Mind Boggling

As I shared before, I have been reading Karen Armstrong's book about the growth of fundamentalism (The Battle for God) and listening to some tapes of Jean Vanier on the Gospel of St John. Yesterday something really struck me and I wanted to share it with you.

I know that Christianity is hardly the flavour of the month currently. Folks, sadly (from my point of view) are leaving in droves - at least as organized religion. I think I do understand better why, the longer I live and also, the more I read. 

I found myself comparing how Jean goes about talking about Jesus, about the Gospels, about what it means to be a Christian and what Karen is saying that many Christian (I want to put that in quotation marks) fundamentalists think being Christian means. The difference between the two is so enormous that I wonder how it can be that people can read and study and pray around the same book (the bible) and come up with such wildly different understandings.

Jean (you will understand that I am totally in accord with what he says) speaks of Christianity and most specifically the Jesus he meets in the gospel as the essence of forgiveness, mercy, compassion, integrity, acceptance of the human condition in all its darks and lights. That is not to say that Jesus is wishy-washy because love is hard and often painful. But it is to say that he represents all that is best in human nature.

The fundamentalist seems mostly to be looking at (as fact) the creation story in the book of Genesis and the horrors and battles found in the book of Revelation (which I would like to suggest should not be in the bible since with the exception of a few beautiful passages it seems totally out of sync with the message of Jesus in the gospels). Anyway, the fundamentalist prefers to think of Jesus as a man of battle who in anger is going to wipe out everyone who does not please him. This Jesus is not, apparently, a man of peace. We are all going to be judged severely if we believe in: birth control, abortion, gay marriage, evolution, equality of women and so on. The message is exclusive (nobody but white, protestants [maybe a few RC's] need apply) and severe.

How can this be? Nowhere in the gospels is that part of Jesus' message. The most powerful of Jesus' images is in fact, not to obey 'the rules' but to love. He also makes clear time after time, that we - as we are, with all the dark places we want to hide - are beloved sons and daughters of God. That in good part was what Jesus exists to say to us.

I suppose that what happens here has to do with our personalities? our upbringing? our fears? so that what we believe will be to some extent governed by that. Perhaps mostly our fears.

I am just boggled and very, very sad that a message which is meant to be loving gets transformed into exclusive, angry, misogynist so-called Christianity.

Facing fear

For some reason or other both the book I have been reading: Karen Armstrong's The Battle for God: a history of fundamentalism and Jean Vanier's tapes that I wrote about last time, have spoken of the power of fear in us.

Fear feels like one of the most havoc-creating emotions we can experience and when we act out of fear we can do some quite dreadful things to each other. Karen's book is helping me to have some sense of why our world is so polarized. She speaks of the fear behind fundamentalism; the fear that all that I believe in, all that I hold dear, all that has given my life meaning is being destroyed by others. 

If for instance, my life is built on believing that the bible or the Koran or the Torah is truly the absolute and literal word of God then when others start to challenge this I become full of fear. The values that I hold dear are being trampled under and I begin to feel that I must try to overcome or destroy those who are doing this. I may begin to see them as agents of satan. Gradually, the gap between us seems unbridgeable. 

Is there a way out of this? Certainly not quickly or easily but if we succumb to hopelessness then we all lose.

In Jean Vanier's tapes on John's Gospel he talks about what seems to me like a small way through the barrier of fear. Jean speaks about the story that is usually called 'the woman at the well' in Chapter 4 . He  reminds us that Jesus was  speaking openly to a) a Samaritan, a people who were in fact, despised by the Jewish community and b) a woman. Women were of no great account and certainly a man alone would not have a conversation with one let alone such a deep theological one. Still that is what happened and it is typical of Jesus.

Jesus engages the woman in an increasing spiritual dialogue. In the process, he points out that he knows the woman has been married five times and is now alone. He is not using this as a rejection or a criticism but simply as a reality of who she is. Jesus accepts and loves her as she is: somewhat 'broken' but beautiful all the same.

Jean picks up this point and reminds us that for all of us there are aspects of ourselves that are broken and that we fear to be exposed. There are things, relationships, situations where we have not behaved well or from which we have been deeply hurt. We are often left with a feeling of worthlessness, rejection, anger. Jean speaks about the need for each of us to have someone who knows us as we are, deep down, in our brokenness and in our beauty. He is suggesting here that Jesus is doing that for this woman.

But what I think he is also saying is that when we can become aware in truth and acceptance of the fragility and brokenness in ourselves and then in each other, we begin to see each other not as enemies but as other human beings. We don't need to agree, we may have to act strongly but we will not act out of hatred or fear. 

Jean asks the question: why do we fear the light of truth? and he answers: because the light reveals the dark places in us. So, when we can slowly allow the light in, then in our meetings with one another  fear will slowly fade. 

