ELIMINATE THESE WORDS

The late Senator Barry Goldwater, no friend of mine because of his politics, but a kindred spirit when it comes to what is really important, namely our relations with one another and with this world of ours, made a couple of astute observations. First: “Scratch the word hate from your vocabulary. If you’re going to talk about a man you don’t like, just say you don’t like him. Don’t say you hate him. ‘Hate’ is the dirtiest, ugliest word in the language – any language.”

To truly hate someone means that we wish that person were dead and not only dead but consigned to everlasting hell as well. What is worse is that when we hate another person, we are, in the process, hating God because that person is a child of God no less a way than we are and is loved by God to no less a degree than God loves us and has God living in him in no less a way that God lives in us.

We can and must always hate the sin, just as God does. But we must extrapolate the sin from the sinner if only because we desire the same from God and especially from the one we have sinned against. We all do sinful and selfish and stupid actions because we are limited human beings. We are not perfect and will never be perfect but can only strive to be better today than we were yesterday. And if we fail, as we often do, then we need to pick ourselves up, brush ourselves off and start all over again.

That is all God expects of us, all we can expect of ourselves, and all we can expect – and demand – of the other. There is no room for hate in God’s world, only confession, repentance, and forgiveness. As Goldwater said, we need to scratch the word hate from our vocabulary, admit we don’t like what the other did or perhaps even like him or her as a person. Remember, as difficult as it may be to believe, there are many people who don’t like us.

One more Goldwater observation that goes hand-in-hand with his thoughts on hate: “I’ve never been in a place on earth that I would call ugly, because when you talk to the people there it begins to be a little beautiful. I have a strong feeling that when this world eliminates the social, language, and religious barriers there will be peace. I think that’s the way the Lord wants it.”

As the song says, “everything is beautiful in its own way.” Why? For the same reason why we must not hate: everything, like every person, is a creation of God. It is good and it is beautiful, not only in its own way, but in the eyes of others. They see beauty it what is plain and bland to us just as God see good in someone who acts so badly.

We put up barriers, even walls, sometimes impenetrable walls, between ourselves and others because of cultural issues, religious beliefs, socio-economic differences (and that is only for starters). WE erect those walls, those divisions, those barriers. God does not. As the Senator opined, God’s choice would be that we not only knock them down, but keep them down and eliminate them entirely. That is not and never will be easy; but if we want peace on earth and peace of mind and heart and soul as well, that is the only way.

MISREADING THE CROSS

Sometimes whenever we look at the cross with Jesus on it, hanging in pain and suffering and death, we can easily get the wrong idea about what it means to be a Christian, to follow Jesus. Yes, there are times, probably very, very few and very far between, when we get nailed for being a Christians. But those times are the exception, thank God, and not the rule.

Being a Christian demands sacrifice, to be sure. It means putting the other person first, walking the extra mile, even turning the other cheek if necessary. All these actions can be and usually are painful. But they come up short when we compare that kind of pain to the pain Jesus endured. And, yes, we have been told that no greater love can we have than to lay down our life for another, lay it down and give it up as in actually dying. So, when was the last time anyone ever asked you to do that?

Novelist and poet Chris Abani, a Nigerian by birth, thinking about not only life in war-torn Nigeria but life in this world, said this: “What I’ve come to learn is that the world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion, everyday acts of compassion. In South Africa they have a phrase called ubuntu. Ubuntu comes out of a philosophy that says, the only way for me to be human is for you to reflect my humanity back to me.”

He is not denigrating what Jesus did on the cross; rather he is observing that such messianic gestures really don’t change the world. Jesus’ death on the cross did not. What changed the world were “the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion, everyday acts of compassion” that the followers of Jesus did day in and day out. That is what converted others, changed them, changed their lives.

Yes, we are all thankful for what Jesus did, but that is not what he has called us to do nor is that we have promised to do in and through our baptism. We are called to live each day as caring and compassionate people, no more and no less. That is not always easy and it is often a pain in the neck if not everywhere else on our body. Kindness and compassion are not always rewarded in kind but just the opposite.

