The Other Jesus

(I first thought of titling this “Abusing the Sheep,” which probably would have led to more Google hits, but I think you can see why I decided against that.)

I know that many people would rather not talk about sexual abuse in the Church–or rather I not talk about it.

And I would rather not talk about it, so we are all in agreement.

And that, it seems to me, must be part of the problem.

The other day at the Seminary of the Southwest, I was having a chat out at one of the picnic tables with two juniors when they sighed, stood up, and made their apologies. They were off to do the Episcopal Church’s “Safeguarding God’s Children” class, our training for preventing sexual abuse of those we serve. I did my training enough years ago that I’d probably be due for a refresher course if I were doing parish work, but I remember it well. Basically “Safeguarding” grows out of our awareness of the potential for abuse–and by making it a topic of conversation instead of trying to pretend it never happens, we try to make it less likely.

Sexual abuse is not exclusive to the Catholic Church, and so I hope what I write will not be seen as simply calling my Catholic sisters and brothers to account; although I am certainly doing that, I would do the same if a Methodist hierarchy were moving a pederast pastor from church to church, or if Assembly of God deacons were covering up their pastor’s sexual indiscretions because it is bad for the church. Studies show that far too many clergy of whatever stripe have sex with people in their congregations, but it is Catholic priests in the news at the moment, and it is Catholic bishops and archbishops decrying media coverage of these events.

A reprehensible human truth: people in power, or some version of power, take advantage of those over whom they have power. Professors, politicians, pastors–the news is always full of people who have had sex with those over whom they hold some form of authority, and you and I may also have personal stories about such people.

Like others in positions of authority, clergy and church workers sometimes take advantage of the power differential between them and those they serve, a difference that can incorporate both spiritual and emotional power. Some people–infants, children, teens–are clearly not capable of choosing to have sex, and we think of this abuse as particularly heinous because it is. But even those who we might think are old enough to choose affairs may be making choices influenced by transference, guilt, and other powerful factors; whatever her other wisdom, an 80 year old woman may not be competent to choose to have sex with someone who has charge of her soul.

And so the rule, simply, is this: leaders of the Church should not abuse those under their care, they should not enter into consensual relations with those under their care, and they should not imagine that their positions in the Church protect them from wrong-doing or ethical mishaps.

The firestorm of scandal swamping the Catholic Church just now is sad and infuriating, because not only did it happen, which breaks my heart, but it has continuously been mishandled by the Church itself, and that affects all of us who call ourselves Christian. The Catholic Church is our parent, and when our father or mother is getting its booking picture broadcast on the nightly news, it reflects badly on us as well.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, said publicly this week that the Catholic Church in Ireland had lost its credibility because of sex scandals there. Some people might think this a statement comparable to, I don’t know, “Dogs eat vomit,” something we all recognize but we don’t talk about because it’s unpleasant and repugnant. But the Archbishop’s comment unleashed a wave of resentment like you would not believe: outrage, calls for apologies. Check out the British papers.

Martin Marty had written last week, just prior to the Archbishop’s statement, that perhaps Protestants have not called for more forthrightness from the Catholic Church for positive reasons: ecumenism, sympathy, a sense that this is something for Catholics to condemn. But, he said, it may also be a matter of professional embarrassment, an “old boys club” in which people who wear clerical collars protect other people who wear clerical collars.

So when someone who wears a clerical collar–and an archbishop’s cope and mitre, for good measure–points out that not only is the Catholic abuse scandal morally repugnant to all people, but it harms the Church itself–well, that is, judging by the outrage, taken as a betrayal of the “old boys club.” An editorial in The Guardian Monday notes with droll British humor that the perception that the Catholic Church has lost credibility in Ireland is “so widely shared, and so close to the truth, that to say it out loud has produced an enormous row.”

It’s true.

But we don’t talk about it.

Only here’s the problem: when we don’t talk about it, as the record shows, then people get away with victimizing others.

When we don’t talk about it, people outside the Church get to point their fingers at our hypocrisy, at our desire to protect our institution whatever the cost.

When we don’t talk about it, those who have been hurt by church leaders may imagine that they are the aberrations, or, worse still, somehow to blame for what happened to them.

I wrote in a recent blog post about health insurance that I think a big part of what Christianity is about is protecting the least of these, and I stand by that, but I’ll go global with this: When any religious leader–Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim, Shaolin monk–abuses or takes advantage of a person under his or her (although, God help us, it is almost always a him, isn’t it?) care, there should be consequences.

And those consequences should not merely be movement to another place where the offense can happen again.

I love the Catholic Church as a parent, but my heart does not break for any perceived offense to the Church.

It breaks for those innocents harmed by it.

God, forgive us for the wrong we have done. For those things we have left undone. And help your Church, we pray, to be an instrument of healing for those who are hurt, suffering, and alone. In the name of the one who suffered that we might know abundant life, our Savior Jesus Christ, who reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, One God, Now and Forever. Amen. 

Yesterday at Baylor I saw something almost unheard of in Baylor’s storied history—a campus protest.

Admittedly it was one guy with a megaphone and a couple of his friends handing out flyers about “Obamacare,” but it was something. I’m happy to see people at Baylor get political, even if too often, they have been on what turns out to be the wrong side of things. Baylorites know that during the campus unrest of the 1960s, Baylor’s sole protest seems to have been for the Vietnam War, and when I spoke at a peace rally before the Second Gulf War to suggest that Saddam Hussein had no Weapons of Mass Destruction and nothing at all to do with the attacks of 9-11, I was drowned out by the anti-protest protestors across the street.

But it’s, as they say, a free country, and I welcome people’s participation in the political process and the polite expressions of their opinions. Here’s mine:

I am in favor of the health reform package, as imperfect as it is, because I believe I have a Christian duty to take care of the least of these.

