"It isn't what you have, but what your priorities are."

This is one of the very common comments tossed about by us when we start talking about our wealth, and I want to address it before any others because I tend to think that it alone is the one idea in this wealth mess that I haven't yet resolved in my own mind. It's of no surprise that I am especially intrigued with this idea intellectually, because it leaves a lot of room for shades of gray and I tend to inhabit that kind of a world.

On the one hand, there are two clear things which support this idea. One, I know some people with quite a bit of money who are extremely generous and give a lot to our local community, as well as to individuals in need. They have no particular attachment to the material things they own, and as some Christians are fond of saying, "It's all going to get burned up in the end anyway. It's just stuff." In short, there are people who have a lot of material wealth but don't consider that wealth an end in itself. Two, there are probably people who have very little but are very selfish about it. I can't think of anybody I've met who is like this, but I have no doubt that they exist.

To continue, I know people who probably give half of what they make to one charity or another, and it's difficult to look at somebody who makes a lot of money but gives half away and say they are somehow more greedy or less concerned with the poor than a person who makes comparatively little and gives only a small fraction, if any, to those more needy than themselves. There is unselfishness and there is selfishness, fully independent of resources. It isn't what you have. It's what your priorities are. Fair enough.

But on the other hand, there can be serious flaws in the basis of this thinking, and for over half of my life, I have not been able to get them out of my head. Before talking about them, there is something that needs to be delineated. The idea of priorities in the above few paragraphs needs to be explained a bit for the sake of completeness. There are two main issues at stake, which are concerns about greed and concerns about idolatry. So when a Christian looks at their possessions and says "It's all going to be burned up in the end anyway; it's just stuff," he or she is typically making reference to concern with idolatry. It's a way of saying "These things aren't important to me in the way God and people are important to me. God comes first; not things." I mention this just to note that I do see the distinction between the views; but as I hope to point out, the distinction becomes more or less meaningless to the discussion at hand. So. Onward to the flaws.

The first major problem I have with the idea of priorities is to me as obvious and unavoidable as the sun in the sky. There's a simple way to say it, but I'll first mention the way it came to me. Years ago, I was sitting around one day pondering the phrase, "It isn't what you have, but what your priorities are," when to my mind came the image of Jesus walking into my house, wandering through the rooms therein. As he walked around, he looked at the furnishings. He looked at the things hanging on the walls. He looked at the decorations. He looked at all my electronic toys (including, sigh… my computers). He went outside and looked at my four-wheeled toys. Nervously, wringing my hands, I followed him around. Finally, I could bare the silence no more, and offered, "I know what you must be thinking, but, it's not what I have here, it's my priorities in life that matter." And with that, Jesus turned to me, nodded slowly, and said, "Yes. And I see what your priorities are." The simple point is, what we have indicates what our priorities are. I cannot see anything more concrete, more clear, more obvious, more inarguable than this. Greed or idolatry? Irrelevant, really. Where your resources go, is where your priorities lie.

The second problem concerns the wealthy giving much and the poor giving little. Jesus touched upon this a bit when he spoke of what we sometimes refer to as the widow's mite:

He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on." (Mark 12:41-44)

Before I say what I'm about to say, I just want to notice that I'm posting this series out of my own guilt and confession of my extreme selfishness in a hurting world. I'm guilty, I'm sorry, and I'm hoping, wanting, to change. So I am not pointing fingers here. Really, I'm not; but it will easily seem so. I've heard people with a lot of money talk about what they give at church. And I've heard them talk in thickly veiled terms about how they give so much more than other people in church. Sometimes they'll fall back to something like, "I give my ten percent, but I don't see those people doing it." To be sure, if a person takes home $100k a year and gives $10k a year to charity, they're giving a whole lot more than the person who brings home $20k a year and gives five percent for a total of $1k. This argument makes a lot of sense numbers-wise, I agree. The only problem with it is that it's not the way Jesus looks at it, and it's bass-ackwards from the economic reality of the situation. Interestingly, it summarizes elegantly the two main ways of viewing things that we see in the politico-socio-economic rhetoric around us. The former people always view giving in terms of what is given. But Jesus defined giving in what was left. And so, as Jesus would see it, the person who is left with $19K has given far more than the person who is left with $90K. If you really must assign cold mathematics to it, let's do it this way: the "wealthy" person has given approximately four and half times less than what the other has given.

