Jesus Christ said 'by their fruits ye shall know them,' not by their disclaimers.”

 William S. Burroughs

“If your actions don't live up to your words, you have nothing to say.”

 DaShanne Stokes

________________________________________________________

Jesus said it

I believe it

“By their fruits you will know them”

What is there, at the center of who we are

What is there, deep down, at that place which defines who we are

Will eventually be lived out

If we are hate, we will hate

If we despise people, we will bully

If we are cruel, we will be cruel, and support cruelty

If we are filled with all the miseries of the earth

We will contribute to all the miseries of the earth

If we are filled with Sacred

With Love

Well, that is a different story

We are kind

Compassionate

Generous

And loving

We build up, rather than tear down

We affirm rather than ridicule

If you want to know what rules in a person’s heart

Then all you have to do is look

Look at how they treat the vulnerable

Look at how they talk about others

Look at how much the give, and forgive

Right now, we have people who are claiming one thing

But revealing something else

They claim greatness, be reveal smallness

We all of course do this, in various ways

To various degrees

At various times

We all have our moments of incongruence

I know I do

I talk one thing, and live another

But what does a person’s body of work say?

Who are they, day in and day out?

Who are they at their worst, and at their best?

This is important

Because it should help us choose who to trust

Who to live with

Who to put energy into

Who to elect

Who to follow

I will try to be love

I will try to put energy into love

I will try to follow Love

I will try to let Love flourish, at the center of who I am

And hope it shows

The need for a kindly God

Cruel people believe in a cruel God and use their belief to excuse their cruelty.  Only kindly people believe in a kindly God, and they would be kindly in any case.

                                                              Bertrand Russell

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Some would say that our religion makes us who we are.

Others would say that our religion reveals who we are.

Some would suggest that we shape our religion to match up with our values

While other would suggest our religion (faith) shapes us

Is it time for a “chicken or the egg” joke?

We hear it said

That we create God in our own image

I think that is all too often true

Even with words to guide us

We still do it

Picking and choosing

And those who most insist

That the words

The Word

must be honor by inerrancy

And literalism

Often violate the Word the most profoundly

Rigidly adhering to some ideas (homosexuality is a sin)

While studiously ignoring others (welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, love all)

It is a tricky thing

Letting God be God

Letting the Spirit be Wind and Fire

Unbound, Uncontrolled

And essentially undefined

Roaring through out souls

Blowing us out of our safety zones

Tumbling us into the mess that that is this world

Into the radical reality

Of God’s new thing

It is a scary thing

Letting God be God

A risky thing

Letting God be God

And the truth is

That unless we let our faith

Make us uncomfortable

Unless we let our faith shake the foundations of our sincerely held beliefs

Unless we let our faith make us more open

More welcoming

More loving

More forgiving

More generous

Unless we let our faith open our hearts

To those we would reject

Open our eyes to see the value

In those we would judge

Open our hands to give

What we would horde

We have transformed our faith

Rather than allowed it to transform us

and we have revealed who we through the God we have created

rather than allowed our God who created us

to reveal who He/She is in us

The Cost

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”

 Henry David Thoreau, Walden

_______________________________

There is a cost to everything

Even if its free

“Don’t look at gift horse in the mouth”

If you do you might get a glimpse of the vet bills

Everything we seek

Desire

Hope for

Has a cost.

There is a cost to power

Sometimes to gain it, and keep it

You have to give up critical things

Such as justice

Honesty

Compassion

Equity

Morality

Love

There is cost to wealth

Generosity often goes

As does fairness

And more

So much more

Of course even those things we consider as good

Cost us

What is the cost of generosity?

Or love?

The cost of empathy

And service

It is not easy to enter into another’s pain

Nor is it easy to give sacrificially

It is difficult to risk

To take a chance on another human being

None of this is safe

None of this is wise, from a human perspective

The way of greed and power is a way of great cost

So is the way of love

People died to end fascism

People died to end racism

People died to protect children

People died to promote equity and justice

Jesus died for the cause of love

(after rejecting the way of power and wealth)

There is a cost to everything

But as someone named Jesus once noted

“What good is it if you win the world, if you lose your soul?”

What good is it if you win and win and win

But blur the divine image

Distance yourself from the Sacred

And end up

Well, desperate

Grasping

Lying

Bullying

What good is it?