The young man’s broadcast arguments at Baylor yesterday were about how much the plan cost, about how it was taking money out of his pockets. I got the impression of a lot of “me” and “my.”

Now I work hard for the money, as the immortal Donna Summer sang. I try hard to provide for my boys and myself. I want stuff, and things, and all that.

But I’m also fortunate enough to have health care, as I’m sure yesterday’s Baylor protestors are.

As a hospital chaplain, I saw emergency rooms used as primary care facilities by those who can’t afford insurance—and the horrific complications caused by those who can’t afford the most basic primary care.

And I am here to say that “me” and “my” are less important than “us” and “our” in Christian understanding, and if health care reform should actually end up costing me some money, than so be it.

In the Gospel of Luke, when Jesus announces what it is he’s come to do, he first announces it in the synagogue—where fellow Jews had gathered to learn about the scriptures—and he announces it by reading a passage from the prophet Isaiah:

He came to Nazara, where he had been brought up, and went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day as he usually did. He stood up to read, and they handed him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll he found the place where it is written:The spirit of the Lord is on me, for he has anointed me to bring the good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim a year of favour from the Lord.He then rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the assistant and sat down. And all eyes in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to speak to them, ‘This text is being fulfilled today even while you are listening.’ (Luke 4: 16-21, NJB)

What Jesus was saying was that the good news he had come to bring—the teaching and the healing that he was doing—had their basis in God’s ongoing messages of justice and righteousness. What he had come to fulfill were messages of good news for those who suffered, for the poor, for the downtrodden.

And they were messages that were now beginning to come true.

This week 28 million Americans who could not afford health care got the chance to take care of themselves and their families, to make sure that an illness would not bankrupt their family–or unnecessarily kill them.

And we got the opportunity to help make that happen.

And  so, respectfully, I say, “Thank God.”

Lent 2C

St. David’s, Austin

Feb. 28, 2010

Luke 13:31-35

³¹At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” ³²He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. ³³Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’ ³⁴Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! ³⁵See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

            I’ve gotten so used to the drive up to Waco on the days I teach at Baylor that I don’t tend to be very reflective about it any more. I roll out of bed, shower and shave, grab a Clif Bar, dress, and before I know it I’m halfway to work. It’s a journey that has become so familiar that often I’m well into it before I realize what I’m doing. Was that Salado I just passed? Belton? Troy?

            This past Tuesday morning, though, with sleet pelting my windows here and 4 to 6 inches of snow expected in Waco, I did something a little different. When I rolled out of bed, I sat on the edge for a moment, listening. Looking out the window. Thinking. Was continuing on my usual way what I ought to be doing on Tuesday? Was there a wiser choice—a better decision—that I might come to by sitting and weighing the evidence? Was it possible that rushing off as I usually did might even lead to disaster?

            I was thinking about Tuesday morning because it represents for me all of those occasions in our lives when we pause for a moment and try to reflect on what we’re doing—or what we should be doing—and these occasions are worth noting because, if your life is anything like mine, they are all too rare.

Many of us are off at the crack of dawn, fueled by caffeine or panic at falling behind. We rush through our days, exits whizzing by outside our figurative or literal windows, and we seem to have passed the exit some time back where simply doing one thing at a time was sufficient. Moms and dads feed their kids breakfast while they check their voice and e-mail messages; kids eat that breakfast while they work on their homework, text, listen to their iPods. We fill every waking moment of our lives with input after input, layer on task after task.

            Which brings me to the importance of a morning like Tuesday, when I stopped, looked, and listened, and of a season like Lent, when we, as the People of God, are supposed to do the same. We decide to let go of something, or to take on a spiritual discipline that encourages us to reflect on who we are as people on a journey toward God. “Why so seeming fast?” Henry David Thoreau asked the 19^th Century, and what he asked has even more relevance for us today: In our own too-busy, multi-tasking lives, I fear that paradoxically we are missing out on a lot, maybe even on the things that matter most.

When people ask me why I go away to write, I tell them that my daily life makes it hard to listen, hard to pay attention, hard to concentrate, but I am nothing special. Everyone’s daily life makes it hard. Our desire to do many things at once, to always be in touch or available, interferes with our ability to do anything well—including, perhaps most notably for our purposes this morning, some spiritual tasks, particularly the task of reflecting on what it is God wants from us and where God wants us to be. It’s not for nothing that those spiritual adventurers of the Fourth Century, the Desert Fathers and Mothers, fled the sumptuous society of the Empire for the silence of the desert. When asked for a word of wisdom, one brother, Evagrius, advised “Cut the desire for many things out of your heart and so prevent your mind being dispersed and your stillness lost.” And more famously, Moses of Scetis called for people seeking insight to turn away from scatter and toward solitude: “Go, sit in your cell,” he said. “And your cell will teach you everything.”

Your cell will teach you everything. Not a cell phone, as I’m sure you figured out—that would be totally counterproductive—but a place or a condition where you can be alone, be quiet, listen, think, allow God to move in your life, although those can be hard for us to find—and hard for us to permit in our lives. Another spiritual adventurer, Henri Nouwen, wrote that “Emptiness requires a willingness not to be in control, a willingness to let something new and unexpected happen. It requires trust, surrender, and openness to guidance. God wants to dwell in our emptiness. But as long as we are afraid of God and God’s actions in our lives, it is unlikely that we will offer our emptiness to God. Let’s pray that we can let go of our fear of God and embrace God as the source of all love.”

