My Long Wade with Roe

I was born in 1974.  

One year after the 7-2 Supreme Court decision siding with Roe that the State of Texas’ abortion ban was unconstitutional. 

I grew up in the cultural phenomenon known as the Christian Right, a.k.a. the Moral Majority.  This movement started before me and Roe.  It began out of resentment and fear over racial integration during the civil rights movement.  This is where the right’s contempt for “Activist Judges” originated.  These judges were messing with the proper order and ranking of human bodies and it felt ungodly.  The massive uptick in private Christian schools was motivated by fear of our country’s meddling with the god of white-Cristo-supremacist-patriarchy.  But the crusade to maintain the God ordained society under the standardizing white protestant male needed a better banner than racism. 

 

Perhaps even more scary than society’s imminent collapse from race-mixing was the terrifying prospect of women having agency and authority without male oversight.  “Women making decisions all by themselves!?"  An ominous musical score plays.  Foreboding Blood Moons appear. The Sun goes dark. The Earth melts.  Enter now to the stage a redirected concern for the unborn.  It came at just the right time and was a highly successful mobilizing foil for galvanizing political and cultural power.  The pro-life movement was born. 

Over the past fifty years, this network of various denominations of Christians was bolstered and held together by this unifying fight for life. Overturning Roe was a mission symbolizing all moral well-being.  I mean, how could anyone possibly have anything valuable or true to say if they supported the killing of babies?  Abortion rights and their providers exemplified the epitome of moral self-deception, decadence, and the hatred of all that is holy.

I grew up learning that society’s evils were caused by activist judges, femi-nazi’s, free-love hippies, and God-hating liberals inside the US, and of course, the Communists everywhere encroaching from the outside.  My foreign policy imagination was formed by the movie “Red Dawn” (1984, starring Patrick Swayze).  My domestic policy was informed by Rush Limbaugh, every evening during his 30 minute fireside chat television show.  My theological imagination was captured by the rapturing 1970s “Thief in the Night” movies — a precursor to Tim LaHaye's “Left Behind” empire of Christian vengeance porn.

This very scary world was held in stark contrast to an ever-growing and popular evangelical expansion.  It was an alternative cultural society complete with its own publishing companies, colleges, camps, conferences, schools, media, music, and art?.  To be a member in this world gave you meaning, purpose, belonging, and a passport to move freely and excel within its own self-contained sub-culture.  It felt right and good so long as you remained within its heavily policed boundaries. Boundaries for our own protection of course, but also obscured from view. The high walls were painted like the sky across a vast illusion of a sea, like in the movie “The Truman Show”.  It was a totalizing frame of reality which I was taught was The Biblical World View.  A view that can and should be imposed on others as an act of love.  It was love because everyone else didn’t know any better.  They were the Lost.  Those who had a veil of lies covering their eyes. 

In this world, the pro-life movement undergirded an evangelical’s self-understanding as America’s righteous remnant.  A small group enduring persecution for righteousness' sake, but who would ultimately inherit the kingdom of God.  Even as the evangelical movement has fractured, frayed, and been exposed in endless scandals, one of its few surviving identity markers is being pro-life.  It is a critical Jenga piece holding up what remains of its meaning and belonging system.  To touch it is existentially jeopardizing and terrifying.  Waffling on abortion will get you immediately canceled, shunned, and shamed. 

Growing up pro-life was the only political organizing that was known to me.  Marches for life meant picketing Planned Parenthood and supporting Crisis Pregnancy Centers.  Being pro-life did not mean marching for sensible gun laws, the abolition of the death penalty, universal health care, livable wages, humane immigration, banning torture, ending nuclear proliferation, or stopping police brutality against black and brown bodies.  Rather, organizing the march for life happened once a year around the anniversary of Roe as our public prayer to overturn America’s sin.  It was also accompanied by the Pastor’s annual sermon on how life began at conception and the self-evident corruption of this society’s love affair with abortions.  I remember every election season people in our church parking lot would hand out colorful voting guides to help us vote for pro-life candidates. It was the only issue that mattered. And it was and continues to be a single issue exceedingly easy to exploit for voter turnout. 

