Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls
of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic
conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a
spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial
Martin
Luther King Jr
Dom Hélder Câmara (1909–1999) said many years ago when he
talked about the “spiral of violence”: institutional violence provokes a
violent response, which in turn is met with “necessary” repression, [1] and
then the same pattern repeats, each level growing more and more violent without
really resolving the underlying problem (or evil).
Richard
Rohr
_________________________________________________________
It seems as if so often,
when we are trying to deal with the debris in our hearts
and lives
we deal with the “individual stuff”
the words spoken
the behaviors that harmed or offended
the actions that violated even our own personal sense of
morality
It seems as if so often
When we seek to address the issues around us
With that pain we see
In our co-worker
Our friend
With the problems that haunt our communities
Such as mental illness
Homelessness
Hunger
Violence
We seek to deal with those problems
Individually
Which is another way of saying
We address the symptoms, but perhaps not the cause
We address the garbage bobbing around in the shallows
But fail to go to the deep sources of our ills
As a tattered soul, I often find myself doing things I
don’t like
Speaking when I should have been silent
Saying things I shouldn’t have
If can try to “will” myself into a better place
But the problem isn’t really what I just said,
Or what I just did
The problem is what drove that behavior
Why did I have to try and impress the other person?
Why did I try so hard to be like?
I have a question I ask myself
One that helps take me into the places where demons lie
“What did I just say to myself…
About myself?”
The scripts are common, and persistent
And deadly
“You aren’t enough”
“No matter what you do it’s not enough”
“People like what you can do, but they don’t like you”
And it is not until I become aware of those mental
scripts
That “stuff that comes us”
And deal with it, that I can deal with the outer
manifestations
Of those thoughts.
The same thing is true on a societal level
We have to ask the hard question
Of where those ills come from….
And as we ask that question, we have to be honest
Really honest
We have to drop our biases
We have to shut out the voices that want to maintain the
status quo
No matter what
And we have to look for, become aware of
The core issues
People hate abortion
They want to address it by making it “illegal”
What i we addressed the issue by making it less
necessary?
What if we did a better job of educating our youth?
What if we provided better access to birth control
options>
What if we provided better mental health care?
What if we provided better support for young people whose
families are dysfunctional?
What if we provided safe places for young men and women
to go when they need to flee abuse?
What if we paid a better minimum wage, so people didn’t
feel so desperate?
What if we made education more accessible?
What if the pro-life crew advocated for support and care
for living children, the way the advocate for zygotes?
What if we had better housing options, better food
security
What if we did not shame the poor?
What if?
The list could go on
And the list of issues is long
Economic inequity
Racism
Poverty
Mental Illness
Health
War
Most wars have underlying causes that have nothing to do
with the stated reason for war
Perhaps the cause of this war, or that war
Is greed, not the need to protect freedom
Or the need to feel powerful and important
Sadly what often happens when we feel our own dis-ease
Is we do violence to ourselves
We attack ourselves
We self judge
Self shame
And sometimes we literally do violence to ourselves
Through self harm
Or even suicide
What happens when we feel our societal dis-ease is
similar
We attack
Seeking to stop the discomfort
But often doing more damage than good
We seek to stop the pain of immigration
By caging and expelling immigrants
Rather than working to resolve the reasons the immigrants
need to flee their countries in the first place
We seek to stop drug abuse by criminalizing abuse
Rather than seeking to help solve the issues that drive
people to self-medicate
And violence
We fight violence with violence
Creating a spiral of violence that destroys all
Rather than dealing with the underlying evil
That caused the violence in the first place
I am a big fan of small acts of kindness
People need to be touched by kindness
But we must be aware, all of us
That we must also think big
We must look for, and address
The causes of pain at an institutional and societal level
Because our institutions, frankly are failing us
All we have to do is look at how evil is nurtured, even
enabled
In Washington DC
All we have to do is look at ‘the church”
Much of which has sold out to forces that are anti-Christ
(there is no other way to put it)
And has become part of the problem
Instead of the solution
Perhaps there is a reason Jesus stayed away from the
institutions of his day
Both political
And religious
Until it was time to fully attack the “sin of the world”
He needed time to change hearts,
To establish his way,
Before he confronted the institutions
Which then killed him
But we have the teachings
We know the way
We can deny that way
We can ignore it
We can work against it (caged children perhaps?)
But we can’t change it
And that is why ML King Jr was right
When he warned us
prophetically
“Any religion that professes to be concerned about the
souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic
conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a
spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial”
It pains me to watch much of the church in America
Stagger toward the grave
It’s time to wake up
Return to the way of Jesus
And change the world