            That wisdom is one of the reasons I love the season of Lent, when we are invited to reflect, and why I love our gospel reading for today, which comes about halfway through the ten-chapter section of the Gospel of Luke that scholars call the Journey to Jerusalem. Although Jesus knows where he’s headed—and although the Pharisees’ warning that Herod wants to kill him would certainly give me some urgency to be moving on at a high rate of speed—this lesson instead shows Jesus reflecting. It shows him demonstrating trust, surrender, and openness to guidance.

When Jesus is told that Herod wants him dead, he pauses to consider the work he’s been doing. “Today and tomorrow,” he says, “I’m casting out demons and healing people.” This is part of the Kingdom work he does throughout the Gospel of Luke, where God is moving in Jesus’s life through his teaching and works of power. But Jesus is not just considering where he is; he’s considering where he’s going.

Jesus has been teaching and performing miracles, but he recognizes that his commute is about to change, that he is almost finished with business as usual. “On the third day,” Jesus says, in a deliberate foreshadowing of the resurrection story, “I finish my work.” Our translation is serviceable, but it doesn’t really capture the transcendent nature of what he’s claiming for the third day; Jesus is actually saying that the third day’s work fulfills the other work, brings all he has been doing to fruition.

            So in response to the Pharisees’ message that maybe he should do something else, go somewhere else, Jesus pauses to affirm what he is doing. But the lesson doesn’t show us Jesus then rushing back to his work, although I’m sure that, like all of us, he had plenty to do. Instead, he takes a little longer, draws on wisdom from his faith tradition, gives himself to God’s plan and his place in it, and confirms for himself and for those with ears to hear that he is on the right path, that this journey he is making to Jerusalem is the one that matters.

            In the last verses from our lesson, Jesus recalls a piece of wisdom from the Book of Second Esdras about how Jerusalem always kills or rejects the messengers God sends it in love—a prediction, he knows, that will refer to himself. This is not, at first glance, a happy fate, but it is buffered by Jesus’s claim to a line from Psalm 118 that we still recite in the Sanctus in our Eucharistic liturgy, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” The tradition teaches him that challenge—and blessing—are his fate if he does what God has in store for him.

            Well, to paraphrase the immortal words of Lynn Anderson, God never promised us a rose garden; in fact, if we’re doing the work God calls us to, it’s likely to be a Garden of Gethsemane. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that when Jesus calls someone, he bids them come and die; that’s what Jesus himself is modeling for us here in this moment of calm reflection, of listening to the voices of God from the tradition: a willingness to do God’s purpose, wherever it leads.

So in the midst of the daily work—“I am casting out demons and healing people”—and in the face of a looming deadline—“Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you”—Jesus models for us presence of mind, oneness of purpose; willingness to let God speak and act in and through him. It’s a lesson for Lent: Be here. Be aware. Reflect on where you’re headed, and on what you’re doing along the way.

On Ash Wednesday, I watched as our Rev. Beth Magill imposed ashes on the worshippers at the 5:30 service in Bethel Hall; she placed a firm smudge on each of our foreheads, looked each of us in the eye, told each of us, “Know that you are dust, and to dust you will return.” It was, she told me later, one of the most intense experiences of her priesthood to date, and Ash Wednesday should be an intense experience for us as well. At that first moment in our Lenten journey, we discover or are reminded that, like Jesus, we too are on a journey with a definite ending, and that awareness should shape us in positive ways.

My creative writing students at Baylor are always wanting to end the stories they write with suicides, with explosions, with long tragic wasting diseases that make Carmen look like a situation comedy. And I am always telling them that, people, death is just not that interesting. It’s where every story ends, if you tell it long enough. “What people do on the way to death—”, I remind them, “that’s what matters,”

The paradox is this: Yes, we are called to be at work for the Kingdom of God, and, like Jesus, we must be about our Father’s business. But we ought to pause in the midst of this short earthly life to listen, because that silence can teach us everything.

The invitation to a holy Lent is our invitation to slow down, to look around, to invite God to move in our lives and in our world.

Take a deep breath.

Let it go.

AMEN.

Alberto Martinez/Austin-American Statesman, via Associated Press

Yesterday, as you may already know, a man crashed his small plane into an Austin, Texas building where employees of the Internal Revenue Service work, killing or wounding a dozen people, and reminding a lot of people of similar crashes in New York City and Washington D.C. eight years ago. This pilot also chose his site for maximum symbolic value and was willing to die for his cause in the hope of waking up the “American zombies” to the fact that “violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer” to a government that does not listen to them. [1]

When I checked Facebook last night after coming back to Austin from Baylor, an Austin friend, knowing that some of us might work for the government, had put out a plaintive call for folks to check in: “Are we all okay?” 

Perhaps coincidentally, yesterday I drove to Waco behind a man with a Tea Party sticker on his monster truck that talked about taking back the government, and–irrationally, I know–the rifle in his gun rack made me a little nervous.

I know that there is a lot of anger out there about taxes, health care, immigration policies, and a whole lot of other stuff. Believe it or not, I have been known to feel things ranging from exasperation to anger about our country and the way it is led—or not led. But when we come to the point of killing ourselves or employees of our government, I think it’s way past time that we looked at what government is and does and recognize this fact:

Our government is us.

I know we like to think it’s a group of hard-hearted bureaucrats with jobs for life, or representatives who can’t be bothered with issues that really matter to us, or a mayor, governor, or president we can’t stand, but that’s only a perception.

Our government is us.

It’s people like you or me: someone you know from church works for the IRS; my best friend from high school works for the FAA; most of us know someone or a friend of someone serving our nation in Iraq or Afghanistan. We call those who work for our government “civil servants” for a reason; they work for us.

But when we hear the word “government” used with venom, it’s as though we are discussing some enemy, some monolithic force that only exists to do us harm. Certainly this suicide bomber felt he had no recourse except to give his life as a protest against his government.