This political mobilization strategy expanded in the past several decades to a larger umbrella called family values.  Included with the sanctity of life, is the fight for the sanctity of marriage, the criminalization of parents raising Trans kids, not saying Gay, and the fight against teaching American history that includes the perspective of its First Nations and African Slaves.  The larger umbrella reveals the original motivation of the movement as inherently racist, supremacist, and patriarchal.  This however is completely obscured by those feeling the urgency to mobilize for these values. The refrain goes like this…“I am not racist, supremacist, or patriarchal. I am being faithful, biblical, and obedient to God!”

I don’t hear evangelicals talk as much about moral relativity as we did when I was growing up.  “The ends never justify the means”. This was a proverb that pretty much held the weight of scripture.  We believed in moral absolutes and that is what set us apart.  We were not like those Hollywood elites constantly shoving all kinds of relative propaganda and debauchery in our faces.  Our heroes are the football coaches praying on the high school field with the guys.  Godly mentors who instill traditional values of honor, loyalty, sanctity, and respect for authority. The Clintons were the face of everything wrong with America in the 90s.  And Bill’s sexual escapades and abuses of power exposed a corrupt leader morally unfit for office.

It is difficult to be an evangelical in America.  Constantly feeling shamed and blamed by “the Media”.  The punch line of late-night comedians. Scorned by liberal mainline churches in decline, who are probably just jealous of our multi-site ever-expanding ministries.  It is hard to endlessly have your faithfulness misunderstood as bigotry, anti-science, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, and hate.  White evangelicals consistently poll as believing that they face more discrimination than other groups in America.  To be an evangelical is to assume that you will be misunderstood, targeted, and discriminated against.  The experience of persecution is believed to be the necessary burden and cross that this version of Christianity requires.  The good and faithful servant awards may never be received in this life, but they will for sure come in the next.  This often makes the evangelical’s experience of persecution a self-reinforcing form of validation.

It has been an especially challenging six years for evangelicals.  They have had to shoulder the responsibility for electing Donald Trump into office.  They have had to rationalize to themselves and everyone else the glaring hypocrisy of backing and electing a morally corrupt and greedy sexual assaulting narcissistic dictatorial charlatan into the highest office.  They have experienced some of their closest friends and relatives interrogate them and even leave their churches over their political stand.  81% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 75% did it again in 2020.   

It is true that many evangelicals worship Donald Trump as a kind of messianic figure, but many more held their noses as they voted.  They were voting for new Supreme Court justices.  That’s at least what they told themselves. This was the moment to finally correct the court of its activist judges.  It was a “God works in mysterious ways” moment.  An answer to five decades of prayers moment.  A moment when we could say to the towering mountainous precedent of Roe, “be cast into the sea!”  Could the mustard seed faith of evangelicals finally come to fruition?  Could it be “for such a time as this?”

The leaked Supreme Court draft overturning Roe is an identity boost that evangelicals critically need right now.  More than if it actually gets overturned, the draft alone provides the necessary justification for evangelical moral relativity.  The harsh internal disequilibrium that they have had to endure the past several years can find a measure of revisionist resolve.  “God’s ways are higher than my ways.” Is what an evangelical can say, when they cannot say, “maybe the ends do justify the means?”  

The overturning of Roe helps a battered evangelical say, “I did not need to second guess myself.”  And “Our cause really is righteous and just.” And “I am playing for the right team.” And most importantly, “I am a baby saver.”

“I am a Baby Saver.“ 

This is a noble legacy. 

“I Saved Babies” is something you can put on your tombstone.  

Whereas, “I saved White-Supremacist-Patriarchy”…???

A faithful evangelical tried to explain it to me this way:  

“We may not like the pilot, but we like where the plane is going.” 

Where is that plane going exactly that feels so right that you would vote for someone so wrong?  

It was the same kind of rationalization in Alabama.  Disgraced Judge Roy Moore thought he could win the senate seat, even after being exposed for sexual misconduct with at least 9 teenage girls.  Moore was running as the family values candidate.  It is absolutely absurd.  And the absurdity provides a kind of apocalypse if you allow it.  An unveiling of the truth for those with eyes to see and ears to hear.  People like Roy Moore and Donald Trump can win the support of “family value voters” because although they are not moral exemplars, they simply do not threaten the Moral Order of the Universe.  