If I am going to pay a cost

I want to pay the cost that goes with

Forgiveness

Hospitality

Acceptance

Compassion

Generosity

And yes

Love

Still I Rise

Out of the huts of history's shame

I rise

Up from a past that's rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.”

― Maya Angelou

____________________________________________

I am a white guy in America

I am identified with the majority religion

I was raised in relative affluence

I have had all the advantages

Perhaps I have not made the most of my advantages

Definitely I have made my mistakes

Clearly there are people who loathe me, for good reason

Obviously there are people who love me, for good reason

But I will never know

The oppression experienced by a person of color

The devaluation of a Native American

The pain of a person born LGBTQI, and thus rejected by faith and family

The despair of a person born in poverty

The minimization and marginalization experienced by women

I have little or no way to connect with all of this

I have been poor, but not in poverty

I have lost jobs, but have had the advantages to find others

There is much I do not know

But I do believe on thing

I believe in resilience

I believe that each of us has some capacity

To rise

To find within us the resilience to keep putting

One foot in front of the other

Left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe!

I believe that this capacity is inherent

I believe it is Sacred

I have no illusions that the path out poverty

Or addiction

Or pain

Or failure

Is easy

And I understand that it is harder for some, than for others

Not because of who they are

But because of systematic oppression

Because of injustice and inequity

But I do believe

That we carry within us the capacity to rise

I believe, that if we tap into that “something” within us that is Sacred

That is Love

That is Hope

That is Generosity

We can experience resurrection

We can be lifted up

Sometimes it takes a lot of help from Sacred

Sometimes it takes help from other people

Sometimes the progress is halting and sporadic

Sometimes one is knocked back down

By hate and racism, by being devalued and judged

I know that I can rise out of my petty issues

And petty failures

Out of my shallow afflictions

I also believe, or perhaps I hope

That the one in front of me, born into a world of trauma

Born into a house of addiction

Born into a race or creed marginalized and oppressed by our culture

That one living in poverty

Living with mental illness

That one carrying the sins and miseries of the world

That one shaped by tragedy and oppression

Can also rise

I also believe that inside each of us there is a presence

A light

A flame

I do not know

Always, how to tap into Sacred Presence

And find my way up

I do not know always

How to support others, as they too, seek to rise

But I do know we can rise

That this is the “job” of life

To find our way up

To find our way back to our original blessing

And to help others along the way

Call it what you will

Resilience

Resurrection

Recovery

It’s a thing

It’s real

It’s work

It’s our job

So today is another day

What am I going to do today, to find my way to higher ground?

What am I going to do today to help another to higher ground?

Perhaps they are the same thing

May it stop

Sitting at my desk

The detritus of my day scattered around me

Tasks undone

Books unread

My mind is distracted

and my soul twisted

the news of the day has once again

torn the fabric of my soul

once again I have plumbed he depths

of my own inability to connect

I have gone through the motions

Quite sincerely

I have listened and encouraged

but have felt more like an observer

that a participant in the dance of life

and now nerve pain streaks across my shoulder

nerve fibers screaming their discontent

and pain begets pain begets pain

and soon my body sags

everything hurts

and what doesn’t hurt doesn’t work

and my bully braining, seizing the opportunity begins to tell me

that it is all meaningless

and that this is the sum of life

this emptiness and dissatisfaction

this anger and outrage

this despair

and there seems like nothing to do

but breathe into this pain

and let it flow

down, down, down

through my fingertips

onto the keys of my computer

and on to this page

and I as look at these words

and feel diminished by them

(I should do better than this)

I breathe

And breathe again

And mutter under my breath

To that which is intimate and immanent

Bargaining

Complaining

Hoping

Just wanting it all to stop

All the pain

The pain of the children at the border

And that of LBGTQI people who are told by so called people of God

That they deserve to die

The pain of women raped

Abandoned

beaten

Forced to give birth

The of those with cancer

And mental illness

The pain of those who have lost someone they love to death

The pain of those bullied

And my little inconveniences too

The difficult path of love

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”

George Orwell, 1984

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I shouldn’t have done it, really!

I was a precocious reader as a child and dove into 1984

Some time in the 60’s

Right after I read Atlas Shrugged

I know, right?