But in truth, our government is populated by people that we elect or employ, people who are drawn from our own ranks. They aren’t some mythical “other” we should hate and scorn; our government is not run by, say, the French.

But when people say, as they have said for decades, that “government is the problem,” we are making it seem as though by getting rid of government we will be better off. This is patently untrue.

Making allowance for human imperfection—and bad policies—still it’s true that the government tries to protect us from terrorists, dangerous workplaces, toxins in our foods, substandard schools, potholes. Government, as Miss Molly Ivins used to say, is not an enemy; it’s a tool. And you can use this tool for good things or for bad things.

I am willing to grant that the suicide pilot had bad experiences with the IRS, as perhaps most people have who have been audited or had their wages garnished. Perhaps you’ve run afoul of a national, state, or local agency. Maybe you recently got pulled over by a small-town cop. Maybe you’re mad as hell at our president.

But now, in this time of taxes and tea parties, I think we’re called to acknowledge that the government is us, and that we do need it.

If you say you don’t want to pay taxes, or so many taxes (our tax load is actually quite low compared to many nations who receive more services from their governments), then at least be honest about what you want government to do. Maybe you want to be left entirely to your own devices, to never receive any services, but I doubt it. Don’t say that you don’t want the government to interfere with your life; don’t say you don’t want big government; don’t say you don’t want a massive bureaucracy working for you.

Because when you personally need your government, however angry you may be with it, you will want it to be there.

Putting aside every other example, if your town is hit by a tornado—or earthquake, or flood, or hurricane—you’re going to want government. And you’re going to complain, in fact, if it is slow in rescuing you, in pulling your neighbors from beneath their houses, in setting up shelters and bringing in potable water.  Because you understand that a government exists to take care of its citizens.

Those who argue that churches and charities can do the jobs we associate with government are kidding themselves. Churches and charities don’t have the same resources, or the same powers. The Southern Baptist Convention won’t stop China from importing powdered milk with melamine in it; the Red Cross won’t check the Hudson River (or the Mississippi River, or the Columbia River, or the South Canadian River) for pollutants; the Catholic Church can’t mandate safe vehicles, or screen air passengers for underwear bombs. (Insert your own bad clergy sex scandal joke here.)

If you’re upset about government policies, then by all means, do something about it. Peacefully. Protest. Organize. Contribute. Run for office. In full recognition that not everyone agrees with you, but that if enough do, things can change.

So although frankly crowds of angry people scare me, if Tea Parties lead to positive change, to a government more responsive to its people and less responsive to monied interests, then hooray.

But if their rhetoric leads to more people willing to kill themselves and others because of their belief that their government, made up of their fellow citizens, is the enemy, then shame on them.

[1] http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/us/20100218-stack-suicide-letter.pdf

Martha and I were having a bit of a visit the other night, and she was asking me to talk honestly about what marriage is like, since being married is something I have done too often and she has never done yet.

“When it’s good,” I told her, “it’s the best thing in the world. It’s an amazing thing to share your life with someone who wants to share back. But when it’s all gone bad, it’s horrible. It’s worse than being alone.”

And that’s what I think about love. It can make us happy. It can make us sad. I read that “Broken Heart Syndrome” is an actual medical condition, and I believe it.

Truly being in relationship with someone makes your heart a hostage, means that you cannot control what happens to it. Some days your heart will be pummeled, some days soothed, and many days both.

And yet, knowing love, expressing love, being shaped by love leads to the only life that matters.

As we roll into another Valentine’s Day season, I’ve been thinking a lot about love. I’ve been in love and out of love, have been loved and have loved as a father, husband, boyfriend, friend, sibling, child—and I know that love is simultaneously my greatest source of joy and meaning and my greatest source of pain.

I’m not intending to be glass-half-full here by any means; I’ve known a life filled with love and one without, and I choose love every time, hands down, no matter what the risks. I’ve written a couple of novels, Free Bird and Cycling, about men so badly hurt that they’ve preferred not to love again, or at least tried not to, although fortunately that didn’t work out for them. I’ve cheered for George Clooney’s Ryan Bingham in this past year’s Up in the Air as he began to recognize that a risk-filled life loving other people is better and ultimately more satisfying than a safe but sterile life that keeps everyone else at arm’s length.

So I’m speaking here of more than romantic love, although I am including that. I’m also speaking of love for friends, of love for family, of love for God and God’s love for us. I’ve seen people who have denied or built walls to exclude some or all of these kinds of love from their lives, and I myself have been guilty of most at one time or another, to my great detriment.

And yet now, in a life where, mostly, I am trying to live fear-free and embrace love with all its possibilities, I am still experiencing simultaneous joy and heartbreak. I’ll leave Martha out of this, since she is a private person and prefers not to have her feelings circulating through the interwebs. But without violating anyone’s privacy but my own, I can say that the greatest heartbreak of my life has not been, perhaps surprisingly, the dissolution of my marriages, even at their train-wreck worst, or the loss of any of my love relationships, despite the great hopes I might have had for them.

No, my greatest heartbreak has been being separated from my children.

Jake, my older son, remained in Oklahoma with his mom after I moved to Texas to take the only (!) academic job offered to me after I got my PhD, the job I still hold at Baylor University. From Jake’s age 4 until he turned 18, we saw each other once a month and for stretches in the summer and over Christmas. He grew up outside my gaze, his daily life (except for a short, difficult, but also joyous stretch when I had temporary custody of him) a mystery to me. I loved him so much that his absence was like a hole in my heart; sometimes late at night I sat in his dark empty Texas bedroom, surrounded by his toys and books, and wept.

Now he is 24, and lives in Austin. That hole in my heart has been sewn up and seems to be healing nicely, thanks be to God.