Those holding to a belief that there is a Divine Moral Order reflexively see that as being Patriarchal. Evangelicals will refer to it as God’s Creational Design. And this designed patriarchal ordering gets conflated into a concept called Family Values.  In patriarchy, you must maintain a strict gender binary.  There cannot be any queering of any kind because all bodies must be categorized, ordered, and ranked under a man. To be a man is not to be a woman, or Gay, Trans, Non-Binary, or Intersex. In America, we have a very entrenched kind of patriarchal ranking system.  It is white. It is Christian. It is heteronormative. It is cis-gendered, colonizing, capitalistic, and supremacist.  Donald Trump and Roy Moore simply do not threaten the American Patriarchy.  Threaten the patriarchy and the unilateral power dynamics of the entire universe will unravel.  Is there a climate crisis?  Well, it cannot be as threatening as offending the god of Patriarchy who could rain down judgment like Sodom at any moment. The supposed God that blesses America is Patriarchal. And HE demands the maintanence of that Patriachy in order for His beneficence to trickle down to the likes of you and me.

Roy Moore sexually assaulted girls.  Girls however are lower in the design order below men, so his sin does not immediately disqualify him.  And in the face of candidates who are challenging the white-Cristo-supremacist-cis-heteropatriarchy, Roy and Donald are men who will uphold it.  This is why Donald Trump can repeatedly say of himself “That no one has done more for Christianity than me.”  Donald or Roy may not be someone’s favorite moral pilot, but they will surely keep the Moral Order plane in the air for a little while longer.  This is why I believe evangelicals could stomach voting as they did.  It was not because they are pro-life above all else.  It is because their true image of God, the one standing behind the Jesus curtain that they worship, is a white god, a supremacist god, a patriarchal god, and a violent god. Their god is a Moral-Order-Warrior demanding the violent defense of the golden idol of family values.  And they bowed down.

I lost my good evangelical credentials almost as soon as I started as a pastor.  I remember my first year in 2005.  Christmas Day was going to fall on a Sunday.  I polled the congregation to see if we would prefer celebrating Christmas Day with our friends and families, rather than in the church building?  Would we be satisfied with the Christmas Eve service the night before?  Most affirmed and our church had its first Sunday off in 107 years.  

I did receive one dismayed letter from a Dear Saint announcing that they would be leaving the church over this.  The letter read… “No church on Christmas? What’s next ABORTIONS!?”

I did prove to be a slippery slope out of evangelicalism.  We ordain women.  We ordain queer folk.  We marry gay couples and even will perform straight weddings.  We march for black lives and support spouses needing a divorce.  And yes, I believe that access to abortion is ethical and just.  I believe that sometimes an abortion is the most loving option available and that those laboring with these decisions are in the best position to make them and should be granted the full agency and ability to do so.  

The WWJD bracelet came after my adolescents.  But What-Would-Jesus-Do became the moral rubric for evangelicals for a good while.  Probably until Lance Armstrong’s “Live Strong” bracelets were no longer in vogue because of his doping scandals.  I do not think ethical wisdom can be reduced to contextless right and wrong choices, but I will try to bring the ending of Roe into a WWJD frame of reference. I apologize upfront if this causes you to earnestly pray for my soul’s salvation.

Q: Do I believe Jesus would drive someone across state lines in order to get a safe and legal abortion? 

A: I believe Jesus would do more than drive.  I believe Jesus would cover all the expenses.  Well, I believe that Jesus would at the very least make the rich dude cover all the expenses.  It would be far better though if Jesus wasn’t needed to drive or pay in this scenario at all. That driving across state lines is back on the table is an absolutely ridiculous breach of justice. It’s wrong. 

