What Child Is This?

 "I was given nothing to help me learn to live as the person I was created to be."

                  --Richard Wagamese, Walking the Ojibwe Path, p.43

This statement caught me short, and I had a loud, resounding question pop up in my brain: Do any of us know the person we are created to be?  If we consider all the accouterments of culture, education, family, and religion does anyone really know themselves, I mean in God's sight, as we're created to be?  I suppose it is impossible to spin time back to the moment of our birth and look at "Who is this child?" Likewise, few of us get born with a predetermined purpose - like Jesus' beginnings of the angelic" Son of God" proclamation to his mother-to-be. People who wind up doing big things with their lives, tend to get biographies written that imply they were "called" to be great in their early beginnings.  But do the majority of us?  Most of us go to public (cookie-cutter) schools receiving the same culturally pre-determined education that curriculums are based upon.  Those K-12 packages supposedly send us all out into the world on a "level playing field" - even though, in truth. they can't possibly. So what happens to any self-actualizing goal "to be the person I was created to be?"

Sure, some families put strait jackets on their offspring at early ages to follow in a parent's or grandparent's footsteps.  Then, depending on the child's created disposition, they'll take on the assignment with gusto or alternatively, go complete rebel and wind up in a wildly different place. That is what I am getting at -- how do we learn to live as we're meant to?

At its heart, I am addressing a profoundly spiritual question: who/what does God intend for humans to be?  Through the ages, undeniably, humans have veered off the "humane" track.  The laundry list of sins cataloged and treated by religion(s) as an illness needing correction reflects the course of departure from loving, peaceful, generous, cooperative, helpful, courteous... basics of the human soul that God likely intends.  While some social structures work at furthering these "positive" ways we are created to be, their commonality across the board is rare. 

For humanity to aim toward a more egalitarian, magnanimous world it would be necessary to change many of the assumptions on which our world's economic and legal systems are based. We would need more effective (and more widely available) methods for addressing mental illness, improved methods of breaking generational trauma, concerted means of addressing homelessness and poverty, and refined educational strategies to support self-esteem and self-actualization. 

All of these and hundreds of other ideas fly 180 degrees against the "traditional" social and religious attitudes reflective of crime and punishment and "making a living." So politically the leap to a New World remains impossible.  Still, there is a peace-filled place for dreaming the God-hope in our meditative imaginations and seeing in our souls the purity of divine intent for our existence. 

Faith

Faith is one of the simplest words in the Christian lexicon.  Yet it also seems to be one of the biggest stumbling blocks thrown into the Christian Church. Why? Largely because The Church, long ago, got in its own way racing to define what one needed to believe if one was going to have "faith."  So, rather than faith being the experiential thing it is, it became prescriptive by order of the educated, who possess a well-honed recitation of narrow beliefs according to catechism and creed.  The Church said, "We will provide you with the right belief(s) so you can have the right faith" (And then if you don't hold precisely to the line, we can burn you at the stake as a heretic.)

Jesus never knew any kind of "catechism."  The closest he came was having a solid knowledge of the Law on which Judaism was founded. He could answer the questions when the synagogue/temple lawyers showed up to trap him, but he did not preach to his followers about them. In fact, he provided his own set of suggestions on how to live one's life through the Beatitudes. (I like to use the word play Be-attitudes for these.)  Jesus played up the power of faith (if you have the faith of a mustard seed you can move mountains) and downplayed the difficulty of faith (you need only the faith of a child.)

Simply, faith is a trust that we will have a tomorrow. Kids have faith that their parents will be there when they wake up.  We can have faith that even in death, life does go on. There are scads of people who spend their lives building guarantees into their faith whereupon their faith becomes grounded in the security of their investments, But that becomes an extremely thin line between "faith" and idol worship. Faith doesn't operate in the realm of guarantee nearly as powerfully as it does in the realm of hope. On the spiritual plane hope and faith keep us going (treasure kept in our hearts) far more than our investment portfolio (where moth and rust can steal or be lost.)  

In what do we have faith?  The four Sundays of Advent often include a weekly focus on four spiritual words that usually include peace, joy, love, and hope.  These four words strongly connect to the personhood of Jesus - his life, teaching, and ministry.  Likewise, they can be our words.  While there can be some instruction involved in teaching children the how-tos, the actual practice of them is a life-long laboratory of experiencing what they mean in the contexts we find ourselves in with each relational interaction. When we give/receive joy, when we practice/experience peace, when we give or receive hope or love we meet the elements of faith that radically alter our lives and those of the people we interact with. We don't need stuffy theological Ph.D.s cramming quilt and atonement and hell down our gullets - nothing about those elements fosters a speck of faith (far more worry if you ask me!).  They're just intellectual snobbery.  As the Apostle Paul ends 1 Corinthians 13: "Faith, hope, and love abide." Let your faith abide in you.  Have faith in the eternity of tomorrow. (Spoken like a great procrastinator, eh?)  