I remember my Junior High brain was mesmerized by

These dystopian novels

I confess I was seduced by the brilliant rebels in Atlas Shrugged,

Complicit with the belief that it was not “fair” for the bright and effective

to live in a world where the weak were given largesse they did not deserve

1984 just seemed surreal

and even though the shadow of Nazi Germany

still lingered, I could not envision the world ever going into that darkness again

but I underestimated the human lust for power and wealth,

and I did not understand how quickly people slide into cruelty

I should have known

I saw the “Lord of the Flies” reality play out on the playground

In the locker room

I was sometimes the target

I was a skinny late bloomer with big ears and ugly glasses

And sometimes (alas) I was the persecutor

I would like to think I was mostly kind, and accepting

(only my classmates can really tell you that0

But I had my moments

I remember a boy named Clarence Arlo Thompson

We called him CAT, because he had his initials indelible planted on all he owned

I don’t know his story, I never bothered to find out

He was smaller than I

And in Junior High terms, really different

He would run through the halls arms outspread, making airplane noises

We treated him poorly

It haunts me to this day

But what I know now,

That I did not know then,

Is the power of power

We love power

We love having power

We love using power

And for far too many there is an evil delight

In using that power

In using that power in ways that minimize, and diminish

That marginalize, that hurt

We love power

When we don’t have it we want it

When we have it, we will do anything to keep it

Anything

Lie

Cheat

Abuse

Oppress

Suppress

Anything

Orwell had it right

“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”

Right now, we live in a nation

where power has become an end

Something to be used, and enjoyed

Something to be abused, and exercised perversely

This issue with power is not new

The old pre-history story of Adam and Eve

Is a story about power

They didn’t want to be themselves, they wanted to “like God”

They wanted power

It is frightening, and appalling

Some of us believe in Sacred things

Some of us believe that there is a power, call it Love, call it whatever

That shapes the universe, and shapes us

Some of us believe that we carry a bit of that Sacred

That Love, within us

And some of us believe that when we are awake to that presence

We can find within ourselves, the ability to move away

From the House of Power and Domination

To that place where we choose Love

And compassion

And generosity

And Equity

Above power

It is not an easy path

The path of love

The path of service

It is scary

Dangerous

It makes us vulnerable

And sometimes we lose

But if we do not chose love over power

We are choosing cruelty over kindness

Apathy over compassion

Greed over generosity

And if we do not chose love over power

The world we create

Will look a lot like the one emerging

Right in front of our eyes

Is this who we want to be?

I don't want to care, but I do

If there’s a way forward, it isn’t in knowing less—and so I’ll keep reading and learning, and dealing with how much turmoil that creates within me. The challenging part, will be convincing those blissfully unaware right now, to allow real life to inconvenience them enough to care too; to let true information disrupt their carefully curated happiness.

Knowledge may indeed be a pain in the rear end—but it is still one of the most powerful weapons we have in the fight to stay human in inhumane times.

I don’t want to know how bad it is anymore, but I do.

I don’t want to grieve the horrible reality anymore, but I do.

I don’t want to care anymore, but I do.

                                                                        John Pavlovitz

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There are times I just want to close my eyes

But like those ghoulish spectators on the edge of a tragedy

I am drawn

Moth like

Into the fire

And sometimes I get singed

The lies are overwhelming

The hate palpable

The greed depressing

But mostly it is the selfishness

The lack of insight

The privilege

That batter my soul

Not just from those who perpetrate evil

From high places

But from those who

Because it feels safe

Because it feeds their own worst persons

Because they think they will gain

Thoughtlessly affirm and applaud.

And I don’t like seeing that collusion

Oozing from people I live with, work with, even worship with

And so the news feed

And the responses to it

Sear my very being

I am discomforted

And I am  even more disturbed when the words of one whose life

shapes (I hope) my life

reveal our spiritual paucity

when those words condemn our attitudes

our words

our behaviors

and I do not know how to respond

without becoming a part of the mess

I want to “post” the truth as I see it

And I do

Then I delete

And repost

And delete

Because ??