But a year ago September, his brother Chandler, my younger son, moved from Austin, where I had seen him almost daily through his first 11 years, to North Carolina.

And I am going through all of this all over again.

Chandler is coming in a few weeks for a spring break visit, and then I will see him again in the summer, and we talk almost daily and Skype when we can. I know we are making the best of circumstances, that we have more ways to communicate than Jake and I did, but I would still give almost anything to have him here, to feel him try and wriggle loose when I try and hug him, to feel him push my hand aside as I try to mess up his hair, to stand nearby just watching him climb trees or shoot baskets or play piano.

Only love can break your heart. And only love can mend it.

I heard that somewhere.

Maybe it is true that everyone has a place where love hurts as well as heals. Maybe you already know that you can have a generally joyful life, and still have one aspect of it in which your heart is broken.

When Chandler comes to Austin in a few weeks, my joy will be complete. And when I put him on the plane back to his mom, my heart will hurt.

And still, despite this cracked little corner of my otherwise joyful life, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Happy Valentines Day to all the lovers, the parents, the friends, the brothers and sisters, the children, the Children of God.

And thanks be to God for love itself, and for being Love Itself.

Someday love will bring us nothing but joy, and I am praying and working for that day.

Mister President, Madame Speaker, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, kids of all ages:

The State of Our Union is rotten.

Can I say that? Can I criticize, in love, an institution that is floundering like a whale on a beach? MLK and RFK would say yes, but look where that got them.

Jesus would say yes, but he had also had a pretty bad day as a result.

Here’s the thing: I love this nation, I voted for this president, but we have lost our way, and I don’t know what it will take to get it back again unless we turn around.

And I’m not speaking of returning to some mythical Golden Age in the 1950s, when white men had it really good, and women and not-so-white-men not so much.

And I’m not speaking of rediscovering some mythical Founding Age, where some of us have turned the Founding Daddies into the First Great American Christians when many of them didn’t even think Jesus was the Son of God.

But as a Christian who is an American, here is how I see the state of the union: We are such creatures of self that the very idea of union is almost laughable.

We are so afraid of the world outside that some of us want to hermetically seal our borders to prevent others from gaining the comforts our own ancestors came here seeking. We are so afraid of the world outside that we spend more on defense than every other nation on the planet combined (and then complain about how social programs have led us into deficit spending). We are so afraid of the world outside that we (or at least a majority of American church-goers) say we accept torture, the demeaning and maiming of another human being made in the image of God, in the spurious hope that it will make us safer from attack. Where is our thought of union with others?

We cling to our use of resources and our way of life when we have been told by the mass of scientific opinion that it is making the planet unlivable for our children and grandchildren. We buy SUVs and advocate drilling more oil wells when the mass of scientific opinion tells us that the poor around the world are already suffering from the environmental results of the petroleum age, and will suffer more. We rest secure in the thought that oil will probably last for years, and why should we sacrifice so much as a trip to the mall in a big, air conditioned vehicle? Where is our thought of union with others?

We lament the use of our tax dollars to help provide medical care for those who lack it, or housing for those who lack it, or education for any other children besides our own—and that’s here in America (God help the poor who are in other lands—because we don’t want to). We insist that the homeless stay off our block and out of our part of town, herd them into places where we don’t have to look at or interact with them. We feel great sympathy for victims of disaster here and elsewhere, and sometimes respond with great generosity to their plight—but never enough sympathy or generosity to alleviate the conditions people like the people of New Orleans or Haiti lived in before their disaster—or will live in after the relief workers have gone. Where is our thought of union with others?

Even when we try to do the right thing, our self-interest screws things up. I am disgusted that the fight to make health care available to every American has been twisted into partisan battle, and political and business-as-usual deal making. I am disgusted that our need to safeguard our economic system has rewarded banks and economic institutions whose own greed and lack of foresight and moral vision caused the disaster in the first place. I am disgusted both by people who say that President Obama has to do things the way they’ve always been done because it’s the only way to get things done and by people whose memory is so short they believe President Obama leads the most corrupt, or dangerous, or dishonest administration in history.

I am disgusted that we cannot call ourselves to something higher, better, nobler.

A dangerous unselfishness is what Martin Luther King advocated, and I know, you’re saying, that can get you killed. But you can also get killed walking across the street, or by a bolt of lightning from out of the sky, or by a man carrying explosives in his underwear, for crying out loud.

Safety is an illusion we cling to, but that we cannot guarantee ourselves, no matter how we cling to our money and things, no matter how many guns we own, no matter how we clamor for law enforcement and the military to defang the dangers of the world. I mean, honestly—once we agree to do body scans and the occasional orifice search of all airplane passengers, Al Queda will start implanting bombs in people’s pacemakers or something. There is no safety in this imperfect world.

What is there? Love, faith, trust.

We are here to be good to each other, to give and to sacrifice, to do what is right even when we know it will be difficult, to learn and act on the belief that we and those we love are not at the center of the universe, to treat every human being as though she or he is beloved by God, made in the image of God.

What did Jesus do? He broke down barriers. He reached out to the poor, disenfranchised, despised. He healed. He fed. He blessed. He taught. He was dangerously unselfish.

I don’t know what that looks like as American domestic and foreign policy.

But Mister President, Madame Speaker, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, kids of all ages:

I can tell you that, for the most part, this is not it.

May God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America–and remind us, as Stanley Hauerwas says, that with God’s blessing comes accountability.

