Return to the Way

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

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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