Perhaps needless to say, I have very little patience for the Christian who drops a thousand dollars into a collection plate, drives his or her expensive car to a restaurant before heading to his or her fine home, to sit in front of his or her HDTV and think of how other people need to be giving more to further the work of the kingdom—while a brother or sister in God drops five bucks into the plate, leaves church by packing his or her family into a beat-up old wreck with plastic tape over the tail lights and cardboard for windows, to go home and scrape together something for lunch and wonder which bill he or she will have to let slide so that the family can eat during the coming week. In this scenario, I'd really like to hear some banter about "It's not what I have, but what my priorities are."

To summarize the "what I have versus what my priorities are" line of speaking, I'm thinking the following. The idea remains gray. I would be one of the very last people to try to second guess other people's motivations and hearts, which are absolutely between them and God. Maybe a person has a sick kid or may not see another birthday. Spoil them rotten? Absolutely. I would. Or maybe a person makes far more, gives far more, works far more, and is devoted far more to the poor than anybody else, especially me, knows. I can absolutely allow for that. Or maybe a person, like me, is morally weak and is selfish, and needs patience and time with love in the meantime. No problem. We love each other in our weaknesses. And last of all, the Bible says some people have certain gifts and not other gifts, and it lists giving as a gift. So after all my talking, there's no judgment cast. But I look inward, and I know the line doesn't fit me. I know that for me, what I own shows my priorities. I know the line is untrue. If I truly cared for the hungry, the sick, and the homeless, I would have less so that they could have more.

I am a work in progress. May God move me.

There is only one true flight from the world; it is not an escape from conflict, anguish and suffering, but the flight from disunity and separation, to unity and peace in the love of other men. — New Seeds, chapter 10

A few years ago I was teaching a group of Christian adults, and every class for twenty-six weeks was great. I loved the class. The students loved the class. I talked about some fairly hard topics, and some pretty provocative topics. I talked about how we love to come to church with our smiles pasted on and pretend we have no problems, when in fact we have all the same problems as everybody else in the world. I talked about the idea that God doesn't have an intricate plan lined out to the most minute detail from now until the end of the world. One period I even claimed that Jesus didn't have a priori knowledge that Judas would betray him, and that furthermore—presuming the traditional view of "salvation" being about going to Heaven instead of Hell—Judas was saved in the end (the context within which this opinion was delivered is a bit large). And so it went, smoothly and thoughtfully and respectfully with good-willed reciprocity from both sides of the lectern, until one night after I had made the statement that the kingdom of heaven is a kingdom of the poor and not of the rich, and asked, "So who are the rich?"

There was a pregnant pause, and nobody said a word.

So I said that if I were to take a yard stick and hold it vertically, and if it represented the per-capita income of all the people in the world, then every one of us in the building that night would be in the upper half inch of the stick. "That makes you and me the rich," I said. And at this—I kid you not—a woman straightened right up in her seat and yelled at me, "Don't talk to me about my money!"

The odd thing is, the lady who said this was a bright, thoughtful, supportive member of the class and I had a good deal of respect for her (to this day I would say "have" instead of "had," but she has since passed away). Given that, it would be far too easy, and I think quite mistaken of me, to simply ask myself, "How could she have been so wrong, so selfish, so far off base?" I don't think that's the wise question. But what I still wonder, to this day, is why did she react the way she did? She was bright. Why didn't she say something else, and contribute to the discussion? Why did she just give this emotional interjection that effectively shut the conversation down?

I can only guess, but I tend to think that for those of us who are rich and who claim Christianity, somewhere deep down we know "our money" is a problem. By this I mean that I think we know, deep down, that there is an issue with our wealth and we have not resolved the issue to our own satisfaction. Further, I think that maybe we realize the resolution would be either: to come up with an effective defense of our wealth; or to give up our wealth. And finally, I think we don't want to play the gamble of honestly seeking this resolution because doing so would incur the risk of having to acknowledge the latter alternative. So, we avoid the issue whenever possible. But of course it can't be avoided entirely. Once in a while somebody will bring it up publicly, or in moments of repose we will raise the question within our own hearts and minds. In both of these cases, it seems that the best we can usually muster are lines of discussion which have become so predictable that they have become clichés.

As noted in my previous post, I'll present a few of these in upcoming posts.

