charity, crisis, & climate
Charity is not only in the moment of perceived crisis.
A crisis is always compounded with factors both before and and after. Perhaps crisis is unavoidable, but what exacerbated the problem, and how do we go about reducing the present harm and dealing with underlying issues? In the literal wake of hurricanes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters, how do we move forward?
It is easy to care about others who have suddenly lost everything. But are we willing to care about those who never had much to begin with? Are we willing to care about how to help them flourish after the crisis? Are we willing to research and change systems that made the crisis even worse?
The wanton development of Houston contributed to the surreal damage. Hurricanes are only getting worse and more extreme with climate change. Earthquakes have been causing devastation across Mexico. Floods in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal have killed hundreds and left millions homeless. But these events happen over, and over, and over again.
Humanity has crossed a threshold moment that requires us to act judiciously with how and where humans live. There is more awareness of limitations on natural resources. As the climate continues to change, we will see a new form of refugees as former habitable spaces become unrealistic for large populations. Whether it is flooding or extreme temperatures, humans will no longer be able to live as simply as they have in the past. Our development of cities need to be more sustainable, our energy systems need to be more sustainable, our food systems need to be more sustainable; our individual choices have collective consequences, and we must seek to think and work more collectively.
Charity is not about returning to a status quo; it is speaking on a common humanity, a common image of God. And if a common brother or sister is continually in a place of suffering, if their environment does not allow them to thrive, if we are making the environment more volatile, do we not have a responsibility to act?
This planetary spaceship we live on is resilient. It is harsh. It is home. And followers of Jesus who are unwilling to wrestle with the underlying issues are failing the commandment to love our neighbor. This is a planetary-scale stewardship, not simply solved by local initiative. We must seek to humble ourselves and to work together before. May His Kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven.
character
To me, character is if you’re the same in public as you are in private, and I think that in many ways, that’s what’s appealing about [Trump].
Mike Huckabee, in an interview with The Atlantic
This definition of character truly says it all and stands in contrast to a statement made almost 20 years ago:
Character is doing what’s right when nobody is looking.
This new definition for character is merely one piece of the denigration of virtue. When the worst of human behaviors is not only permitted, but celebrated, it speaks about our society. What is right has been redefined to mean freedom of speech and freedom to live without regard for another. Character has become doing what is wrong when everyone is looking.
Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.
Matthew 10:15 (NRSVCE)
And lest there be any confusion, the primary sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was there inhospitable society. A society where men looked out for themselves above others and were open in their desire to do wrong – politically incorrect, morally irreprehensible. And the people who celebrate this the most, who cry out for blood and Barrabas, are those who would say, “I follow Christ.” Lord, have mercy on us.
daca: a case of mercy against empire
It is clearer, now more than ever, that Christianity in America has made Empire its god.
Again [Jesus] entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. And they watched him, to see whether he would heal him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come here.” And he said to them, “Is it lawful on the sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out, and immediately held counsel with the Hero′di-ans against him, how to destroy him.
Mark 3:1-6 (RSVCE)
DACA provided temporary relief for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who were brought as children into the US. It had stringent requirements for work, education, and criminal record. The death sentence of DACA is just another example of pharisaical interpretation. Mercy and grace are blasphemy in the name of “law and order.” And those that have tried to ignore the thinly veiled white supremacy are finding out that they too are targets. Whose land is this anyway? The broken theology that somehow Euro-American colonists and immigrants are the lost tribes of Israel is both delusion and hubris.
The Church has recognized and proclaimed the need to welcome young people: ‘Whoever welcomes one of these children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me’ (Mark 9:37). Today, our nation has done the opposite of how Scripture calls us to respond.
In the midst of literal storms, a spiritual battle is at hand for the heart of this nation. And it grieves me that there are people who say they follow Jesus be complicit with empire, seeking order above justice, being lawful above kindness, and preferring comfort above mercy. Matthew 25 has strong words of rebuke for those who refuse mercy.
Lord, have mercy on us.
smoke & mirrors (the nashville statement)
From the beginning of man, Satan has done well to twist the words of God, to mask a greater truth. The American experiment, however distorted in practice, was set with an ideal in mind. It was also founded with blood money.
The raging culture wars have always sought to point out something that was the demise of this country: alcohol, feminism, drugs, promiscuity, same-sex marriage. But this has been smoke and mirrors by the enemy to distract us from our original sin of racism. The refusal to acknowledge this is listening to the whispering lies of Satan. It is Adam pointing to Eve, reducing his own complicity in sin by blaming another; it is trying to remove the speck out of our neighbor’s eye with a log in our own.
America is in need of nothing less than an exorcism from a 400-year old demon of white supremacy, and the principalities and powers that have lurked in the darkness are being repeatedly exposed to the light. Howling, irrational, self-destructive, they act out as the demons did in the man possessed by a legion, just before they were cast out, and the land itself quakes beneath this cosmic conflict. We have stirred up ancient principalities that seek to divide, and to devour. Fear of anyone/anything that we deem “other” is not a peripheral feature around the Trump phenomenon, but is rather it’s central, galvanizing energy—the very character of this demonic force is blame and accusation. The very reason that old racially charged markers of “history and heritage” are suddenly in the limelight—that signs of our oldest conflicts are smack dab in the middle of a contemporary conflict—is precisely because we are in the midst of a decisively spiritual battle.
- Jonathan Martin, Our Resistance, is Repentance (on the Nashville Statement, and Most Everything Else)
The voices that were complicit in this statement have pronounced heretical Trinitarian belief – subjugating the Son and castrating the Spirit.
Those we can’t trust for orthodoxy on the Trinity can’t be trusted when it comes to morality.