Because I do not want to become what I resist

Hateful and angry, a person who name calls and diminishes

Because I do not believe that those who have chosen to believe lies will listen

Because I do not believe my words will make any difference

At all

It would be easier

Much easier

Not to read the news

Not to comment

Not to try and bring the way of Love into the mix

It would be easy to just “let it go”

As so many often advise

To “get over it”

But I can’t

And so I walk

And so I write

And so I challenge, hoping I am not part of the problem

And so I share what I believe to be the truth, hoping I am at least close

So I risk sounding like a fool

Being seen as a fool

So I risk being disliked, and rejected

So I risk people avoiding my little congregation

“I don’t want to know how bad it is anymore, but I do.

I don’t want to grieve the horrible reality anymore, but I do.

I don’t want to care anymore, but I do.”  (John Pavlovitz)

And so I stand

And speak

And pray

And hope

Here i am

It's all about me

It's all about me

Oh yeah, me, myself and I

It's all about me

It's all about me (You know it's all about me)

It's all about me me me me me

Everybody knows that it's all about me

Chelsea Staub

“We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.”

 Christopher Hitchens

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Power, Love

Dominion, Service

Blessing, Curse

Self Centered, Other Centered

I have been obsessed with dichotomies lately

And as I have watched the Evangelical church in America

And read religious meme after religious meme

And listened to the patter of talking points

That emerge thoughtlessly from the mouths of so many Christians

I have become convince that for many of us

Faith is all about self

My self

Me, myself, and I

When people talk about faith

We hear about being saved, rescued from the clutches of a retributive God

We hear about how wonderful it is when a person dies “in the faith”

Because they will “go to heaven”

And how sad it is when a person did not “know the Lord’

Because they will be in torment for all eternity

Faith is fire insurance

It is that simple

Turn or Burn

When I read the memes it is all about how

As a person of faith

God is on “my side”

Blessing me.  Giving me goodies

Making my life rich and wonderful

(all, perhaps, because I have somehow earned it by joining the club)

But I know if I’m honest it doesn’t work like that

Read Job, or the Psalms

Read the words of Jesus, who insists that the rain falls on the just and the unjust

I am surrounded by self centered faith

Where I am part of the inner circle

I am blessed

I am rescued

I am better

I am righteous

And perhaps there are elements of truth in all of that

Perhaps

But it seems to me that something is missing

What is missing is God

What is missing is service

What is missing is the radical demands of the Gospel

Which call us to divest rather than invest

Give rather than accumulate

Love rather than hate

Be vulnerable rather than defensive

Humble rather than arrogant

Servants rather than rulers

If my faith centers around me

I think I have missed the point

I think faith should center on God

On loving God

Connecting to God

Being loved by God

Being transformed by God

Or at least “re-created’ in to what I was designed to be

Faith should center on responding to the divine presence with in me

And that should move my focus

Outside my self

To others

Particularly to those other

Who are most vulnerable

My faith should not make me smug

Or arrogant

Or entitled and privileged

It should not give me permission to control

Or coerce

It should make me giving

And forgiving

Compassionate

Humble

It should make me a servant

I always think of Jesus who

but emptied himself,     taking the form of a slave, (Phil. 2:7)

What a contrast to Joel Osteen, and Kenneth Copeland

It is scary different

Here is my challenge to myself

To pay attention to how often

I invoke faith, on my own behalf

How often I talk about faith in terms of what God is doing

(or in terms of what I hope God will do)

For me

Me, me, me

And then to seek

To simply turn to God

And say, as so many saints and sinners have said in the past

Here I am

“I am no longer my own, but thine.

Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.

Put me to doing, put me to suffering.

Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee,

exalted for thee or brought low for thee.

Let me be full, let me be empty.

Let me have all things, let me have nothing.

I freely and heartily yield all things

to thy pleasure and disposal.

And now, O glorious and blessed God,

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.

And the covenant which I have made on earth,

let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.” (Weslyan  Covenant Prayer)

transform the whole

Tribalism is really a form of egoism.

It's all about my people, my religion, me, me, me.