I've been touching upon the subject of loving God and loving others; that the center of Christian living rests in the vicinity of these two great commandments. Because they are so central to biblical teaching, it isn't difficult to talk about almost anything in Christianity and relate it to these two themes. Recently I've also been dancing around social justice, and it is a case in point, for to be concerned with and act on behalf of social justice is a manifestation of loving others and, by extension, of loving God. The question is, if you turn that statement, does a necessity result? Does loving God and loving others necessarily mean that you are concerned with and act on behalf of social justice? I believe so, and would like to open up some personal opinions on the issue.

I write once in a while on a problem I have with the fact that many people have characterized the word love by labeling it as an action. Now, with respect to using this classification in order to separate actively loving somebody from the idea of simply having an emotional feeling for them, I agree. Similarly, it is a good idea—as well as a useful admonition to myself—to perform this same separation with respect to a purely intellectual view of what love should be. That is to say, it doesn't do much good to have beautiful, profound ideals of what Godly love might be, if you never act upon them. Where I have a problem is in settling for the idea that love is merely an action, and nothing more. The problem I have with this is that it places love in the position of being one more thing which Man can claim as his own, as if love does not and could not exist—doesn't happen—without Man. So, rather simply, I take the stand that Love with a capital L, Love that comes from and is God, exists within Man but also transcends and exists independently of Man. Having said all that, I claim that the Love with which we are supposed to concern ourselves as Christians is the Love of God that is God, that it can be and must be experienced, that it can be and must be entered into, and that we can and should literally become a part of it in both the ontological and the active senses. In so doing, we become Love's inspired action in this place we call the world.

Because I have this view my interpretation of 1 John, as an example, is when the writer says "[if you know God, you'll love. If you don't love, you don't know God]" what he means is that if you've experienced God, you can't help but become a part of his love, which leads to action in the world. And he also means that if you aren't a part of that love, then obviously you haven't experienced God. To me this seems much more matter-of-fact and spiritually sound than a more typical, legally based interpretation which substitutes the presence of actions accepted as loving for any actual knowledge of God; the latter being a matter of confusing simple action with a state of spiritual being. But, as I've also noted previously, this creates a great area of concern for me in regard to my own Christian faith. Without going into the specifics all over again and yet including some of my most recent posts, the issue is this: if one is not primarily concerned—genuinely concerned in a deeply inspired and actively loving way—with the social injustices and suffering that other people endure in this world, then that person really must question whether he or she knows God at all. If, for example, I can sit and see in the newspaper the plight of millions of people who are starving or otherwise being systematically slaughtered by individuals or institutions while I blithely sip my Starbucks and circle my thumb around the wheel of my iPod, well—there is almost certainly something seriously, seriously wrong with me as a child of God. There is no way around this. There is no way around it, and I am rapidly reaching a point in life where I am unwilling to accept the aversion to, excuses concerning, and complacency toward this issue; all of these being inherent in my personal, formal Christian tradition.

In line with the posts on loving God, loving others and social justice, over the next few weeks or months I will be offering a few posts dealing with these aversions and excuses.

It is easy enough to tell the poor to accept their poverty as God's will when you yourself have warm clothes and plenty of food and medical care and a roof over your head and no worry about the rent. But if you want them to believe you—try to share some of their poverty and see if you can accept it as God's will yourself! —New Seeds, Chapter 24

Several months ago, probably closer to a year ago, I began putting together a post but had some problems working it out in my mind. I thought up until this week that I had eventually posted it, but I can find it nowhere, so I'm guessing that I didn't. In that case, it's a nice thing that I didn't, because I think I've now remedied the problem I was having (best as I can recall) with feeling good about posting it in the first place.

The post was supposed to be the first of three concerning "dirty little secrets" of Christian faith (note, please, that I'm referring to specific traditions in modern Christian faith; not Christian faith in general). Well, so I didn't publish the first, I forgot the second, and I ended up posting the third as "Faith, Belief, Reality etc. Part III." Now that I recently posted some ideas on judgment, I think I'm ready to publish the first post now, in a slightly edited form without some introductory materials concerning dirty little secrets. I'll include the post here and now, and append a comment or two related to the judgment post:

[begin]

A lot of us, Christian or not, spend a fair amount of time talking about "justice." Oftentimes, perhaps usually, we talk about how justice was or was not carried out in a particular criminal or civil case. Sometimes we talk about justice in terms of our Christian faith, generally when we talk about Heaven and Hell and who will or should go to either place. In the majority of all these cases we like to say we "cry out" for justice to be served, which is in itself a borrowing of language inherited from religious tradition. We believe, for whatever reasons, that crying out for justice is a good, moral, Godly thing for us to do. And so it is. But now we have to get a little closer to the dirty little secret, and to inch toward it I'll start with Micah, who is credited with saying:

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8, NRSV)

Some English translations of the Old Testament give us "mercy" instead of kindness in this verse, and I'm not sure which, if either, is closer to the Hebrew. I'm going to go with mercy, since it's what I've heard most often and because, admittedly, it goes better with my point. To love mercy implies that we will extend mercy, and extending mercy necessitates that beforehand a wrong must have been committed. (After all, if none had been committed, there would be no need for mercy.) In short, it seems to me that if we accept that the three things Micah admonishes us to pursue are not mutually exclusive—and there is no reason to think they are so—then mercy is dealing with gracious forgiveness toward wrong-doing and if so, then the justice we are supposed to "do" is not about dispensing an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth. It is not about people "getting what they deserve." Justice here cannot be about punishing wrong, nor about giving another person their just desserts. So here's the beginning of the dirty little secret: The justice we typically seek in mainstream Christianity is not the justice God asks of us, but is a purposeful misinterpretation on our parts; one which allows us to ignore what Micah says the LORD really requires of us: that we be socially just.

I have long believed and often said that every problem of man comes down to his frighteningly insidious and clever pride. In the case of ourselves vis-à-vis Micah, what we have is a pride that tells us we should be able to possess whatever we want in life no matter what the cost to those who can't seem to get what they need in life. It is pride that tells us that we deserve spoils and they don't, because, simply, we are good and they are not (in a sort of incestuous reasoning , we have previously concluded, via our poor theology, that they are not good because they do not have). Once this pride convinces us that justice is about punishment and vengeance rather than social welfare and fairness, then we can tell—which is to say, lie to—ourselves that we cry out for justice, while we commit all manner of crimes against social justice. Furthermore, because this twisted view of life necessitates that we relegate the justice for which we "must" cry out to the realm of punishment and just desserts, we throw mercy out the window, saving it as well for those whom we judge to be deserving—which we read as those who haven't really done anything wrong other than what we ourselves may have already done or are currently doing. In short, we somehow manage to make sure that justice and mercy are defined in such a way that each affords us personally the most benefit possible. Whatever that psychological, intellectual "somehow" may be, it is allowed to succeed because it is approved by our pride.

What the secret comes down to, the dirty little secret too dirty for our minds to allow to bubble up to the surface of our consciences, is that we rich, Bible-thumping Christians are not leading the lives God asks us to live. In spite of all our rhetoric, in spite of all our crying out, in spite of all our so-called morality, we are missing the basic, essential facts of Godliness. And dirtiest of all, when it comes down to it and the rubber meets the road, we aren't really willing to face the facts. Plain and simple, we don't want to be in line with God's program. We don't want to be, because we are too selfish. We don't want to be, because we don't want to share. We don't want to be, because we would rather believe that we deserve life's extravagant spoils and others deserve comparatively nothing. We don't want to be, because in the end we care about ourselves far more than we care about others. We don't want to be, because we like it this way. We don't want to be, because it's a lot more fun to wheel our SUV through the drive-thru than it is to be like much of the rest of the world: hungry, sick and suffering from exposure to the elements. Besides, what thinking person can't see the truth that some of us are blessed because of who we are, some are cursed because of who they are, and this is the way life always will and should be? (Well and of course, notwithstanding that Micah, the other prophets and Jesus disagree.)

Many of us, and I fear myself included, are hypocrites in the realm of justice. It's a secret that only we don't know.

[end]

As best as I can recall (and believe me, my memory is not so great anymore), the problem I had with this post was questioning myself on my interpretation of the word justice. I seem to recall going a few rounds in my head about whether or not I was being sufficiently open to the form of justice that I was rejecting. But, after reviewing Jesus' invective in Matthew, where (it seems clear to me, anyway) that Jesus is quoting the prophets regarding justice, mercy and humility, I have to side with my original thoughts. Jesus was far more interested in social justice (or, more correctly, the lack thereof) in his time than about "legal" justice. What is significant here is that I can find no evidence that the Pharisees, scribes and such were short on the "legal" justice. To the point, given that these men were more than willing to deny, cast out and punish those whom they considered to fall short, and given that in such an environment Jesus would say they had neglected justice, I really must conclude that Jesus' take on the prophet was that the reference is to social justice.

Do I feel better? Yes, in that I think the original post stands on firm footing. And no, in that I think the post stands on firm footing.