We need to update our love thy neighbor and love is the fulfillment of the law parables for today. I believe the Good Samaritan might look like someone walking in solidarity with all pregnant humans.  I want all those the priests have disdained, the politicians scapegoated, and the judges ruled against, to have a good friend accompany them to the Planned Parenthood appointment.  And hear that friend reassure them with these words, “I am with you. I will support you. This is your decision, and no one else’s. God has given you the authority to decide when and if your body brings another human into this world. So, remember that I love you, God loves you, and She honors you and your decisions, and so do I.”

Maybe you need to throw dust in the air or rip your clothes over the scandal.  But I learned early on from Michael Card’s 1986 album “Scandalon”.  Michael Card, the one who would submit all of his lyrics to his church Elder Team for prior approval.  Michael Card, and apparently his Elders agreed, that Jesus “will be the Truth that will offend them one and all. A stone that makes men stumble and a rock that makes them fall.”  But beyond songs that quote Bible verses, I can hear Jesus saying frankly that “those who have and will need abortions, are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.”  

Jesus did not offend many Lost people.  He did offend religious people.  And to the tribe that raised me…who reflexively quotes Paul in saying that we are the worst of all sinners, but continue to live Lording it over others with the blindness of our own self-righteousness: We need Jesus to offend us out of worshiping the god of the American patriarchy.

I have a great deal of compassion for how my transgressing of evangelical boundaries feels betraying, threatening, and scandalizing.  These boundaries provide an entire life, a sense of security, and a group in which to belong. This kind of tampering can feel absolutely unmooring.  For which, I can only be a witness to my own story and testify that there is an entire life outside of that small construction of reality.  There are new communities of people that provide generative, wise, and enduring friendships, as well as, a flourishing relationship with the Creator of Love waiting for you.  But yes, there is often a long and lonely space between.  It is not easy being an evangelical and it can often feel harder to have been one.

I do believe Jesus is really there in the Truman Show which is evangelicalism.  We tend to be so focused on winning people into it, however, that we miss Jesus inviting us out. 

This is not to say that if you follow Jesus, then you will come to the same convictions as me.  But I do believe that as a movement, evangelicals have been convinced that they are enlisted in a righteous mission to save babies and I think that is a foil. It is an unmarked grave. I have found it to be a movement co-opted into upholding some of the world’s most devastating and unjust systems of power while calling it faithfulness to God and the Bible.  But I also believe in the good news.  I believe in repenting and turning for the kingdom of God is already among us. I believe that Jesus is right here with you and me, ready to lead us out of this death-yard into new flourishing life.

"Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." (Ephesians 5:14)

Do Justice, Love Mercy, and Walk Humbly... (Micah 6:8)

~David

Hennepin County Forum on Affordable Housing, Immigrant Rights, and Restorative Justice

Here is the text from my opening remarks at the Hennepin County forum for Affordable Housing, Immigrant rights, and Restorative Justice:

"Thank you so much for coming out this evening and for your participation. Again thank you to Commissioner Callison for your service in our county. We are grateful and honored by your presence here tonight.

I want to welcome you here and welcome you to this place. I was asked to spiritually ground our evening together and so to do that I will start with the important work of first pointing out the bathrooms. There is an accessible and all gender restroom in the corner of this room. There are additional restrooms downstairs to your left. If you need a ramped exit, it is in the back of this room, then turn right and there is a ramp taking you out to the south side of our parking lot.

The Mills Church is in district 6 of Hennepin County. This church began 121 years ago and rented the original Minnetonka Town Hall for $1 a Sunday. Village Hall is the building on the west side of this parking and hosts our youth ministries.

It is pretty normal to begin a story of where here is with the particular dates and boundaries of our group. However, most stories have a beginning before you or I entered the narrative. This church, this city, this district, this county, this state exists on Dakota land. Lake Minnetonka and Minnehaha creek are and will always be sacred sites. What we call Baker road has long before been a migratory trail that went from Shakopee up to lake Mille lacs for both the Dakato and the Ojibwe nations.

Behind my own history is a very old mythic story that primed me to believe that my prosperity depended on, accepts, and tolerates the dispossession of someone else. Whether conscious or unconscious my gain comes at someone else’s loss. For me this myth also came with a kind of religious justification. Our god wanted us to have, therefore it is understandable that they do not. Maybe because we are chosen, or exceptional, superior or better than in some way: This is often the hidden and explicit Why behind a reality where I have and some do not. And though painful to confront, avoidance does not promise a better future for anyone.