Marty Rubin

__________________________________

I keep thinking about those disciples of Jesus

All huddled together “in one place”

I don’t know what they were talking about

I don’t know what they were doing

But what is clear is that they had separated themselves from “others”

I suspect they shared their common stories

I suspect they broke bread, and drank wine

I suspect they enjoyed the comfort of being part of the “inner circle”

Those who had been with Jesus

Those who had “gotten it”

And I suspect they would have sat there

In that one place

A closed circle

The Jesus Tribe

Forever

But then the Sacred came

Rushing and roaring like a might wind

Burning like a fire

Then the Spirit came

And singed their butts

And blew them out the door

Tumbling them into the streets

Into the midst of the crowds

Tossing them like a human salad

Mixing them in with the dregs of humanity

With saints and sinners

With people brown and people black

And maybe even people white

Mixing them in with

Parthians, Medes and Elamites;

Residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,[b] 10

Souls from Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and Libya

Strangers from Rome and Crete

Even Arabs

And in the power of the Love

Connecting them

Giving them tongues to speak

And (more importantly) ears to hear

It seems that the Spirit does not like closed circles

And does not like walls and barriers

And does not tolerate division

The Spirit does not allow us to play it safe

Or stand aloof

Arrogant observers, keepers of “the secrets”

The Spirit breaks us open

Spills us out

With the unfiltered enthusiasm

of the one who has had too much wine

gushing, babbling

awkwardly familiar

and before we know it

we are welcoming

accepting

forgiving

sharing

praising

but mostly we are mixed in

Sacred Yeast

Empowered not to add to our tribe

Not to stand apart

Not to “lord it over”

Not to control

But to touch the whole

To touch the whole world

To touch all people

To transform the “whole”

With love

if God is love

“We forget that when we see Christ dead upon the cross, we discover a God who would rather die than kill his enemies. We forget all of this because the disturbing truth is this—it’s hard to believe in Jesus.”

 Brian Zahnd, A Farewell to Mars

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It hit me the other day

One of those existential 2X4s

Smack!

It all depends where you start

It all depends on how you choose to see Sacred

(or to be anthropomorphic, God)

It appears people fall into one of two camps

God is love

Or

God is Power

If God is power we see Jesus as some sort of

Divine Hail Mary

A last effort by God to get through to a stubborn and recalcitrant world

Pulling it kicking and screaming into righteousness

If God is love

We see Jesus as the creative power of Love

Coming into our midst, to show us a new way of doing life

If God is power

The cross is all about a retributive God

Enacting retribution, pour out wrath on one person

So that wrath does not fall on all persons

If God is love, the cross is God saying

“this stops here”

The hate, the anger, the greed, the violence

If God is love the cross is God taking on all the pain and hurt of the world

And overcoming it with forgiveness and compassion rather than violence and anger

If God is power then the Kingdom of God

Is about a retributive warrior Jesus who comes in power,

trampling all who have not joined the club,

destroying all but the elect and throwing the excluded into eternal torment....

If God is love, then the Kingdom of God is that time when

Nothing exists on earth that is not loving

No hunger

No thirst

No caged children

No pollution for profit

No war

No guns

Where we start matters

If God is power

Faith is a matter of being on the right side

In the club

It is a matter of being rescued from that eternal torment

If God is power I must make sure God is on “my side”

Aligned with me against my enemies

Helping me control them, minimize them, perhaps even destroy them

If God is power I will be blessed

I will have private jets, and mansions, and wealth beyond belief

If God is love, faith is a matter of connecting with Love

Being touched by it

Filled with it

Empowered by it

Faith is a matter of living love

Of giving, caring, forgiving, loving

Where we start matters

Of course it is true… it is always true

That there is falsity in dualism

Sacred is both Loving and Powerful

So perhaps it is better to say that God is power clothed in love

We make a mistake if we do not respect the ability of the Sacred

To turn things around

To change hearts

To repair souls

But we also make a mistake if we forget Love

And if we forget the inclusive

Unconditional

Nature of that Love

And if we forget the radical

Costly

Generous

Vulnerable

Sacrificial

Serving

Way of life we must follow

If God is love

One or the other

“People are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be. When I look at a sunset, I don't find myself saying, "Soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner." I don't try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds.”