Do not be too quick to assume your enemy is a savage just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy because he thinks you are a savage. Or perhaps he is afraid of you because he feels that you are afraid of him. And perhaps if he believed you were capable of loving him he would no longer be your enemy.

Do not be too quick to assume that your enemy is an enemy of God just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy precisely because he can find nothing in you that gives glory to God. Perhaps he fears you because he can find nothing in you of God's love and God's kindness and God's patience and mercy and understanding of the weaknesses of men.

Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God, for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice, your mediocrity and materialism, your sensuality and selfishness that have killed his faith. —New Seeds, Chapter 24

The website speakingoffaith.org is offering up discussions surrounding the life, work, and teachings of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Today I listened to one of their podcasts, which is available here. I highly recommend giving it a listen if you have any interest in God, spirituality, mysticism, humanity, etc. Which is to say, if you have any interest in a relevant God, a God who transcends the petty bounds of human religious concepts, check it out.

I can't explain what it means to me to listen to interviews like the one in this podcast. The feeling of relief and solace in knowing that the way I view these kinds of topics is in line with the thinking of somebody else, well… I guess that partial sentence only makes sense if I admit that when I listen to this type of interview I am at once reminded that in the circles I inhabit in life, in the religious tradition I have grown up with, I am all but alone. And so to be presented with Heschel's work, to hear it talked about and valued, is at once to receive a sort of validation—encouragement is a much better word—and to concurrently recognize all over and anew again that I need that encouragement because nowhere else, in human-to-human contact, do I find it. This is not self pity. But it is indeed a deep, incumbent loneliness and sorrow.

At any rate, please. Check out the podcast. Download it and listen to it as you can. It is not the most profound thing you'll ever here, but Heschel's view of God is quite wonderful.

Some people think it is enough to have one virtue, like kindness or broadmindedness or charity, and let everything else go. But if you are unselfish in one way and selfish in twenty-five other ways your virtue will not do you much good. In fact, it will probably turn out to be nothing more than a twenty-sixth variety of the same selfishness, disguised as virtue.

Therefore do not think that because you seem to have some good quality, all the evil in you can be excused or forgotten on that account alone. —New Seeds, Chapter 24

Continuing my previous post, here's quite a long ramble concerning the "complication" I mentioned…

To look at a person or a group who claims to be Christian, and to say the religion practiced thereby is "not much of a Christianity" because it is divisive, is a dicey stand to take. It is to create a sort of division, seems contradictory, and some might even say is hypocritical. I think it's fair to say that it is not a clearly defensible position to take, similar to saying, "I accept everybody except those who can't accept other people," or, "I believe (absolutely) that all things are relative." I'm well aware of this, and by and large I have long struggled, and continue to struggle, to not draw lines and to be very careful not to take stands which divide. The problem is, there isn't any way to have convictions for one's life without drawing lines and taking stands somewhere, and to draw lines and take stands means that sometimes you make claims that divide. By the way, I should mention that while this probably seems as obvious as the sun in the sky to most of you, it's something that I've really had a hard time with. Perhaps I've just gotten high-centered in my thinking somewhere back in a long ago, and let's not forget personal psychology; I just don't like causing conflict and I'm a bit of a cowardly little thing. So. What to do?

All of this is wrapped up in a realm of general fear, foreboding and mystique in Christian religion; the idea of "judging" other people:

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye.—Matthew 7:1-5 (NRSV)

I have to note that I've noticed a great number of Christians who, in my opinion, pretty much fail at this injunction. Judgment seems to be high on their can-do list, ranging from judging a person's entire worldview all the way down to attitudes revealed via common gossip: "Do you know what he said she said? Can you believe that? What kind of a person says something like that?" Even at the small scale this is judging in a certain sense, and not just judging, but reveling in the act of it; it's a sad curiosity that sometimes Christians form social bonds based upon shared judgment against others. But, part of my problem is that I've never gotten it straight in my mind as to just what "judge" is supposed to mean. I use the word, I talk about the concept in argument, but what exactly does it mean? Does it mean simply on emotional human terms, does it mean judging facts, behaviors, beliefs, eternal salvation or what? Does it mean I don't like somebody, that I disagree with them, or what? To my mind those forms of judgment—disagreement and (dis)affection—are natural and acceptable. But often we use the word in the area of judging whether a person is "good or bad." I'm not sure this clarifies the issue at all; we never well define what "good" and "bad" mean, but the implication is that we consider them morally inferior to ourselves. I seriously doubt that Jesus would approve of this. We use the word "judge" more definitively in terms of a person's "eternity status," as in, "Yep, that one over there is going to hell for sure if he doesn't change his ways," and that sort of thing. I also seriously doubt that Jesus would approve of this usage, and in fact I'm convinced that he would not. Now, most Christians will say they're judging behavior and acts, not people and souls. To do this is a pretty supportable idea Biblically; it's okay to say that murder is wrong, and you can do it without casting judgment on whether the murderer is morally inferior or going to hell. But the truth is, I'm not sure that the majority of Christians make the distinction.

