2014.07.13 What Would One Say?

When my oldest daughter was in junior high, she did what most kids do during their growing edge years, she giggled and talked in class. She is an adult now and likely remembers this incident.

 

 The English teacher, a particularly stern, and I would say prissy person, did what many teachers would do: called attention to the offense and asked for a return of attention to the lesson of the day.

This should have been enough, but wasn’t. The teacher further addressed my daughter after class and said, “Beverley, isn’t your mother studying for the ministry?” My daughter nodded. The teacher’s wasn’t quite through. She added: “Indeed. What would one say?”

What would one say? The little phrase was meant as a thinly disguised moral scold. (Think Maggie Smith at her prunish best.) In our family it became cause for sibling hilarity—a perfect reprimand tossed off for the tiniest infractions, followed by gales of laughter.  Occasionally, I’d remind them that Jesus wouldn’t say such a thing. So what would he say? They’d egg me on. “Get thee behind me, Satan.” (Matthew 16:23) By then we all were laughing. “Mom quotes Jesus now.”  Ha, ha.

I felt proud to quote the gospel Jesus, happy to offer them a good example of a clear-hearted and clean response for any kind of angry confrontation—a curse really. Peter had not been paying attention in class, or if he had, he’d rejected the teaching of Jesus’ reality gospel and even rebuked Jesus for his wisdom. Peter still thought that God would eliminate the suffering part of the suffering-with-redemption equation, make an exception for someone as good as Jesus. Jesus said, NOT.

What would one say? Do you think, in spite of Jesus’ cross and all the preaching about suffering in most religions, we still just can’t bear it to be part of God’s desire and design? OR is it that we can’t forego dualistic thinking? OR maybe it’s the redemption part we can’t tolerate: Okay for Jesus, and other spiritual celebrities, but not for mass humanity? 

Here is a paraphrase of a quote from The Rt. Rev. Samir Kaffity, Retired Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem...............


 Christianity began as a vibrant faith of the victory of redemption and joy in Jerusalem.
It then traveled around and up the coast of the Holy Land.

It crossed the Mediterranean Sea, to the Aegean and landed in Greece,
where it became a philosophy.

It left there and crossed the Adriatic Sea and on to Rome,
where it became an institution.

It continued westward across Europe, and crossed the North Sea to Great Britain,
where it became a culture.

And finally this great religion crossed the Great Atlantic Ocean,
and lapped upon the North American shore,
where it has become an enterprise.

What would one say?  Is Christianity an enterprise, a business, a product to be perfected for consumption, to be twisted into the latest desirable shape? I wonder if the oomph has gone out of Christianity, the gutsy vibrancy of Jesus and other founders, the capacity to be direct without superiority? 

Are churches today embarrassed to offer the profligacy (so, so close to licentiousness) of divine grace, cheek by jowl with profligate violence—and call both truth?

It doesn’t make a bit of sense to do so, you know. I want to holler NO—Godde is Love.  Just how inclusive can Godde’s Love be? I wonder. 

If the junior high school teacher’s attitude seeped into the literary material she was trying to get the kids impassioned about, it would be dry, and they would be rightfully bored, no matter how much attention they paid, nor how hard they studied, nor how enterprising they were. 

What would one say?

2014.07.06 Faith It!

Freedom is not the same as choice. Nor is it the same as independence. But is it connected somehow to faith?

The other day I was deliberating, obsessing really, over a relatively small decision about whether to offer my opinion or let it go for fear of offending, when I heard myself say to myself, “Just faith it!”

Faith it? An immediate “Greek” chorus of English teachers chanted in my head: “Faith is a noun, dear, not a verb.” Alternatively, this might be a Spirit-nudge cutting through my mental murk—obviously not god the grammarian. But should I have faith to say what I thought or faith to shut up? I was free to choose. 

I hate freedom.

And who is really free anyway? (The last word is "immigrant.")




Choice is overrated, mostly because our fat affluent culture offers so much to consume that it’s overwhelming and stressful, and partly because choices that seem free are bound by inner and outer limitations—like unconscious motivations, what your mother and Mother Church always said to do, and other people. Still, I had to choose something, and I wanted God or Jesus or the powers to tell me what to do. I had choices BUT I wasn’t free.

As reported in Bondings 2.0, June 17, 2014, by newwaysministryblog, Britain’s Cardinal Vincent Nichols addressed the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence. He highlighted war-time rape and sexual degradation as “a most fundamental denial of human dignity and a most gross breach of a person’s human rights.” Duh.

I would have stopped reading— BUT I saw the next word, which was BUT.  ("But," I knew, could cancel everything that preceded it.)  I read on: “But . . . in his speech, Nichols offered a different definition of sexuality than is usually promoted by Catholic bishops.” 

After defining human sexuality as a vital component of our humanity, blah, blah, he continued: “A fundamental aspect of the Church’s teaching about sex is that sexual acts must always take place within the context of  . . .  (Yeah, yeah, we know it’s the context of Christian marriage.) 

BUT, the Cardinal did not say Christian marriage, he said “authentic freedom.” Authentic freedom. For any two people?  Not just Christians?  Outside marriage?  Just for love and not just for procreation?  The moral context of sexual acts is now about freedom, according to this cardinal, and, I would add, many theologians and ethicists.  Morality unbound like Lazarus.

I love freedom.

But, how did this help me? I’m not exactly sure, BUT this came to me: “authentic freedom” is spiritual freedom, faith freedom—the authentic freedom of the soul in Love, the soul in a moment without tight rules and contexts of practice, the soul at risk from without, willing to take risks from within, a soul who can faith it.

That’s how I stopped deliberating, praying, trying to fit my decision into some acceptable safe cubby.  I faithed it.

I don’t know if offense was taken or not.

Only after my faithing, did I remember the biblical wisdom in Galatians 5:1 :"It is for freedom that Christ has set us free."  It doesn’t say choice; it does imply faith.

P.S. did you know there is a car named SOUL? A Kia. KIA means "killed in action." Ill let you interpret that any according to your mood or your spirituality.  BUT I doubt if this little car authentically free.