 Carl R. Rogers, A Way of Being

_____________________________________

my fingers hover of the keyboard

there is no gentle way to say this

and yet I do not want to offend

but I am offended

perhaps there are better words

bigger words

the best words

but I am hurt,

pained

wounded

part of me simply unravels

when I see the hate filled faces of those with their signs

“God hates you”

“Repent or Burn”

I believe that God is love

Not just that God loves

But that the very nature of God is love

There is nothing in God that is not love

and yet

this religion called Christianity

is an active affront to this very idea

that God is Love

for woven through the fabric of this faith system

are many darker threads

and fundamentally, for many

even those who would insist it is a religion of love

it is a religion of fear

believe the right things

vote for the right person

follow the right rules

have the right ideology

belong to the right religion

say the right words

or you will burn in conscious torment for all eternity

you will be cursed by God, your life will be awful

God will hate you

you will be excluded from God’s grace

excluded from the church

what I see is not a religion of love

but a religion of coercion and retribution

what I see is a religion focused on power and control

not on acceptance and service

Oh, if we fit the prototype

if we can snuggle down inside the ‘community’

if we are on the correct side of the equation,

it all works splendidly

we don’t even notice our own language

our own attitudes

we just roll out the formulas

the talking points

we are like walking talking religious memes

we don’t notice that we exclude, and judge

we don’t notice that our faith is about domination

not servanthood

until things get hard

until the challenges come

and then our God is revealed

Our God is revealed when a refugee shows up at our border

Our God is revealed when we must choose between profit and the planet

Our God is revealed when we are asked to accept and welcome one who is different

Our God is revealed when the poor show up on our doorstep

Our God is revealed when people hurt us, or disappoint us

Our God is revealed in how we use power

Does the God we really follow

Judge?  Exclude?  Threaten?

Does that God have unconditional love (agape), or is that love extremely conditional?

Is our faith centered around fear, satisfying God, earning merit, being on the “right side?”

Or is our God love

And is our faith centered on participating in love, and sharing that love with all?

It has to be one or the other

All we need

For Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), a French Jesuit priest who trained as a paleontologist and geologist, love is “the very physical structure of the Universe.” [2] That is a very daring statement, especially for a scientist to make. Yet for Teilhard, gravity, atomic bonding, orbits, cycles, photosynthesis, ecosystems, force fields, electromagnetic fields, sexuality, human friendship, animal instinct, and evolution all reveal an energy that is attracting all things and beings to one another, in a movement toward ever greater complexity and diversity—and yet ironically also toward unification at ever deeper levels. This energy is quite simply love under many different forms. (You can use another word if it works better for you.)

Love, the attraction of all things toward all things, is a universal language and underlying energy that keeps showing itself despite our best efforts to resist it. It is so simple that it is hard to teach, yet we all know love when we see it… We all know positive flow when we see it, and we all recognize resistance and coldness when we feel it. All the rest are mere labels.

When we are truly “in love,” we move out of our small, individual selves to unite with another, whether in companionship, friendship, marriage, or any other trustful relationship…  To move beyond our small-minded uniformity, we have to extend ourselves outward, which our egos always find a threat, because it means giving up our separation, superiority, and control.

                                                                        Richard Rohr, 6/4/19 Blog

_____________________________________________________________

Only Love can save us

Anthropomorphize love if you want to

Turn it into God (which is theologically sound)

Put flesh on it in the person of Jesus

Or not

But in a world spinning out of control

Fragmenting at an alarming rate

With wars and rumors of wars

Ever resurgent racism and fascism

In world with border walls

And arms deals

And mass shootings

In a world where the greedy abuse the earth for profit

Only love can save us

The problem is, of course ego

That part of ourselves that would make us the center of the universe

That part of us that cannot see past its own self interests

Sure, we all know what it looks like when one’s soul

Has an extreme case of ego

It looks like narcissism

It looks like the sociopath who simply does not care about others

Who simply cannot see others

Only his or her self

But we all have egos

And we all get into trouble here

We are all willing, at some level, to sacrifice the other for the self

Perhaps I can only speak for myself

But it is certainly true of me

There are those moments when I limit love

When I am not generous

When I exclude

Because I am tired

Because I am fearful

Because I want to be comfortable

Because

There is only one thing that keeps me from being a jerk

(or more of a jerk than I am)

Only one thing that keeps us all from simply brutalizing each other

Bullying

Name calling

Lying

Suppressing

Oppressing

Minimizing

Only one thing moves us beyond

Separation, superiority, and control

And that is Love (Sacred, God)

That is the way of Love (as taught by Jesus, and others)

That is the indwelling love (the Spirit)

“All you need is love

All you need is love

All you need is love, love

Love is all you need”  (Beatles)