When the late
Walter Wink wrote that religion all too often neglects the soul in its
preoccupation with institutional maintenance he echoed the cry of the
millennial—“spiritual but not religious”—generation. In response, the religious
community accuses that generation of not being faithful. Faithful to what?
Generally faithfulness is judged by conformity to a specific doctrine—ours.
Western
Christianity’s competitiveness to identify and enforce “correct” doctrine has led
to an “us vs. them” mentality. Such a dichotomy always leans toward an exclusionary
witness and doctrine that is enforced with power and often with violence.
Regarding
people with that mind-set, a recent blog stated, “To
them, the Bible is a message of selective grace… Conveniently, they always see
themselves as privy to special revelation that’s given only to them and the
select few who adhere to their strict rules, practices, and traditions. They
view God’s ‘love’ as exclusive rather than inclusive.” He continues, “The concept of ‘the mystery of God’ is a direct threat to
their ideologies. Therefore, almost every situation and question has an answer
and explanation. Everything is black and white — nothing is unknown.”[1]
In this outlook “we Christians are the good guys with the good book, and ‘they’ (feel free
to insert your own enemy here, be it Jews, Muslims, Fundamentalists, Liberals,
etc.) are the bad guys with the bad book. So rather than deflecting the blame
to some “other” we need to have a way to recognize and deal with the problem of
violence in ourselves—in our culture, nation and faith.”[2]
Wink points out the human tendency to locate evil outside ourselves. In ancient
times people did this by projecting demons and evil spirits. Flip Wilson’s alter
ego, Geraldine, put it this way: “The Devil made me do it!”
But, Wink
insists, “None of these ‘spiritual’ realities has an existence independent of
its material counterpart. None persists through time without embodiment in a
people or a culture or a regime or a corporation or a dictator.”[3]
Perhaps the
greatest barrier to human reconciliation and unity is the unwillingness of so
many to consider, even remotely, “What if I’m wrong?”
During
conflict resolution, when I confront people with the question, “But, what if
you’re wrong?” the invariable response, almost without fail, is, “But I’m not.”
There is a
world of difference between, “I believe this with all my heart, and I stake my
eternal destiny on that belief,” and “I’m right. Period;” between, “That’s
just wrong!” and “I have a problem with that.”
The insecurity-driven
obsession over control has risen to demonic levels; and yet even as we try to
convince ourselves that we are in control, we simultaneously whine and complain
about all the ills that happen to us.
Bottom line: we control nothing—except our own choices.
Derek Flood
takes up Walter Wink’s idea by suggesting that as Israel moved into a
monotheistic faith, the people still had a need to locate evil outside
themselves. But with only one deity, the only place to lay blame for evil was
God. So in the earliest phase of their monotheism, God was credited with both good
and evil.
“When disaster
comes to a city, has not the Lord caused it?” (Amos 3:6)
When David’s
infant son died, according to II Samuel, it was the Lord who had struck the
child (II Samuel 12:15), because, “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous
God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers!”
Later
counter-testimony emerges in Ezekiel: “As surely as I live, declares the
Sovereign Lord, you will no longer quote this proverb in Israel … He will not
die for his father’s sin, he will surely live … The son will not share the
guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son” (Ezekiel
18:3, 17, 19).
And by the
time of Jesus, Israel was addressing the obvious moral difficulty of
attributing acts of evil to God. They simply attributed it to the devil.
Jesus affirmed
that God is not the author of evil, and that our response should be the same as
God’s, namely, compassion and care. Suffering is never to be considered a part
of God’s will; rather, it is to be opposed in the name of love.
The process of
identifying the source of evil outside ourselves is an exercise in
self-deception. Of course some things
the ancients called evil still manifest themselves beyond our choice and
control. No one would choose cancer, or a tornado or Tsunami. But we do control
our choices and our responses to those events that transcend our control.
Since at least
the early 4th century when Constantine decreed the Roman Empire to
be “Holy” and enforced a bastard Christianity through the power of the state,
the ugly truth is that human choice more frequently has chosen to follow the way
of the Pharisees than the way of Jesus. Therefore, the history of the Christian
movement has been bloody.
The first step
in following Jesus is to cleanse our own house—to rid our lives of the myth of “redemptive
violence” so we might pursue the way of love and peace. That may require us to face
the hard question: “What if I’m wrong?” or to admit, in the immortal words of the
prophet from Okefenokee, “We have met the enemy
and he is us.”
That’s the way
I see it through the flawed glass that is my world view.
Together
in the Walk,
Jim
[2] Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking
Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives and Why We All Need to Learn to Read
the Bible Like Jesus Did (San Francisco: Metanoia Press, 2014), Kindle
edition, Location 1085.
[3] Walter Wink, The Powers that Be: Theology for a New
Millennium (New York: Doubleday Galilee, 1999), Kindle edition, Location
360.
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