 Saturday evening Jan. 23: U2charist at St. David’s, Austin

Some final peaceful thoughts on inter-faith relations from my manuscript for The Other Jesus in honor of MartinLuther King, Jr., of blessed memory:These most recent paragraphs (see previous posts) veer precariously close to a theological belief called universalism, and I am not suggesting universal salvation, exactly, although I have here quoted others who find God moving in each faithful heart. The hidden truths of salvation are, like other things, way above my pay grade; I do not know who God will choose to redeem any more than I know how the ultimate shape of our eternal life with God will look. All I can honestly say is that I believe I have found the path of God’s love for my own life in a faithful belief in Jesus Christ and practice of his teachings, and that I cannot imagine myself walking any other path.

But that is a long way from saying that I don’t believe anyone else should walk an other path, and, strangely enough, my life and faith would be diminished if everyone else were Christian. I have learned how to walk my own path in a more faithful and just way from many on those other paths. I have learned from Jews about holiness and setting things apart, about justice, about speaking truth to power, about faith in the One God. I have learned from Muslims about submission to the will of God, about charity and compassion as central elements of true faith, about mystical union with the Divine. I have learned from Buddhists about inner attention, about mindfulness in the present moment, about gentleness, about right speaking. When we truly see and hear others, we can paradoxically, as Robert McAfee Brown suggested, see ourselves more clearly. Rodger Kamenetz wrote of his own journey to Tibet that once he had seen Judaism contrasted with Tibetan Buddhism, he understood his own faith tradition as “not just an ethnicity or an identity, but a way of life, and a spiritual path, as profound as any other.” [1] Encountering another faith tradition illuminated his own path, and actually opened up a new life of faith for him within his own tradition.

I am writing this chapter in Northern New Mexico at the Casa del Sol retreat center at Ghost Ranch. Nearby are holy places of Catholic pilgrimage, pueblos where Native American rites and dances are still practiced on Christian holy days, a community of Sikhs, a bunch of Buddhists, a mosque and Muslim study center. In this landscape marked by different faiths and practices, the community that has formed around Casa del Sol has demonstrated how interfaith relations might work. A rabbi, a Muslim teacher, and  a Christian minister often join to lead educational programs, spiritual teachings, and worship here, each pulling from their own traditions, each learning from each other, and through their willingness to interact and dialogue, each demonstrating love and respect for other traditions. When I lead my Wisdom of the Desert retreat at Casa each June, I speak out of my Christian tradition, relating the wisdom of Jesus, recalling the Desert Mothers and Fathers. But I also read Sufi Muslim stories, Jewish wisdom tales, even the occasional Buddhist saying (aren’t those steppes deserts, after all?). I am a Christian who understands myself, my God, and my life through the window of my faith, but I often get strength for the journey from our brothers and sisters who have found meaning elsewhere.

Our answer about how to live in a world filled with faiths and denominations, is that we are not called to be, as the New Atheists would argue, less faithful, but to be more faithful. In response to other traditions and cultures, we are called to be more fully Christian, believing, practicing love and compassion, treating each person we meet as though she were Christ. We are called to work with other Christians and with all those of good will to feed the poor, heal the sick, restore the damage we have done to our planet, fight for peace, love each other. We are called to live in hope and trust. We are called to continue to believe that God is working in the world, and that this may be happening in ways that are not obvious or even recognizable to me.

And finally, we are called to continue journeying faithfully as followers of Christ even though others may not understand what we do or why. If we journey faithfully and thoughtfully, eventually they may understand, and eventually the negative associations that people have had with followers of Christ may drop away. Some might join us in our ecclesias; some might form new ones; others may pursue other paths. But if we live with love and compassion, then people will see the connection between Jesus, the founder of our faith, and his followers that now sometimes eludes them, and we will be doing the important work that God gives to every Christian: living so that others can see the God of Love reflected in what we say and do.

[1]   Rodger Kamenetz, The Jew in the Lotus: A Poet’s Rediscovery of Jewish Identity in Buddhist India (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), 280.

A great documentary on Christian/Muslim relations airs today. Check here for stations:http://www.ethicsdaily.com/photos/airdates.pdf

 Here’s a second piece of the new book that I’ve been working on for Westminster John Knox, offered up in this season of peace and goodwill:

Americans don’t have a history of people within the Christian faith killing each other, as Europe saw for centuries and Northern Ireland has seen until recently, but we do have plenty of experience with Christians denigrating the faith, culture, and beliefs of other Christians. With so much conflict, misunderstanding, and genuine bad feeling between Christians, it should not be surprising that when we consider Christian responses to Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and adherents of other faiths, we often find those same emotions heightened to a greater degree. Admittedly, sometimes they are returned. Not everyone from another tradition is going to be willing to sit down and talk, and I don’t imagine that we can have meaningful dialogue with those who hate us, demean our beliefs, or do not see us as worthy of God’s love.

But other people’s responses to us are always going to be largely out of our control. What we can control is our approach, and what I want to suggest is an approach that takes our own faith seriously without insisting we hold all the answers, looks for common ground where it exists, does not deny our differences, but considers them through the filter of love and compassion, and acknowledges that we are all seeking the sacred in the best way we know how and that perhaps it is not simply ignorance, wrong-headedness, or the deceptions of Satan that keep you from believing as I do.