2700 years ago one in a very great history of Hebrew Prophets challenged this story…the myth that prosperity must tolerate dispossession. Instead this poet declared that prosperity depended on seeing and bringing justice for the dispossessed. In this story, to be chosen or exceptional means to be a people that treat the foreigner as native born, and provides shelter and protection to single mothers, to the orphan, refugee, and to fatherless children. This prophet named Micah expands our imagination by exhorting us to work toward a world where nation no longer fights against nation. We no longer expend energy training for war, rather our resources are directed toward peace with God, others, and creation. Make justice, love mercy, walk humbly. Beat swords and weapons into shovels. And then this other famous line…Then, “Everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them afraid.” Micah 4:4

Everyone, not some at the expense of others, but everyone has meaningful work tending their own grape vines and is able to provide a safe haven for their family flourishing and at peace under their own fig tree.

Now just one more date in history...

It was August 1790…Jewish congregations in NewPort Rhode Island wrote a letter to the newly elected first president of the United States, George Washington.

In their congratulations was a profound question. Will we as Jews be welcome? Will we have a home and a place in this new nation?

Washington gave a 340 word response that included these words…

“For happily the Government of the United States gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance…The children from the stock of Abraham” are welcome and then he quotes Micah 4:4

“Everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them afraid.“

This wonderful history would have remained unknown to me if it wasn’t for our good neighbors and friends at Bet Shalom congregation around the corner on Orchard Road. I am indebted to them and grateful for our kinship.

And these beautiful words and history would have remained without a tune for me if it wasn’t for a talented young man from Puerto Rico name Lin-Manuel Miranda

In writing the award winning musical about Alexander Hamilton.

He had the vision to have these words sung by an African American George Washington. Building on the vision that Washington saw and now including those for whom most of this nations founding Fathers did not see.

[sing]

“Everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them afraid. They’ll be safe in the nation we’ve made / I want to sit under my own vine and fig tree a moment alone in the shade, at home in this nation we’ve made.”

These lyrics capture the spiritual foundation of all of our major religions. The ability to identify my own desires and be able to extend them to the other. To love the other as you love yourself.

"I want to sit under my own vine" is simply extended to Everyone. Everyone will sit. It is a story and a vision that dispossesses no one.

My hope tonight is that our time this evening be guided and blessed by the same prayer that George Washington extended to the New Port Jewish community…

"May the God of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in God’s own due time and way, everlastingly happy."

Amen"

Onto a Vast Plain

This poem by Rilke was one that spoke to me while on sabbatical this summer.

I'll highlight the lines in particular that struck me:

"You are not surprised at the force of the storm--
you have seen it growing."

"it becomes a riddle again and you again a stranger"

"Now you must go out into your heart as unto a vast plain.
Now the immense loneliness begins."

"Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have."

"Be earth now...
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing ripened until it is real."

Onto a Vast Plain

Rainer Maria Rilke           
(Hear it read aloud by Joanna Mercy)

You are not surprised at the force of the storm—
you have seen it growing.
The trees flee. Their flight
sets the boulevards streaming. And you know:
he whom they flee is the one
you move toward. All your senses
sing him, as you stand at the window.

The weeks stood still in summer.
The trees’ blood rose. Now you feel
it wants to sink back
into the source of everything. You thought
you could trust that power
when you plucked the fruit:
now it becomes a riddle again
and you again a stranger.

Summer was like your house: you know
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.

The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.

Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.

Repenting of Contempt: Great Reformation 5.0

6) Repenting of Contempt: 

Post 6 of 6 on my list of reforms in honor of the 500th anniversary of the protestant reformation. The first word is repenting of Christendom, which is a reformation of power. The second word is repenting of Capitalism, which is a reformation of trust. The third word is repenting of Consumerism, which is a reformation of identity. The fourth word is repenting of Certainty, which is a reformation of authority. The fifth word is repenting of Clannish Self-Protection, which is a reformation of tribe. Today’s last and final word is repenting of Contempt, which is a reformation of the heart.