A Vulnerable Suggestion

At Christmastime, most Christian churches recognize and celebrate the belief that God came down to be with us humans. As the story goes, Jesus came as a lowly infant in God's swaddling clothes.  Like all babies, he was vulnerable, at first unable to hold up his head - a remarkably humble in-breaking.  That vulnerable way didn't change throughout his life.  Even at his trial with Pilate and the moments of his death reflected his open vulnerability to all aspects of the human lives around him. When I look at Jesus, it invites me to look at people differently, with a more discerning sympathetic eye. 

Being vulnerable is not something that is valued in American culture. Vulnerability is not seen as an attribute in the business or industrial world.  It's challenging to outfox one's competition with vulnerability.  Sports also do not encourage holding your opponent in mercy or compassion.  The word "success" immediately calls us to win at all costs.  To see the U.S. political climate, one quickly grasps that winning comes by doing whatever it takes, including cheating, lying, and even breaking the law if that helps you achieve "the goal."

When we look at Jesus' life, however, we don't see this kind of success or winning at play. Another set of values is at work: compassion, careful listening, and empathy for another's situation. He doesn't view a relationship as transactional—"I'll give you this if you give me that."  Jesus doesn't see "losers," and even among those of the times considered social "winners," Jesus sees them on the same even playing field with their own "logs in their eye" to be understood and healed.

The majority's extraordinarily high levels of stress are caused by the innate pressure to succeed and get ahead. Daily life is geared toward being in competition to achieve something - grades, life partner, income, career, outward appearance, power, among so much more.  What would our life be like without pressure on that level and only Jesus' goal to be kind, listen, and offer a hand?  Obviously, we would still need to consider our basic needs - food, shelter, clothing, etc.  But what would society look like without the "dog eat dog" mentality?  Without going whole hog off one's rocker, how could you start working to develop the simple habit of noticing others and offering the kindness of letting them know they matter?  Would the world be different?  It would be different for that one who is noticed, person by person until it hits a critical mass, which is how reality is changed. 

  

 

High Hopes

 

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it. 

               -- John 1:5 (NRSV)

News over this past weekend was all about the fall of the Assad regime in Syria.  For many years, Syria, with borders on many of the Middle Eastern nations, has existed as an enclave of torture, war, and vile disregard for the dignity of human beings.  Tens of thousands of refugees have fled.  Thousands have reportedly been murdered in subhuman prison conditions.  Light in Syria under Assad's rule has been grimly dim.  

Anne Applebaum from the Atlantic wrote this (as reported by Heather Cox Richardson):

...the end of the Assad regime creates something new, and not only in Syria.  There is nothing worse than hopelessness, nothing more soul-destroying than pessimism, grief, and despair.  The fall of the Russian-Iranian-backed regime suddenly offers the possibility of change.  The future might be different. And that possibility will inspire hope all around the world."

Cynics dismiss hope as futile.  They discount it as a fool's errand. Yet for the human spirit the truth is without hope despair wins. We know that in those contemplating suicide, the last straw that triggers the act itself is the absolute sense of despair about overcoming one's situation.

Human beings are not just a bundle of biochemical processes packaged in skin.  We are extraordinarily unique in that while possessing the physicality for life, we also have mental and spiritual sides that add value, meaning, and purpose to our lives. The spirit part of a person is that part where hope exists.  Hope embraces the far larger perspective on possibility, on one's freedom to pursue those possibilities,  and to realize the euphoria of being conjoined with the ultimate successes of love.   

Advent and Christmas being placed as they are in the northern latitudes' darkest time of year can be the infusion of hope.  These religious holidays call to us from bleakness to envision the possibility bought by the freedom we each have to make life-changing decisions.  To see the world in a much larger dimension outside our personal situation. To commit ourselves to care about the world and the suffering people it harbors.  To generously reach for kindness, peace, joy, and lovingkindness.  In those small acts are the very seeds of hope. Hope that through love, a broken world can change, develop, and overcome the hostile rollercoaster humans are prone to. 

Occupation Forces of Peace

Most mainline Christian denominations observe the last Sunday of November as "Christ the King" Sunday.  It is the last Sunday of the Christian year, which begins again with the first Sunday of the Season of Advent (the four Sundays before Christmas Day.) The scripture readings for Christ the King Sunday are commonly a repeat of the Holy Week passages about Jesus' trial and crucifixion.  In other words, Christ rules over sin by dying.