Fight on. Father, have mercy on us. Jesus, come. Holy Spirit, guide us.
memorialize
What do you choose to memorialize?
There is a keen difference between remembering and memorializing something. Most people would choose to memorialize the good moments in life: a birthday, a graduation, a birth. The bad moments are not forgotten, but are also not placed on a pedestal: a break-up, a job loss, a death. In every awful experienced moment, something may be cherished. Memorializing beauty out of death remembers that death, but does not give death the final say.
“Pass on before the ark of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan, and each of you take up a stone on his shoulder, one for each of the tribes of the Israelites, so that this may be a sign among you. When your children ask in time to come, ‘What do those stones mean to you?’ then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off in front of the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the Israelites a memorial forever.”
Joshua 4:5-7
As Joshua led the Israelites into their promised land, the memorialization was not of the Egyptian oppressors, or the 40 years of disobedience and wandering in the desert – it was about what God had done. Through the stones, it was not about forgetting their history, but telling the story of what their history meant.
Often the argument for preserving Confederate statues and allowing Confederate flags is that we should not forget our history. In Germany, Nazi buildings are extremely hard to come by — nearly all have been destroyed. Yet Germany certainly has not forgotten anything: There’s just a recognition that remembering and memorializing are two different things.
History indeed should not be forgotten. But the sins of our nation’s past must be interpreted – Robert E. Lee was no hero. What then with these monuments? An empty pedestal can give lessons to the past. A statute can be moved into a museum for proper contextualization. And new memorials can be built to memorialize the beautiful moments that have come out of the struggle for racial justice.
Dear White People.
I love you all. I hope you know that. I count many of you as friends, as brothers, as sisters. But your unwillingness to listen to the cries of your neighbors and drown it out with KLove is literally killing people.
Racism in America is not dead. It is not in the hands of the few, of the extremists. It is systemic. It is permitted. White nationalism is simply the tip of an iceberg that is build on White moderates.
“First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;” who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” - MLK Jr.
Now is not the time to say, “I’m not like them.” The face of James Fields Jr is too close to home. I could have grown up with him. His mother seems like a kind and caring midwestern woman. But her staying out of his “political views”, his having an “African American friend” highlights that there is a desperate need for you to not be silent, for you to not simply say, “well that’s too bad, that’s so sad” and move on with life.
Please do not be silent. Please do condemn domestic terrorism and white nationalism. Please learn and take action for justice. Please be a part of dealing with our national sin instead of perpetuating it for yet another generation.
broken systems
When it comes to the environment and economy, fossil fuels are justified because they are cheaper. But this justification reveals that the system is defined with a single scope: financial capital.
“There’s an unpriced externality in the cost of fossil fuels. The unpriced externality is the probability-weighted harm of changing the chemical constituency of the atmosphere and oceans.”
- Elon Musk
The reality is that the system should also include the environment. If you take enough variables out of any system, you can make a convincing argument for anything. But the reality is that we do not simply live in separate non-interacting systems. That’s like saying lung cancer won’t kill you because it only affects your lungs.
“But wait!” You may exclaim, “If you take the inverse and add enough variables, then you can can moralize everything!”
Yes. That is what the Creative Mandate has revealed itself to be in this day and age. For us to have “dominion over the earth” is to take into account the whole of Creation to the best of our abilities. Things used to be more simple. Humans didn’t travel geographically that much. Our spheres of influence were smaller. But now, even a drive down to the convenience store occurs because of a global economy. The sooner that we accept this, the sooner we can work towards solutions – whether more localization or centralized efficiency.
(Source: inverse.com)
victory & loss: week 24, 2017
victory: The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe gained ground with a federal judge ruling that approval of the Dakota Access Pipeline violated the law in certain aspects. The operations have not stopped yet, so we can pray that this would not be an empty victory.
loss: Philando Castille’s assassination has not been vindicated in the justice system. Once again, fear of losing one’s life is justification for killing the other. Fear. Not threat. Fear is becoming cemented and centered as the new American Idol. In the name of fear, every action is justified. In the name of fear, our Savior was crucified. Lord, have mercy upon us, and come soon.
babel to pentecost: loving v. virginia
It’s only been 50 years that interracial marriage has been declared constitutionally protected. Fifty. The lies that were embedded in the defense of anti-miscegenation laws have yet to be killed. White supremacy needed such a law to keep a sense of a ‘pure breed’ that would not have a single drop of any other race or ethnicity.
The oft used Biblical justification of separation of races is in the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. Humanity had a single shared language, a single shared culture. Instead of continuing the Creative Mandate, to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:28), humanity decides to make a name for itself. God “confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.” His Creative Mandate was still to be fulfilled.
His Creation was not yet complete, and the story did not end here. At the moment of Pentecost, the separation was broken down by the Holy Spirit.
And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?
Acts 2:8 (NRSVCE)
The reversal of Babel was not going back to the way things were, but to something new. This diversity that God infused did not disappear, but was informed more deeply by the gospel.
Diversity is encoded within our DNA, our universe. To increase genetic diversity is better for a species; to limit it results in increased health issues. In diversity the brilliance of an infinite God is reflected.
The culture of the Cross is not, however, colorblind, or culture-blind. Pentecost could have been an opportunity for a singular monolithic language and culture to be understood by everyone. But it wasn’t. Each person understood in their “own native language.”
Interracial marriage reflects this beauty. And God does not look kindly upon critics of what He has joined together (Numbers 12). White supremacy seeks to co-opt the culture of the Cross into its own and deny the power of the Holy Spirit. White supremacy looks upon diversity with great fear, as it is an enemy of the Cross. White supremacy demands cultural superiority and paints other cultures as savage. And in 50 years, it is still alive and well, veiled in the same lie at Babel: “let us make a name for ourselves.”