Robert McAfee Brown has offered nine general suggestions for ecumenical exchange in this spirit of faithful but compassionate interaction, and they also begin with the rejection of absolute certainty. These suggestions also include surrendering the belief that my tradition is better than your tradition, rejecting the agenda that we only dialogue so that you can ultimately see the wisdom of my position, and recognizing the cultural baggage that encompasses all our faith convictions. Further, Brown advocates the sharing of stories to recognize our common humanity, and learning about other faiths through those stories and not through outside interpreters from our own tradition. Finally, Brown says, we do all these things to discover who we really are, and these are matters of real urgency, since the failure to live peacefully with those unlike us, is, as the New Atheists do have right, the most immediate human threat to our race. [1]

To understand what these things might look like, we can use a meeting between people of non-Christian faiths as a sort of laboratory that doesn’t necessarily put our own issues on the line, although it certainly illuminates them. In The Jew in the Lotus, his account of how a delegation of Jewish rabbis from various traditions were invited to meet with the Dalai Lama, my friend Rodger Kamenetz observed some of these qualities of interfaith dialogue for which I want to argue. This meeting was, first, a dialogue between groups who were assumed to have something of value to each other; many Jews have been attracted to Buddhism as a practice, which rabbis wanted to understand, while the continuity of Jewish culture and belief during the many years before they again had a homeland made the Dalai Lama think their tradition had something to teach the people of Tibet. In their time together, they listened to as well as spoke to each other, and what emerged from this dialogue was understanding and mutual compassion—and something spiritually powerful, as well. Rodger discovered that this dialogue and journey actually transformed him from someone only marginally Jewish into someone devoted to his faith. In other words, he did not understand who he truly was until he had engaged in this conversation with believers of a different tradition.

The group sought to understand commonalities between their faiths—the Dalai Lama had expressed an interest in Jewish contemplative practices, both cultures had experience with the difficulties of exile, and both traditions placed compassion and justice at their hearts. But this meeting did not assume that there were not fundamental differences between them, which was illustrated by how much maneuvering it took between the rabbis of different traditions to negotiate the prayer of thanksgiving the Jewish delegation wanted to pray upon greeting the Dalai Lama, and even by the issue of how to address the Dalai Lama himself. “His Holiness” is the typical form of address, as you may know, and some of the Jews (as might also be true with some Christians and Muslims) had difficulties with this title.

Both questions revolved around wanting to recognize this man, one of the world’s great spiritual and ethical leaders, without going so far as to call him holy, since only God is holy. (And while we might argue that we seek holiness in our spiritual journey, as we, made in the image of the holy God, seek to become ever more like God, I we can also see where this might be a sticking point; we reverence God alone.)

The Jewish delegation also rejected honorifics for the Dalai Lama that might be translated as “savior,” since such a figure would seem to be involved in the act of salvation which only God can provide. One of the Jews explained the liturgical and linguistic contortions in this way: “We would like to say a word in honor—it’s not that we don’t want to honor—it’s like saying we understand, we honor you as a source of teaching and blessing for your adherents.” But not, he implied, as a savior or holy one we Jews recognize or reverence; it was their faithful attempt to honor a great man and a great wisdom tradition while remaining true to their own beliefs. [2]

The exchanges between Jews and Buddhists on this trip were challenging, but also fruitful and necessary. One of the Orthodox Jewish rabbis, Irving Greenberg explained why, in a pluralistic world, there is great value in interfaith dialogue: “The big question on the religious agenda is how people rooted in their own religion are able to respond to others. We must learn to affirm our truth while doing true justice to the other.” Honest encounters with different modes of belief prevent a religious person from thinking he or she possesses the whole, or sole, truth, Rabbi Greenberg said. “God’s will is for us to learn how to affirm our full truth doing full justice to the other, not partial justice or twisted justice, or a secondhand treatment.” [3]

Another rabbi, Abraham Heschel, was one of America’s great heroes of interfaith dialogue; he often worked with people of other faiths on issues of common interest. He marched with Martin Luther King in the deep South when white Southern religious leaders could not be seen in his company. But as William Sloane Coffin points out, while it may be true that “God dwells with every committed Jew, Moslem, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu who believes religious pluralism to be God’s will,” Rabbi Heschel pointed out that “’the first and most important prerequisite for interfaith is faith.’” [4]

What Coffin meant was that I do not honor my Muslim brother or Jewish sister by pretending not to be deeply and happily Christian, nor am I taking their faith seriously if I pretend to more commonality than we possess and diminish our differences. These distinctive paths to God should be seen as distinctive; at the same time, I believe that they are worthy of honor. The Hindu sage Ramakrishna once wrote that there are many ways to climb to the roof, all of them valid; the Christian sage C. S. Lewis once wrote that those of us who have already found our room in God’s house should behave with great gentleness to all of those still looking for theirs. Although our first honor is to our own path, there is much we can learn from each other, not the least being that perhaps God does not call us to force others off their paths.

[1] Robert McAfee Brown, Speaking of Christianity: Practical Compassion, Social Justice, and Other Wonders (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997), 117-120.

[2] Rodger Kamenetz, The Jew in the Lotus: A Poet’s Rediscovery of Jewish Identity in Buddhist India (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), 46-48.

[3] Ibid, 49.

[4] William Sloane Coffin, Credo (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004), 85. 

A piece of what I’m writing at Ghost Ranch this week for a book called The Other Jesus, which will be out in 2011. In the midst of the Christmas season (and I remind everyone, Christmas is a season, not a day), I thought these might be words of peace. More later:

            On my son Chandler’s last visit to Austin, he spent part of one day visiting old friends, and when I went to pick him up, I had a long conversation with his friend’s father, who is, in typically Austin fashion, not a Christian. He does, in fact have images of Hindu gods and goddesses placed around the house, so I’m assuming he leans in that direction. As Chandler was putting his shoes on, the father was asking me what I was writing, and so I told him about this book.

“I’m trying to write a book about what it might mean to be a faithful and thoughtful follower of Christ in the 21^st Century,” I told him. “Someone with a thirst for justice.” He nodded, once, twice, three times. I asked about his work as a healer, we were talking about the stock trading he has been trying as a day job, and then Chandler’s shows were tied and jacket on, and so we parted with a handshake.

In the car, Chandler’s first question was, “Were you uncomfortable?”

“Why?” I asked. I have been uncomfortable over the years around some of the more granola/patchouli/free love denizens of Austin, but I have always liked this family, and the father, who is a gentle soul.