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Something hopeful

I have just started listening to some tapes of Jean Vanier the founder of the l'Arche communities. Jean has been giving talks to long-term l'Arche assitants on the Gospel of St John.

As I listen I am struck first by the fragility of Jean's voice since the last time I spoke with him - perhaps 15 years ago. At the same time, I am even more touched by the obvious strength and commitment from which he is speaking so that the fragility of his voice (he is 83) is quickly forgotten. I find myself deeply moved at his faith and his ability to articulate in language that speaks more to the spirit and the heart than to the head. That has, I think, always been the case with him.

One of the things Jean starts with in the first talk is the importance in that Gospel of signs and how there are people who see the signs and respond positively to them and others who see the signs and ignore them. As I was listening and after, as I was pondering what I had heard, it seemed to me that this applied very much even as we live now.

There are many signs in our world that all is not right: poverty, wars, the environment, the fear at the heart of many of our communal relationships and we know something needs to be done. However it seems so overwhelming and costly to change this state of things that we say things like: ' we will form a task force', 'we will send an envoy', 'we will give to charity'. And maybe those things can be useful. But if I hear Jean and John's Gospel rightly, there is a more immediate and personal response we each can make - or begin to make.

John the Gospel writer speaks of what people experienced in Jesus - most especially that combination of compassion, love, truth and integrity. These are surely all qualities we admire and, hopefully, wish we had. But when you think about it, if each of us could make some - even small - commitment to more deeply embrace compassion, embrace trying to love, embrace truth and integrity (which may be the sum of the other three) then surely things would start to turn around for the better in our world.

We so often say we can't trust our politicians, we can't believe them; in fact we are less and less sure who we can trust. Maybe if we start with ourselves in our own small piece of our world, the whole spirit of our world would be a better place for the generations to come. I by my actions am not going to reform the world but by trying, however feebly, to reform myself surely that will be like the ripple of the water which gradually moves outward. I hope so.

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Living our vulnerability

I saw a sign on a bus this morning that said 'Knowledge defeats fear'. My immediate thought was 'yes okay, that makes some sense because if I know about something, if that knowledge helps me to understand better then I am less likely to be afraid of that thing or person or country or whatever'. 

It is certainly true I think, that the more I am aware of why other people think the way they do or know something about the experiences that have formed them, the more I may be able to see them as unique and interesting human beings. If I see shadows in a dark room, I am much less afraid when I turn on the lights.

But I also know that the older I get the more aware I am that there are some things I cannot know or understand. Like death.  Like evil. I experience these things but I do not have any kind of knowledge of them that makes it possible to control or escape them or not fear them . I imagine that you could think of other things like that.

It seems to me that there are also things that we may have knowledge about but still are afraid of. Like violence. Like injustice. Like why I get angry. Like why there is pain. 

In all these things we surely face our vulnerability and that can be very, very  hard. We can try so hard to control our lives so that we don't feel so vulnerable: so we won't get sick and die, so the people we love won't get sick or hurt or die, so we can keep our job, so our children will be okay and so on. And then we experience something like a gunman who shoots to death 12 innocent people and we learn something about the limits of our control.

Learning to live with vulnerability is a lifetime's task and possibly never entirely successful. But I think peace only comes when we do so. Living fully the present moment , because that is all there is, is maybe a good place to start.

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Easter

I think there is a very real way in which these people are images of Christ crucified. And if that is true then there is hope for them for they will , as Jesus  said to the man on the cross next to him, ' be with him in paradise'. 
                                                           
Maybe that seems facile. Because we know that sometimes life does not get better and then we wonder if there could be a paradise? 

There are two things I think are worth thinking about here:
                                                         First of all, experience does teach us that paradise exists where love  exists. We know also by experience, that we are given the power to love. So... by loving those who are suffering we can make paradise present for them and for us. When we can feed the hungry, visit the sick, free those imprisoned by fear, clothe the poor, educate children and nurse the sick then, I think, paradise is present. Then these people we see here would no longer exist like this.             

Secondly, by using this power of love starting with those right next to us and spreading out to neighbors and nations so that justice prevails, we won't ask whether paradise exists for we will be 
part of it.

HAPPY 
     EASTER!

Good Friday

Now we are getting close to Good Friday, the day that began a journey that goes on even today. It is a journey about love and its response to unjust suffering; it is about the ways in which we lash out at those we don't agree with or who in some way threaten us. But it is also about the possibility of healing and existence of life-giving hope. 

One of the apparent scandals of Christianity is the existence of unjust suffering. If there is this loving God, why does not 'he' save us from that? I don't know that any of us has a very clear answer to that and I suspect, in the end we do our best to ponder and to understand but finally, must trust in the message of love that we see in our tradition.

