It occurs to me…

Today from Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest:

“Never look for right in the other man, but never cease to be right yourself.  We are always looking for justice; the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is – Never look for justice, but never cease to give it.”

It occurs to me that this addresses much of the angst and enmity swirling around us today.  I certainly know I am guilty – expecting justice from others without spending at least as much time contemplating whether I am dispensing it myself.  Of course dispensing justice, not expecting it, rips away from me my coveted entitlement to whine and complain when I don’t receive what I defined as justice and came to expect.  (There is a smirk there I don’t want to get lost in the text.)

Reading today from Krysta Tippett’s Becoming Wise I was once again reminded of the power of presence and dialogue.  Writing on an initiative by the mayor in Louisville to make the city a city of compassion, she describes a dinner where a cross section of the community was present at a dinner:

“Most stunning of all was the hard-won sense of trust in that room: of fears calmed, and vulnerabilities laid bare and safe to be so.  An African American pastor tells me that the greatest breakthrough was having a politician who was willing to sit down with the people’s pain – just that.  Not, in the first instance, to present a policy or a fix – but to acknowledge that damage has been done and dwell with it, let it be in the room, accompanied, grieved – lamented, in the ancient language of the prophets.  We know in life that taking in our losses and grieving them is a step that is not in itself productive or effective – all those ways we measure what matters.  But it’s an opening without which only limited growth, movement out and forward, is possible.”

Shortly thereafter she writes:

“After 9/11 in America, we had a robust vocabulary of revenge and enemies, and we acted on it.  We didn’t summon words to help us dwell with the shattering experience of vulnerability in our strongest fortresses.  That vulnerability brought Americans into a new point of kinship with far-flung strangers around the world, who live this way much of the time.  But our response drew us apart again.”

It occurs to me that we are again at such a moment in history in our country, a James 1:19 moment where everyone (politicians, protesters, everyone) should be “quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.”  Yet here we are again, watching the yelling and screaming and finger-pointing from people who should know that there is nothing good that comes from spewing the recycled seeds of hatred that brought us here to start with.  Progress in this world does not and cannot come from hatred and blame.  It is difficult to see meaningful discussion arising from pointed fingers or the atomic bomb of dialogue – “shut the f_ _ _ up.”  No, progress requires that we first “acknowledge that damage has been done and dwell with it, let it be in the room, accompanied, grieved – lamented.”  Sadly, we seem to have skipped over that part and jumped right into the finger pointing and name calling.

“If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?  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 4:46-48

I ran across this today and it seemed like a perfect complement to yesterday’s “who is my neighbor” passage.  I guess this is the “who do you love” passage.  (Is it possible to read that without George Thorgood’s “Who Do You Love” rolling through my mind?)  I think C. S. Lewis’ commentary on this (not on Thorgood’s song, on the Matthew passage) in Mere Christianity is instructive:

“On the one hand, God’s demand for perfection need not discourage you in the least in your present attempts to be good, or even in your present failures.  Each time you fall He will pick you up again.  And He knows perfectly well that your own efforts are never going to bring you anywhere near perfection.  On the other hand, you must realize from the outset that the goal towards which He is beginning to guide you is absolute perfection; an no power in the whole universe, except you yourself, can prevent Him from taking you to that goal.  That is what you are in for.  And it is very important to realize that.  If we do not we are very likely to start pulling back and resisting Him after a certain point.”

Perfection sought.  Effort accepted.  Forgiveness.  Grace.  Repeat as needed.

In the midst of current turmoil, today’s reading at church, the Parable of the Good Samaritan, was timely.  The Priest and the Levite pass by the injured man on the side of the road, the Samaritan stops to help him.  After telling the parable there is that exchange between the lawyer and Jesus in Luke 10:36-37:

 “’Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?  ’”The lawyer replied, ‘The one who had mercy on him.’  Jesus told him, ‘Go and do likewise.’”

What does it take to inherit eternal life, to be a good neighbor?  Pretty simple directions from Jesus – have “mercy.”  I looked it up in the dictionary: mercy: “compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm.”

 

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”  2 Corinthians 4:16-18

We read this yesterday in my Bible study, on the aftermath of the previous day’s police shootings in Dallas.  It is an odd juxtaposition, but on reading it I immediately thought of a recent experience where, playing golf on a hot day, the clubhouse had an Igloo cooler full of ice and wet towels.  The towel was just the right thing on a hot summer day — refreshing, needed, appreciated.  Likewise, this passage hit the spot.  It helps me remember that I can’t and don’t necessarily need to immediately make sense out of every event that occurs (unless I am in trial, in which case I need to object immediately).  It reminds me that sometimes, often, when I jump to conclusions I come to the wrong one.

Reading today from Tippett’s Becoming Wise , she notes the subtlety of change in society.  Yes, we see the mountain tops, the icons, the symbols, but we can easily miss/forget the groundwork that makes the change possible.  We don’t really see the folks on the ground with shovels, maybe even just spoons, that are laboring to bring about a change they might not ever fully realize.

Tippett writes: “As the Great Benedictine nun Joan Chittister reminds me, the New York Times equivalent of the sixth-century Rome never carried the headline BENEDICT WRITES RULE!”  Still, Benedicts work, his influence, and that of the small bands who joined him, remains with us thousands of years later.  In this I am reminded of the line from the Sam Cooke song – “It’s been a long time comin’, but a change is gonna come.”

We of course need not go back to sixth-century Rome for examples of those who bring about change.  Martin Luther King, Jr. comes to mind as one whose work influenced a change that lived well beyond him, a change greater than any headline would have given him in his lifetime.  Jackie Robinson falls into that category also.  But to Tippett’s point, they are the focal points, the “shiny objects” that grab the headlines.  For every King, Jr. or Robinson there are thousands working under the radar, taking the steps that facilitate change at ground level.  There were those who held signs, marched, or sat at lunch counters to support integration.  There were those who actively supported integration in baseball, even if only through buying tickets and cheering a black man playing on a baseball field.

The reality is that, consciously or not, each of us is involved in change at least at a basic level.  What change am I part of?  What change am I helping bring about?

I missed the boat on yesterday’s post.

I quoted Elie Wiesel:

“No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. ”

As I have pondered it more, here’s what I was trying to say, but failed to do so clearly.  Collective judgments are wrong.  They are wrong literally because they are not true.  No matter what _____ is, all African-Americans are not _____.  All Muslims are not _____.  All Caucasians are not _____.  Many may be _____, perhaps even most, but not all.  That would be like saying no one ever wins the lottery.  Granted, the odds may be 1:26,458,224, but someone wins.

Collective judgments are also morally wrong because they shortchange/ underestimate/ discriminate against the entire group based on a perception which is (see above) simply not true.

That said, prejudice and collective judgments are real time-savers – just not factually or morally correct ones.  It becomes easy to default to collective judgment; it seems to require less of me than actually assessing each person for who or what they are.

There, that’s more to my point.

More from Elie Wiesel:

“No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. ”

“All collective judgments are wrong.”  As I dwell on that it rings true.  There’s always someone in the group to prove the collective judgment wrong.  All African-Americans are not _____.  All Muslims are not _____.  All Caucasians are not _____.

That was Wiesel’s point in the quote, which in its complete form reads:

“No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.”

Ouch!