“Well,” he said, “I just thought you might be uncomfortable because you’re a really big Christian, and they don’t believe like we do.” I nodded thoughtfully, because I know that a lot of people who are Christian might be uncomfortable around blue-skinned gods. People of any strong belief, actually, have at least a tendency to want to be around others who confirm those beliefs. But I think, slowly, I’m getting to the point where I don’t require everyone to share my beliefs. I have been to a couple of Jewish seders, own a hundred-year-old Buddha statue from Thailand, and have a translated Koran on my bookshelf. They are not the way to God for me, but they may be for others.

“No,” I replied. “We had a really good talk.” And I smiled. “And he’s a good person. Who am I to tell him what to believe?”

This last comment would be received as heresy by many Christians. What? You’re going to allow someone to persist in error? You’re going to behave with acceptance toward someone who doesn’t believe as we do about the Creator of the Universe? You know what’s true, and you’re going to damn someone to hell by not correcting him?

It’s exactly these ideas, whether voiced, acted on, or held in seething silence, that account for many of the attacks on religion from those outside it. The New Atheists argue that religion is dangerous in its truth claims because we live in a world where the results of the worst of religion can now be so damaging. “I honestly believe that religion is detrimental to the progress of humanity,” Bill Maher says in his 2008 documentary film Religulous, echoing a strain of rational criticism found in many of the attacks on faith that have cropped up since 9-11, since those attacks seemingly pitted Muslims against Christians. Religion that cannot tolerate any difference, that insists that everyone needs to believe as it does, is leading the world toward that Armageddon that we discussed in our last chapter. Because so many religious zealots anticipate the end of the world with joy, Maher argues, it may actually cause the end of the world. (“If there’s one thing I hate more than prophecy,” he says at the outset of the film, “it’s self-fulfilling prophecy.”)

At their heart, these critics of religion are saying that because religious people seem unable to turn loose of our truth claims, unsubstantiated by rational evidence as they may be, but still tend to want others to acknowledge the truth as we see it, religion can only be a force for ignorance, uncritical belief, and violent attempts at conversion. As Sam Harris writes in The End of Faith, “It is no accident that religious doctrine and honest inquiry are so rarely juxtaposed in this world.” [1]

This book has attempted to pose an alternative both to uncritical belief and to critical arguments against belief by suggesting that a thoughtful Christianity can amend many of the problems we discover in our faith and be a joyous and meaningful path to God. Certainly we are called to thought, not simply uncritical belief, as William Sloane Coffin said: “There is nothing anti-intellectual in the leap of faith, for faith is not believing without proof, but trusting without reservation. Faith is no substitute for thinking. On the contrary, it is what makes good thinking possible.” [2] The medieval theologian and thinker Anselm, whose motto was fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding, believed that his faith actually allowed him to get closer to the core of life’s important questions.

            But, as hard as it might be for the champions of rationality both within the Church and outside the walls to acknowledge, human imperfection means that our knowledge will always be imperfect. My understanding of God’s revelation is the best I have now, but it does not mean it is perfect, nor that is it the only understanding possible. So it is that Coffin, the champion of Christian intellect, also recognizes its limitations, and places love and compassion above it:

It is bad religion to deify doctrines and creeds. While indispensable to religious life, doctrines and creeds are only so as signposts. Love alone is the hitching post. Doctrines, let’s not forget, supported slavery and apartheid; some still support keeping women in their places and gays and lesbians in limbo. Moreover, doctrines can divide while compassion can only unite.” [3]

            Absolute certainty leads to thinking that if I am right, you must be wrong. Absolute certainty leads people to marginalize, hate, or attack those who believe differently. Absolute certainty leads people to fly planes into buildings, to blow themselves up on buses, and to launch wars—literal or figurative—against other faiths because they believe God wills it. This absolute certainty is the first of the marks Charles Kimball has recognized as when religion becomes evil; when you and your fellow believers—and you only—have the absolute truth, he says, other things will necessarily follow in succession—blind obedience without asking the hard questions, the end justifying the means, and ultimately, “holy war.” [4]

            During Chandler’s recent visit, we also saw a not-very-good animated kid’s film, and desperate afterward to try and get some value for my fifteen dollars, I asked him if the film taught us any lessons. Chandler thought for a second, and shrugged, since it is not a lesson he necessarily needs: “We shouldn’t be afraid of people who are different from us.”

            “That’s a pretty good lesson,” I told him. “Sometimes people end up killing each other because they haven’t learned it.” Certainly the contemporary world contains plenty of examples of how difference leads to difficulty; Robert McAfee Brown wrote that “New ideas often frighten us and make us more rigid than we need or ought to be.” [5] So learning not to be afraid is important, and one of the ways we learn this is by being in dialogue with those we think of somehow as other. Think about your own developing understanding of the world—actually coming face to face with people you have only heard about (people from another race, another belief system, a different sexual orientation, maybe) can force us to recognize our common humanity. One of the most positive things about interfaith dialogues springing up after the attack on the Twin Towers is it allowed Christians and Muslims to look across the room at each other instead of across a chasm of faith and cultural differences. It allowed them to listen to each other instead of talking at each other. And in some cases, it convinced those on both sides that one could faithfully worship God in a different way—which has always been a hard thing to acknowledge.

[1] Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New York: Norton, 2005), 105.

[2] William Sloane Coffin, Credo (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004), 8.

[3] Ibid, 9.

[4] Charles Kimball,  When Religion Becomes Evil: Five Warning Signs (New York: Harper SanFrancisco, 2002) passim.

[5] Robert McAfee Brown, Speaking of Christianity: Practical Compassion, Social Justice, and Other Wonders (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997), 120.