By The Rivers of Babylon...

I am no prophet, nor a prophet's son; 

but I am a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees.

-The Prophet Amos (7:14)

If you have been following along with this little blog, you know that there are several things going on right now that greatly trouble my soul.  Most of them begin with war of some sort: war between Israel and Palestinians, the war on drugs, the war against terror, which has begotten a war in Afghanistan, and one in Iraq that we thought we won, until recently when ISIS stormed through various parts of the country and established an Islamic caliphate, which has proceeded to brutally persecute Christians and Islamic minorities in the name of Allah (way to go guys, be the monster everyone already suspected you were).

I'm getting pretty tired of war, and I'm not even personally involved in any of them, except as a human being, and it is as a human being that these things deeply trouble my soul.  I have been told that as an American Christian I really have no right to comment on things like the Israel/Gaza conflagration, because I don't understand what it's like for Israelis to live in a place where they are surrounded by people who openly wish they did not exist.  I'm not Jewish, indeed, so therefore I should just accept the bombing of civilians and the murder of children because: security is important.

The whole notion that I should just accept the atrocities of the world because it doesn't concern me is a theological and moral disaster.  You want to talk about decaying morality?  Leave the homosexuals and their cute little weddings out of it, let's talk dying children, let's talk people robbed of their homes and livelihoods, let's talk thousands of children fleeing the narco-state violence in their home country showing up on our doorstep, those are freaking moral crises!

I'll let the Jews speak for Israel, because at least a few of them are doing a good job:

Here

and 

Here.

I want to talk to American Christians, because I am one of them, and I think we are failing with a capital F to be Jesus followers.  In the article above by Rabbi Lerner, he compares the modern nation state of Israel to the Golden Calf, a form of idolatry.  We 'Mericans have the same problem, we have made our nation, because it really is a pretty remarkable human venture into liberty and justice, into an idol.  Remember, the Golden Calf seemed like a good idea, even to Aaron, Moses' own brother.  It seemed like a good idea because people need symbols and something in which to place their hope and trust.  God, the actual living God, didn't really seem like he had a good plan.  God was up there in the smoke on the mountain talking to Moses about the Law and the people were, quite frankly, terrified of that God.  The Golden Calf was a lot more of a sure thing... or at least a thing they could control.

When people want to control things, there are two things that we really love: Idols and Violence, not necessarily in that order.  You can control other people with violence for a while, but it usually gets out of control, Idols are more effective in the long term.  If you can create in people's hearts a strong affinity for anything that is not God, you can often subtly deprive them of their inherent connection to God.  This is not a desirable state of affairs, because God, our Creator, is what binds us together.  God is about bringing things together.

Roman Catholic Theologian Richard Rohr notes that the etymology of the word religion comes from the root ligio, to bind, and essentially means re-binding.  It should hold us together with one another and with God, and in so many cases it has the exact opposite effect.  It tells us that we are far from God; abject sinners and flawed creations.  It convinces us that we should hold ourselves superior to those who believe differently than we, because we have ascertained the essential truth of God's will.  That is, as Rohr points out, "diabolical," in Greek dia balein, means to throw apart.

The notion of empathy that I wrote about yesterday and then also ran across in Rabbi Jacob's article above, is exactly the sort of thing that holds us together as human beings.  It is, I suspect, a major component of what the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ seeks to demonstrate for us: God has empathy for creation.  Jesus is often sidetracked by his compassion (read empathy) for the afflicted.  His activity as a healer and a miracle worker, was both a blessing and a curse to his message.  Some people believed because he made the blind see, others remained spiritually blind despite his miracles.  In fact, it seemed to be the religious folk who were most offended by Jesus' empathy for people they had previously considered unclean and unworthy.

When people speak to me of God's elegant plans where everything works out for the best, I have to call shenanigans.  God's plans are messy, because God insistently works in and through human beings.  He pushes us in the direction of unity, like a parent who puts his toddler in a sandbox with other kids, hoping that little Billy will play nice.  God has made us for community, we are social at our very core, even introverts like me, (and I really HATE to admit this) need other people from time to time.  To deny our connections to one another makes us less than human, in extreme cases it makes for a sociopath.

Unfortunately, there are way too many sociopaths running loose in the world today.  There are way too many people who deny the living, relational God that I see pretty clearly in Scripture and in Jesus, in favor of some static idol.

The idols are legion: money, power, empire, lust, pleasure, leisure, individual rights, security, family, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.  Do you notice how that list migrates from "deadly sin" type stuff, to things we might actually think of as good and moral things?  That's what idols do, they are parasitic on our need for a living God, they offer us a way that is a little neater and a little more controllable than a God who might just show up in a whirlwind and cause all manner of messiness.

God does not have many names, aliases are more the devil's thing.  The basic prayer of Israel, Shema, goes as follows: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is ONE."  And the really remarkable thing is that you can actually sum God up in one word, and it is a word that you can find in all the religions and in all human cultures.  The word is Love, a relationship word, a together word, a word that defies violence and power and says, "Hey, maybe we should go a different path."  It is a word that Jesus uses a whole awful lot, and it is a word that speaks of a connection.

It is a word that holds empathy and compassion, mercy and justice, sacrifice and celebration, sex and friendship, art and beauty, all within those four letters.

It is the failure of love that is causing ALL of the problems of humanity.  We fail to love others, and we quickly name them enemies, they then threaten our security, we compete, endlessly for finite resources, and in the process our connection, our ligio, begins to wither and disintegrate.  We lose each other.  And if you think that we can lose each other this tragically and hold on to God, you have not been paying attention.