Tag: Jesus

I have watched the violence and the revolt in Egypt with a heavy heart.  On one hand, I am overjoyed to see a people long held in shackles struggling to attain freedom.  I hope this sentiment will someday encircle the world, so that, as it is written, the wolf and the lamb will live together.   As a pacifist, however, it causes me much distress to see police out in the street, blazes set alight, and the familiar signs of overheated passion.  In observing everything from a distance of thousands of miles, I am forced to confront my own beliefs.  It may be that physical force alone can bring needed reform and change.  But, as others far wiser than I have noted, war and warlike impulses are easy, but peaceful solutions are difficult.

This past weekend I saw a recent German/Albanian narrative film entitled simply The Albanian.  Rarely have I seen a movie that confronts the fullest picture of the worldwide controversy regarding undocumented workers and illegal immigration.  While its sympathies are clearly with immigrants, it does not resort to cheap sentimentality or agitprop.  We recognize how the issue involves all the complications and tragedies of human lives.  Suffice it to say that the entire matter is much more complicated than we ever usually contemplate, even for those of us who support immigration reform and human rights.  

On this holiday devoted to Martin Luther King, Jr., I hope that we do not forget his full legacy in the proper context.  In Meeting yesterday, a Friend’s message rather bluntly noted that she is growing tired of the way that King’s life has been increasingly presented.  Starry-eyed optimists have reduced the man to some sort of inoffensive Santa Claus figure.  Gone is the edginess, the reformer threatening the status quo, and the leader who spoke out not just for Civil Rights, but also against the Vietnam War.  And, like the Friend, for these reasons, I am beginning to dislike certain aspects of this day.  King would want us to continue to press forward, not pass out rose colored glasses while we romanticize past struggles.  It is true that winners write history, but be it known that I disagree strongly with the translation.          

The impetus for this post was a most unlikely subject. I’ve been recently deconstructing my own uneasy feelings towards disgraced NFL Quarterback Michael Vick. My partner, a native of Philadelphia, is a huge fan of the Eagles professional football team and is thrilled at the its recent success with Vick at the helm. When the dog fighting revelations surfaced, I admit that I wanted to see him banned from the league for life. Instead, Vick served nearly two years in jail, filed for bankruptcy, missed two full seasons, and was blackballed from his original team. His stunning return to form was highly unexpected. And as much I try to be a forgiving person, I simply cannot extend it to a player who is nonetheless a strong candidate to be eventually awarded the National Football League’s Most Valuable Player for a most impressive season.

Every action has a reaction, every destructive action has destructive reactions!

This report is just a part of the legacy we’ve left to an entire small Country of innocent people, as well as their neighboring countries, whose doctoral leader was under our thumb, right up till his hanging, as to the policies of that whole region we push in the names of Freedoms and Democracy!

2010 has been granted the dubious honor as the year of the angry voter.  Unfortunately, far too much of that anger has been bolstered by means of a religious appeal.  Tea Party members, for example, have been quick to justify what they believe by using pseudo-intellectual, reductionist conceptions of Christianity.  A quick survey of signs held aloft at rallies will find many who display pure hatred, then cite a verse of Scripture at the bottom.  One sees this also at anti-abortion rallies or those challenging same-sex marriage rights.  A God which always agrees with us no matter what the issue or the circumstance is not God at all.  Christianity may find more of an audience among conservatives, but the gross distortions of many continue to damage its reputation.  

What follows is something that has been weighing on me heavily this morning.  Discussing the act of vocal ministry, a Friend noted that, while in the act of sharing a message, we aren’t just God’s mouthpiece, we are God.  This makes me uncomfortable to contemplate.  I would never wish to even come close to hinting that my mortal self was anything near to the Divine.  While I do seek that which is God in others, I am far more comfortable emphasizing my own mortal self.  Due to lots of soul-searching I know where my place is in the cosmos, and I would never grasp for a mantle that is not mine to embrace.  Moreover, I would not take it on if I could, because I do not possess the human strength to bear the burden.  

Generation after generation of politicians running as Washington outsiders have railed against the established system.  Lambasting corruption and inherent evil has been an effective populist message for a long while.  We saw it from one party in 2006 and 2008 and now, in 2010, we observe it in another.  Every generation appears to have been sold the same basic message. But after each wave of reformers finds the going perilous and true change difficult, we engage in an equally long-running tradition, that of demanding why.  Why is this institution so resistant to change and so stubbornly ingrained?  Where does one even begin?

I have written openly about my Christ-centered faith on numerous occasions.  I rediscovered it relatively recently after rejecting it out of hand earlier in life.  The best way to describe the experience is that, for whatever reason or another, it found me, rather than the other way around.  A belief in a higher power keeps me mentally supple and not fixated on the superficial.  My faith points me to the way to live in peace among other people, and also within myself.  So, when I observe yet again how easy it is for the mere mention of Jesus or God to provoke a nasty, negative response in many, I feel tremendously sad.

This morning, as an observer rather than a participant, I witnessed the annual Race for the Cure event here in DC.  It is, for those who may be unaware, a charity run/walk that has served as an effective means of raising funds to combat breast cancer. It also memorializes those who have tragically perished from the disease and celebrates those who have survived.  Before I begin, I certainly do appreciate the sentiment and the work that goes into it putting it on, but there’s a certain sort of commercialized, jocular, self-congratulatory aspect to the gathering that frequently makes me uncomfortable.  At times this morning I felt as though I was in some sort of motivational seminar, the kind that businesses often mandate that their employees must attend.  What I experienced firsthand today was a kind of glossy artifice when nothing could be more devastatingly real or raw than any person who finds herself or himself with a diagnosis of malignancy.