The number one predictor of a marriage that will end in divorce is contempt. This is the finding of preeminent marriage researcher, Dr. John Gottman, and author of “The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work”.

“You make me so angry” is a normal ingredient in healthy relationships. Whereas, “You disgust me,” is a game changer and more often than not, the game ender.

A few years ago there was this show called “Lie to Me”. The lead actor, Tim Roth, played this investigator who could solve cases based on people’s facial expressions. If he saw someone display the face of contempt, a disgusted face. He would say in an endearing British accent, “Now that is the face of a killer.”

Contempt is a hierarchical emotion. It corresponds to a belief that I am superior to you. I am better than you. You are beneath me. When you feel contempt you want to spit. You roll your eyes. You mutter sounds of disgust under your breath and dismissively shake your head. Contempt is a dehumanizing emotion that takes root in the heart and begins to find expression in dehumanizing actions.

In a 1992 speech, Leon Mugesera, a senior politician in Rwanda’s Hutu ruling party, called the Tutsi minority “cockroaches”. This language of contempt became actualized in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Nazi propaganda regularly associated the Jews with disease-spreading rats. Cockroaches and rats are disgusting pests, just like these out-group members. Call the exterminator.

“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.” Jesus, Matthew 5:21-22

Jesus is diagnosing what lies underneath murder. 

There is a progression. 

1) “You make me angry,” becomes…

2) “You disgust me.” (“Raca” is the sound of clearing your throat to spit.) Becomes…

3) You’re dead to me. “You fool” is a dismissal of a person’s standing as a human being. You aren’t even worth interacting with as a person. You have become an object of disdain. It is giving the finger to “the idiot” who just cut you off in traffic. They cease to be a human being in that moment. You are superior to them. They are objectified and disposable.

Jesus is giving this warning: If you allow anger to foster into contempt...you are on the road to hell. You have already murdered someone in your heart and this inner violence will get worked out into actual violence.

In my heart, “you are a cockroach”, 

becomes “you are a cockroach” in my speech, 

becomes “you are a cockroach” at the end of my machete. 

Hell that festers in your heart produces a living hell on earth. It is how genocides happen and continue to happen.

Contempt will only produce hell. 

Contempt cannot bring heaven.

Our culture is a caldron of contempt. We have contempt for politicians, we get contempt from our politicians, we have contempt for the right, we have contempt for the left. Here contempt, there contempt, everywhere contempt, contempt.

Yes, there is so much wrong with the world…but the wrongs will not be made right with our contempt. We, even with the best of motives, will only further the hell with our contempt. It is fighting hellfire with fire.

There is one time. One time, that the gospels say Jesus was angry. The religious leaders try to trap Jesus into breaking the Sabbath laws by planting a disabled man in the audience. This is the story recorded in Mark 3:4-6

“Then Jesus asked them, ‘Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent.

He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, 'Stretch out your hand.' He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.”

“He looked around at them in anger.” I can relate to that.

“Deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts.” I can relate to that. “‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored.” Ok, it starts to break down a bit for me at this point in the story.

But here is what I am reflecting on. Just like Jesus, I am angry and deeply distressed over many of the religious and political leaders I see. But my next step, unlike Jesus, is to move into contempt. I try to resolve my anger and distress with contempt.

I think contempt emerges from a powerless belief. There is nothing I can do except kill them in my heart. My contempt will really show them something new. I will shame them into change. Let’s call each other names until things get better. Powerless.

In contrast, Jesus flips the script. He takes his anger and distress and heals a man on the margins. His anger is creative. His distress is powerful. He refuses to allow his anger to produce seeds of contempt. He refuses to be trapped in an illusion of powerlessness. He directs his anger into healing. His distress brings heaven rather than hell.

I believe all of us have this same capacity to flip the script. To take our distress and transform it with healing acts of love. We all can bring beauty where there is currently only ash. We are not powerless. You are not powerless. I am not powerless. We can flip the script.