I marvel in the example of the Nelson Mandela's of our world who, in spite of all the evil actions that have been inflicted upon them, manage somehow, through faith and courage to rise not unscathed but yet stronger, more loving, more compassionate. There are too, the unending stream of women in our world who are brutalized, raped , denied humanity and yet rise above all that to be people of life, people who will not be crushed by all that we at our worst can do to one another. I know too, many men and women who born with scars of handicap, written off as not being worthy and full human beings, are yet in spite of ridicule, deprivation of rights, or persecution , people alive with dignity and joy.

We do not ever, ever, ever wish suffering. We do not ever, I hope, think it right to inflict suffering. But the sadness is, it exists and I think we can, like Jesus, like the Mandela's of our world, like the brutalized and disenfranchised women of our world, like the mentally and physically disabled of our world, take what is bad and with God's Spirit in our hearts, make it something new, something compassionate, something whole. And then, our world is a better place in which to live.


I think that is what Jesus' crucifixion led to. If God is like Jesus, then we found out that God is not distant and uninvolved. God is  here with us hanging on that cross of terror, giving us the wherewith, not just to endure, but in the end,  to overcome all that is hurtful and dark in a world meant to be loving and care-full and joyful.

 

The gift of Holy Week

I believe this is a very special week. I understand that what many Christians call Holy Week is the remembering and the re-telling, of a story of great power. It is essentially, a story of immense love but sadly, I think many of us don't know that. 

The preparation for it is Lent and for most Christians I think Lent is seen as a rather bleak time. But in reality it is a time when we hear how much we are loved and held by God whom we meet in Jesus of Nazareth. W.H. Vanstone, a British writer of the 20th century, has some beautiful and startling things to say about this time in Jesus' life. I would like to share a small bit from his book: Fare Well in Christ which may give food for thought because he is not saying what we have perhaps, been taught. 


1) He says: I have argued (in his book The Stature of Waiting) that Jesus did not make his final journey to Jerusalem in order that he might fulfill the purpose of God by being put to death there. I believe he neither knew nor wished nor intended that he should be put death. His intention was to address the nation through those who had authority and power in the nation - to convey the good news of God to the nation through the leaders of the nation. He knew that his endeavor would be dangerous to himself: political and religious leaders rarely welcome new truth or new ideas and often respond angrily and brutally to what seems to them a challenge to their authority.

What I especially appreciate in what Vanstone says is that it does away with that old image of a God who demands the sacrifice of his son in order to atone for what everyone else has done. Such an angry, vengeful god is no better than those leaders he refers to above. It is rather, that Jesus was doing what he believed was his mission and that among its risks was the possibility of death. Jesus reflected at every moment the love and 'courage' of the God who dwelt within.

2) Once again Vanstone writes: As the story of the passion unfolds , we see at the center of it a very calm figure, one who neither resists nor protests what is being done to him nor appeals for justice nor begs for mercy. He accepts without anger - one might even say he absorbs - the injustice of his judges, the mocking of soldiers, the taunts of his opponents, and the extremities of physical pain. He retains his dignity.

I think the intention here is not to say that injustice should not be fought but that in this instance when there was no way forward but an ignominious and horrible death Jesus heart leaned out towards those who will destroy him even to he point of saying to our God 'Forgive them for they do not know what they are doing'. That is, I believe, love and its power remains to this day.

3) Finally Canon Vanstone says a startling thing. He says that The resurrection of Jesus disclosed to the world that God, the eternal God, is 'like Jesus'...Since the first Easter day Christians have believed this to be true but sometimes we are inclined to assert the converse of this belief in the words 'Jesus is like God'...The resurrection of Jesus disclosed a new image of God which modified or corrected what was previously believed about God.

Our picture of God is of One who is all-powerful, just and righteous, merciful to those who seek his mercy, wrathful to those who do not, possessive and demanding of those who are his chosen people... If we say 'Jesus is like God' we tend to associate him with these attributes in his dealings with us. We tend as Christians to see ourselves as his chosen people, his elect in an otherwise lost world; as open to his wrath when we fail to plead for his mercy... or meet his demands upon us...

The eternal God, the one in whom we live and move and have our being, the one before whom we stand in life and in death, in time and in eternity, is like Jesus; God is on our side; God guides us through the exercise of our freedom but does not restrict or threaten our freedom; God is considerate of us; does not burden us with guilt or lay down conditions on which alone we will be accepted; does not hold our trespasses against us; reconciles us to 'himself' without humiliating us; does not obtrude upon us 'his' mighty and potentially terrifying powers but deals with us gently, tactfully as friend deals with friend.

Such was the new 'image' of God which dawned upon the world in the grace of Jesus Christ... 

I hope these quotes give hope - that our God whom we meet in Jesus, is one whom we can meet and trust and cling to - even in our betrayals and despair.

The cross of Christ is the tree of life.