Not much of Jesus' teachings dwelt on human sinfulness nor on adhering to a set moral code of "Thou shalt/shalt not.". Moral codes crept into Christianity at the time Christianity was usurped by Emperor Constantine.  Constantine latched onto the burgeoning population of the new Christian faith to increase his popularity and strengthen the empire's cohesiveness. A super-sized chunk of what people object to today about Christianity is the fruit of this root in Roman Empire history and colonization. 

So what was the Jesus Ministry about?  Sadly, the majority of Christians don't even know apart from self-serving perpetrators of the religious orders since the Dark Ages. And because they don't know, they sow more about State Religion or Nationalistic Religion (ala Constantine) than they do about how the Rulership of God works through Christ. 

So many races and nations have tried to claim "chosen people" status in a conveniently constructed Godhead that only their little following have "the truth" to tell. But the majesty and glory of God's unending love doesn't have to be taught.  It is accessible through the experience of beauty found in every corner of the earth.  Starting with the angelic beauty spoken of at Jesus' birth, Jesus brought to earth a message of unqualified love, acceptance, and a simple message: "Can't we all just get along?" Can you feel what he feels?

While the rest of the human race has been in a warring arms race nearly from the first day, from Jesus' first day, he was on a peace mission.  He went throughout the near Middle East without bias, healing the wounds of people hurt by exclusion due to illness, birth defects, mental illnesses, and the woes of an agrarian economy that left many out. He brought peace and compassion to a new level that made the religions in the area nervous. He made a big impact, and because he did, he was sometimes associated with revolutionary movements. However, they were, as a rule, too oriented toward violence over love for the gentle beauty of human love.  He recognized humans as social creatures who needed a strong community to survive and thrive. 

The world does not need more domination, violence, and war.  It requires a large occupation force intent on spreading peace, nurturing cooperation, and teaching to hear/see/feel/smell our fundamental completeness in beauty.  Through this approach, all eat, all thrive, all are healed, and all traumas stop being perpetuated.

Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus

It takes a mature spirit and maybe a compassionate heart to look at the world through Jesus' eyes.  Half of this great divide happening in the soul of the United States is precisely the same divide that has existed since before Jesus' time.

Jesus was no stranger to the cruelties and domination of government powers.  No stranger to religious competitions to establish authority and judgment over others.  He knew and witnessed the harm of social class, the abandonment, and disgust for those deemed "sinful, broken, too poor, too lame, or less than."

Jesus' eyes were not pulled into that world. God has always stood with one foot inside and one outside our humanly created reality.  God stands in a universe far, far bigger than our wee bowl of Cheerios problems.  But in Jesus, something dramatic happened in the universe as big as any supernova.  God put that over-lording perspective aside to become human and to experience for God's Self what helplessness felt like against the earthly powers of humankind.  God stuck to that commitment throughout Jesus' life through all the torments that empires and religious authorities put him through unto death.

He came through an earthly mother, born useless and helpless in the borrowed manger of farm animals. He departed useless and abused at the hands of fearful, angry, abusive, and hard-hearted humans.  What do discerning persons capture of the Jesus Love light?  The love he showed his followers, his dinner guests, his disciples, his healed ones, and his huge extended family?

First, this world is busy daily poisoning our eyes, causing them to see opposites of love as virtuous life goals.  There is daily fighting over scraps, clawing in money, and using any means to acquire wealth and power even if it means high body counts across the globe.  Viewed daily, it hardens our hearts, and we shrink into self-comforting, avoiding the hungering looks in the swollen eyes of the useless.  Everyone but those closest to us become useless, commodities, or worse - a monster preying at our doorstep.  Soon we find ourselves cheering for the arrests, the executions, the promises of strong men, and the bombs that take out our fears. 

But we are fearful of our own uselessness.  We are lost because we have lost Jesus' eyes, and he is no longer our way or of use to us.  So we put him on the shelf on a pretty little crucifix as a lingering crossed-finger hope that he might still have a spare blessing even as we vote for his antithesis.

This Advent, may we each experience the healing hands of Jesus touching our eyes and taking from them the scales he took from the blind man's eyes*.  Let us not give up easily because our eyesight will be blurry at first.  But as our vision clears, may we recognize the Risen God with the eternal light of Love that has shown out into the darkness throughout the eons, claiming us, proclaiming our value, our significance, our worthiness, and see our key spot at God's table is not ours only but all of humanity's too. 

*Acts 9:10-19