May our very first act of resistance each day be to refuse to participate in the cycle of contempt. May our resolution be to become activists of and for healing. May our anger and distress bring heaven rather than add to the hell.

For my final call of reform, on this 500th anniversary of protest, I am repenting of contempt. I am resolved to become an activist for healing and restorative justice. 

Join me.

Grace and peace everyone,

David

Repenting of Clannish Self-Protection: Great Reformation 5.0

French graffiti artist JR paints 65ft child in Mexico

5) Repenting of Clannish Self-Protection:
Post 5 of 6 on my list of reforms in honor of the 500th anniversary of the protestant reformation. The first word is repenting of Christendom, which is a reformation of power. The second word is repenting of Capitalism, which is a reformation of trust. The third word is repenting of Consumerism, which is a reformation of identity. The fourth word is repenting of Certainty, which is a reformation of authority. Today is repenting of Clannish Self-Protection, which is a reformation of tribe.

I know, Clannish Self-Protection, is forced alliteration and it is three words not one. I am so sorry. Here is the big idea: We are a tribal species. We’ve evolved learning to unite our families into clans of families so we have a better chance of surviving. We are vulnerable on our own and therefore we are better together. Clans are an important expansion of the immediate family. But how do we manage the boundary? Where does my clan end and yours begin? Who is a threat? Who is an enemy? Who is my brother? Who gets to join my tribe? Who is my neighbor? These are ancient and perennial questions. And ancient wisdom gives this consistent warning: If you make self-protection your single moral concern, without a view to the other, it will back fire. 

Self-protection leads to self-destruction.

“Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.” Jesus, Matthew 10:39

The ancient Egypt, in the biblical narrative, plays an interesting role. It vacillates between a place of refuge and a place of enslavement. For Joseph and his family, Egypt was a national refuge. This story takes up 14 chapters in the book of Genesis. Egypt plays this role again for another Joseph millennia later. This Joseph, his wife Mary, and newborn son seek political asylum there. In the Bible, Egypt is a prosperous place of salvation for the outsider.

The book of Exodus, however, opens with a twist. “Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. ‘Look,’ he said to his people, ‘the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.’ So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh.” Exodus 1:8-11

The moral mandate for the Pharaoh to protect his people turned Egypt from a place of salvation into a place of slavery. A good impulse can turn in on itself. Self-protection left without a counter voice can be a blinding moral motive with tragic outcomes. It is true that having no boundaries can invite abuse, but over-protection of boundaries will turn you into the abuser.

“But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with harsh labor” Exodus 1:12-14

The Egyptians came to dread the very people they were oppressing. They were overtaken with a paranoid fear of the other and turned the screws on the poor even tighter. Their actions were driven by a blinding fear that their tribe would cease to exist. Their own self-protection became justification for dehumanization. The most prosperous nation in the ancient near east believed they would be over run by refugees. And so the place of salvation very quickly became a place of slavery. Clannish self-protection led to their self-destruction. This is the story of the Exodus and the warning from our wisdom traditions.

“Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.” Jesus, Matthew 10:39

The rise of nationalistic movements all across the globe is driven by this perennial fear of the other. “We will only be safe, if we are only made up of us and not them.” This is a blinding fear that leads to tyranny. If we don’t exorcise this fear, we will allow it to turn us into tyrants. And the plagues we fear will be of our own making. We won’t be destroyed by them, we will be destroyed by ourselves.

To be a follower of Jesus is to have an ever-expanding view of family. To have permeable membranes which are able to include and welcome the other, not as stranger, but as Christ himself (Matt. 25). 

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven…If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?...And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:43-48.

“Wow, you really love your own clan…big deal, even the Sons of Anarchy do that. You know what will change the world? God includes the outsider in her family, I want you to do the same. Love like that.” (My translation)

"If the world is a temple, then our enemies are sacred, too. The ability to respect the outsider is probably the litmus test of true seeing." Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs

Grace and peace everyone,

David

I highly recommend Richard Beck’s new book “Stranger God: Meeting Jesus in Disguise.” So good and honest on why the practice of radical hospitality is so challenging. And the practices necessary for expanding our affections to include the other as family.