Nevertheless, if we truly want to change the world from what it is to what God created it to be and what Jesus came to remind us that we could make it over as, then the only way is the ubuntu way. That means that we are fully alive, fully human, when the kindness and love we share with another is shared back. Sometimes that happens immediately. Sometimes it takes a long time, even a very long and painful time. And sometimes the other simply does not share back. It happens.

Yet, no matter how long it takes, how painful it is at times, the only way we can change another and in the process change a very, very, very small part of this world, is to hang in there even when our acts of kindness and compassion are rejected. Jesus never gave up even to the end when he kindly, lovingly and compassionately forgave those who rejected his love and nailed him to that cross. Neither can or must we.

THE DEVIL

One of the great comedic lines of all times was that from Flip Wilson who used to explain his failings and shortcomings by asserting “The devil made me do it.” It always, always got a laugh no matter how often we, the audience, had heard that line. Why? As with all humor, there is always a sense of truth. It is said that when we find something in another that makes us laugh, we are really laughing at ourselves.

Like Flip, there is not a one of us who has not done something for which we were later or even immediately chagrined. We wondered how we could have been so foolish, so stupid, so selfish. How could we have done such a thing, said such words? The pain for our foolishness could have been eliminated or at least alleviated if we could have blamed it all on the devil.

Like Flip, sometimes we did. In our imagination we pictured this evil-looking creature, fork in hand, fire blazing from his mouth, who forced us to do that which we now rue. Of course we knew better. Nevertheless, there was and is and always will be that need to try to pass the buck, or at least some part of the buck of blame onto someone else. The devil is always and easily that scapegoat.

Yet, no one and nothing, the devil included, can make us do that which we know we should not. The devil is not the cause of or reason for our sins and offenses. We are. However, the truth is that we need the devil. We need that figure in our imagination who prods and pushes us to say and do that which we know we should not. We need that reminder that sin, evil, selfishness is simply the absence of good.

And is not that what the devil is for us: a creature, however we imagine him to be, that personifies all that is bad, all that is wrong, evil incarnate? No good can possibly come from the devil and thus, we reason, all bad somehow must originate with the devil. Thus, whenever we take stock of our sins, we go back to whence they obviously began: the devil. Laying the blame for our sinfulness at the feet of the devil quickly follows.

It makes for a good laugh when we try, a good laugh all around. If we tried Flip’s line on another, they laughed. They didn’t even have to say, “Get serious!” If we tried that line on ourselves, we laughed even harder even as we truly wished we could blame someone, anyone, even the devil.

And yet we need the devil even if we don’t believe in the actual existence of a devil, of Satan. We need the reminder of how powerful the absence of good really is. Nazi Germany, Muslim fanatics, a crazy man with a Glock are examples of the devil at work, examples of what power the absence of good has and the evil that it can do.

There is evil in this world, lots of it. We are reminded of it every day, sadly. But the doer-of-evil, the devil, is not figment of our imagination or some outside force trying to control us. The devil is in each one of us yearning to get out and have his way with us. We are the devil whenever we do evil and we have no one else to blame but ourselves.

IN A PICKLE

Over the millennia there have been numerous arguments and discussions between scientists and theologians. For the most part they have gone nowhere. The scientist wants proof: proof of God’s existence, proof that a certain miracle has taken place, proof that a law of nature has been suspended in this instance – proof. The theologian, on the other hand, does not demand such. The theologian only demands that what he believes is, well, believable, given his first belief, namely, that of his belief in God.

Novelist Robertson Davies, discussing his joining of the Anglican Church: “Yes, indeed, I consider myself a believer. But if I were asked to nail down and defend what it was I believed and why, I would be in a pickle like a lot of people. I think this is the kind of thing that is not perhaps very widely or sympa­thetically understood. Religious belief is not susceptible to the kind of discussion and proof that appeals to skeptical minds that generally want to work on scientific principles. They’re so imbued with the scientific method that intuition and a sort of native awareness don’t count for anything.”

