Can Christians Counteract World Violence?

Who can separate us from the love of Christ?  Can affliction or anguish or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?  No, in all these things we are more than victorious through Christ who loved us.  -- Romans 8:35, 37

There were 21 Egyptian Christian men murdered last week by ISIS in Libya.  First, I want to honor them by listing their names here.  More important than these fallen ones (who are now with Christ) are their families, who are still among the living, grieving their absence from their lives.  Even though the news cycle has moved on and these eleven men are passing out of our awareness, let us remember their families in prayer as they still smart from the loss.


Richard Rohr begins a talk about "How Men Change" by listing the hundreds of thousands of war dead since 1990 and comments, "When one person dies, those who knew him or her feel the tragedy; when thousands die it's a statistic and we have trouble relating.  We simply can't get our heads around it."  Some of Rohr's stated figures included, 2 million dead in Afghanistan, 1.5 million in the Sudan, 500,000 in Angola, 200,000 in Guatemala, 150,000 in Liberia, 77,000 in Algeria, and 880,000 in Rawanda (in 90 days). 

Violence pretty effectively generates more violence in it's wake. Egypt's response to the ISIS murders was to bomb ISIS bases.  Many "defense experts" feel military retaliation is a necessary response.  A State Department spokesperson, Marie Harf, got soundly criticized for making the statement, "We can not kill our way out of this war."  She was suggesting that there were socio-economic reasons for violence being perpetuated.  Why the resistance to talking about the socio-economic changes needed?  Because such change would shake the foundations of the wealthy, who ultimately benefit from the cycles of violence.

All Christians should spend time in prayer and study during Lent pondering all the structures that support and maintain violence -- from racism, classism, and sexism to a world that bases individual identity on possessions and consumption of the world's resources.  We say we worship the Holy Trinity and yet, when famine, fire, sword or other lesser threats challenge our lives we resort to defensive strategies that protect me and mine by destroying you and yours.  Rhetoric and actions that wave a flag and declare war violates the victory we already know through Christ.  In addition, hatred, hostility, and revenge pumps more massive negativity into the world emotionally and energetically.  The cycle needs to be broken and belief in Christ along with the New Testament provides a strategic plan for doing this.  The Pauline Letters, and in particular the 4th chapter of Philippians summarizes sound Christian advice on transforming the negative downward spirals in our private emotional lives, as well as in our collective global life. 

Stretch Your Thoughts and Ways

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord."  --Isaiah 55:8

How often does it happen that we're faced with some situation that needs prayer?  We gather up silent space and begin praying for the positive outcome we want.  Sometimes, perhaps even most of the time, the prayer is answered in exactly the way we desire.  Fairly frequently the answer is not what we had hoped.  Sometimes, the answer is even the direct opposite of what we needed.  Or, how often do bad things happen to good people?  Or, how often do you find yourself in the troubled space of wondering whether God really can or will protect us or our loved ones?  This verse from Isaiah is a good one to memorize and keep in our quiver of arrows to shoot at the doubts that creep into our minds.

We humans like to fancy ourselves as having control.  Some non-religious types, who reek control, drive us crazy with their bossiness and need to be right.  More religious types might carry an indirect righteousness of control; namely, by being good enough God will do their bidding.  The reality, however, is that nobody has the experience, perspective, or scope on life that God holds.  God's thoughts and ways are seriously nothing like mine, as pure as mine might seem from time to time.  The truth is, I don't get it and never will in this life.  All I can do is remember that my thoughts, understanding, and ways are forever going to be getting stretched if I am sincerely surrendering to the full Wisdom and Majesty of God.

We can get angry with God over suffering.  We can claim doubts about God's presence.  We can even say we are done with God.  We would not be the first ones to do so over all the expanse of time and space.  "Scoot over all you millions of disgruntled people, let's commiserate."  We aren't going to be the last.

Hope and faith share a common factor.  That factor is that when what we have faith in or hope for is visible and always proven through a preponderance of evidence, it is no longer faith or hope that we have.  Faith and hope are founded on an invisible, and yes, at times disputable, fact that God is.  This majestic divine presence who has called us out of our wee humanness invites us to stand back in life as witnesses to the suffering, pain, glory, and power of living firmly resolved to hope and have faith.  Your life, your period of suffering, is but a blink of an eye in the eternal embrace of God's overwhelming Light and Love freely given to you.  So, when overwhelmed with loss, sadness, misery, or mystery stretch your thoughts out on the rack of eternity and with a blind assurance of God's love just stretch.  Stretch wide until you can foresee that glimmer in the east -- Love does win in the end.  It always will!

Prayer:
Dear God, relax me into the stretch to feel your eternal mercy at all times.  In Christ, through Christ, and beside Christ we walk and pray.  Amen.

   

    

  

Loving Ourselves Into God's Presence

God has told you, O human, what is good, and what the Lord really wants from you: God wants you to promote justice, to be faithful, and to live obediently before your God.  --Micah 6:8 (NET)

This is probably one of the best known verses in the Bible, aside from the Charlie Brown gang's Christmas pageant quotes.  This verse is an answer to a question asked in verse 6 -- "With what should we enter God's presence?  With what should I bow before the sovereign God?"  The question is on the minds of the people because they're in the religious context and habit of needing purification with sacrificial offerings prior to God entertaining their prayers.  Micah, being the prophet he is, totally reframes the requirement.  In essence, it goes from offering things to offering oneself.  Three ways of offering ourselves to God are lifted up.

Promote Justice:  How do we promote justice?  First off, we have to know right from wrong and be able to recognize when justice isn't happening.  There are many benefits and positive attributes about American culture.  Unfortunately, many times all the benefits cloud our ability to see all the injustice going on around us.  The justice we seek is not limited to the very thin slice of the pie dealing with crime.  It extends much more widely to embrace how fairly the various systems and institutions in society treat people.  Is the economic system, the educational system, the medical system, the religious system, the environmental system, the agricultural system, the court system.... treating people equally, fairly, and justly?  Nobody can kid themselves!  None of these human institutions are.  What we bring before God is our labors to promote change that balances the playing fields in all of life's arenas.  And, even if you are one of the least in society and enduring injustice yourself, there is an offering to God you can be making.

Be Faithful:  In 1352 Julian of Norwich said this: "It really honors God more, and gives more joy, if we ask God to answer our prayers through God's goodness and cling to that by grace, true understanding, and loving steadfastness than if we approach God through multiple intermediaries and our own need."  Being faithful to God means fully embracing and completely assuming God's goodness is present in total abundance -- even when we can't see it or feel it!  To approach God and to be in God's presence we must come before God with the radical all-encompassing belief that God's goodness precedes us.  It must be the absolute most basic tenet we carry.

Live Obediently: Obedience is not subscribing to or keeping a laundry list of "thou shalts" or "thou shalt nots."  Obedience is not following a moral code of some humanly prescribed form.  The ultimate form of living obediently is how consistently and intensely you can love.  Jesus spoke of the greatest commandments.  "Love the Lord your God...and your neighbor as yourself."  If you are loving God and all people, regardless of your problem(s) with them, all the laws and morals in creation are covered.  The issue of obedience creeps into life because we don't want to love obediently.  We want exceptions and excuses to hate, those who do us wrong.  We want a list of all the ways people should treat us.  That's legalism, and it is a far cry from obedience to love.    

To summarize it all, what God wants from us is to be loved back, wholly and completely, to love everything God loves, and to work for love's sake in everything we do.