We believers are always in a pickle, often with ourselves let alone with those who demand scientific proof. We, too, wonder why we sometimes believe what we believe. We, too, have our doubts about God’s love for us, even about God’s very existence or certainly that God cares about us either individually or as a whole. Given the mess that the world is in and has been in almost since creation, we have to wonder about this God of our faith.

Thus, when we try to defend our faith or our God or both, we wind up in a pickle. We have no adequate answers, answers that will satisfy the questioner even when that questioner is ourself. Yet, while the scientist will walk away shaking his head at our foolishness for believing what is impossible to prove and what, in many instances, makes no sense at all, we hang on. We don’t give in or give up.

That’s not to say that it wouldn’t be easier to live with ourselves if we did. There are times when we would just like to shuck it all and give up on this God of ours who seems so often to be so distant and so uncaring about the pain and suffering that we are enduring, unjustly and undeservedly enduring. Just mark it up to fate and get on with life without God. Wouldn’t that be so much easier and certainly make so much more sense?

Perhaps. But we do not. Why we do not, why we hang on and hang in when everything in us says to give up and walk away, we cannot explain. As Davies asserts, if and when we try, we end up in a pickle of our own making. There is no scientific explanation for this instance of ours to hold on to a God who sometimes does not seem to care to hold on to us. Sometimes.

But it is in those times when God holds on to us, won’t let us go, who even forcibly grabs us, that we know why we still believe even when it might make complete sense not to. We wish we could explain this faith of ours, but we cannot. That may put us in a pickle but it is a very sweet one, is it not?

PRAYER

When I was in college, my English professor used to regale the class with definitions from Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary. For example: Conservative (noun) A statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. Lawyer (noun) One skilled in circumvention of the law. My prof’s favorite was that of prayer: to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

As with all of Bierce’s definitions there is a very real ring of truth about them. Most conservatives I know, religious and political, get all bent out of shape around existing evils: taxes and sexual issues being two. And most liberals I know, myself included, invariably arrive at solutions to these problems by creating other problems rather than real answers. A good defense lawyer’s job is to find a way around a law or a reason why his client is exempt from the law.

So, too, whenever we pray to God, we most assuredly confess our unworthiness to approach God in prayer because we are sinful human beings. And that we are. We dare not do otherwise. And there are times in prayer when we most assuredly ask God to either annul or at least bend the laws of the universe on our behalf. That’s what a miracle is, is it not: asking God to go against nature?

Are we fools? Are we wasting our time? Are we wrong? Is that what prayer is all about? Well, yes and no. It’s not what prayer is all about but prayer is about some of that. We do pray that God work miracles on our behalf, or at least on behalf of someone we love at our request. And sometimes our prayer takes the form of yelling at God in anger or begging with tears streaming down our cheeks or, in some instances, both.

We’re not fools or wasting our time or are wrong when we pray for miracles, pray that the laws of nature be annulled on our behalf because we believe, no, because we know God can and sometimes does do exactly that. Not always, but at least often enough for us to pray in the hope that God will make another exception to the laws of nature just this once more and for us or for someone we love.

Lewis B. Smedes said it best: “I think we should see miraculous healings not as a way of solving human suffering, but as whimsical signals – to be taken sometimes with a bit of humor, not made too much of, but still signals – that God is alive, that Christ is Lord, and that suffering is not the last word about human existence.” Whimsical signals: playful, fanciful, impulsive acts on God’s part on our behalf.

It is God who is in control and not us, and we know it. That is why we ask God to give some of that control into our hands by giving in to our prayers, our wishes and wants. Yet, like Bierce’s definition of a conservative and a liberal, sometimes our solution to the problem may be worse than the problem itself or we are creating more problems in having our prayers answered. Bierce reminds us that we need to be aware of what we are asking and Smedes reminds us that God really does know best.