There's another factor that has long confused me, too. Look at what Jesus says, according to Matthew, in the following invective:

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted. But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. Woe to you, blind guides, who say, 'Whoever swears by the sanctuary is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by the oath. ' You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred? And you say, 'Whoever swears by the altar is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gift that is on the altar is bound by the oath.' How blind you are! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it; and whoever swears by the sanctuary, swears by it and by the one who dwells in it; and whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by the one who is seated upon it. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel! Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous, and you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.' Thus you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your ancestors. You snakes, you brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell?" Matthew 23:1-33 (NRSV)

For a person who said do not judge, and for a person who said he was not here to judge the world, Jesus obviously held a strong stand concerning the behavior of these people and—seemingly—their state in the face of God. At first blush, if he wasn't judging them in some way, I don't know what I should call it. So I've long asked myself, "If Jesus said don't judge, isn't he violating his own idea here? Isn't this inconsistent?" But, I think there's a fairly obvious connection or two between the two passages: first of all, in three words, "Pride is bad." Working it out in relation to these passages, if you think about it, pride is at the root of casting judgment, it's at the root of placing yourself above others, it's at the root of condemning others, and it's at the root of hypocrisy. (Admittedly, my conclusion comes as no great surprise, since I believe strongly that pride is the root of all our human problems, so my take on these passages may be more than a bit biased.)

Pride causes us to view ourselves in relation to other people rather than in relation to God. I really tend to believe that Jesus understood that what is good or bad about a person at the most fundamental levels is known only by God. Furthermore, the knowledge between individual and God is the only one that matters. To judge another in a moral sense is to manifest the fact that you are placing yourself in the place of God. Being hypocritical manifests that you are worried about how others see you, about your appearance in their eyes, rather than about how you stand in relationship with God. In short, judging others and hypocrisy are both signs that we have our focus all wrong. Both indicate that we have adopted a person-to-person view of life, rather than a God-to-person view of life. We have failed to understand that all human interrelations are person-to-God-to-person. We have pushed God aside, and attempted to usurp God's position as God. I think this is what steamed Jesus so greatly about the scribes and Pharisees. They talked a great deal about God, but didn't have room for God. All they had room for was placing themselves alongside others, with themselves in the superior position. Jesus just couldn't stand for this. He drew a line. It is very interesting to note that overall in Jesus' ministry he accepted the humble people, some of whom were tax collectors, prostitutes, drunks and the like. But he drew the line at pride.

As to the second connection between the passages, a fair question to ask would be, "So in this case, Jesus didn't seem to allow for the God-person relationship with the scribes and Pharisees. He stepped right in and judged them." Well, apparently, yes, unless one would allow for a view I consider likely. Note that Jesus in the earlier passage says that we ourselves determine the measure of judgment that is poured out upon us. Could it be that Jesus is saying, "Given that you people condemn others based upon a system that you yourself fail to fulfill, given that you are guilty of those things you claim sentence one to hell, then how can you avoid being sentenced to it yourself?" In other words, Jesus wasn't himself judging the scribes and Pharisees; his point was that they were guilty under the standards of judgment they wielded against others. The hypocrites judged themselves, and he was merely pointing it out. While I admit that the felt need to find some consistency between the two passages is mostly a matter of the western modernity's influences in my mind, I consider this analysis to be reasonable enough to be considered seriously. If it is in anyway correct, then there is a contemporary counterpart to it that should be considered, most of all by Christians who are doctrinally legalistic.

There are Christians who claim that believing the "correct" Christian doctrine is absolutely essential to salvation. I'm not saying they simply believe you have to have the Trinity, Immaculate Conception and Resurrection correct. I'm saying they believe things like, oh, if you have a kitchen in your church building, or you play an organ while you sing hymns, or you get the roles of men and women in church mixed up, you're doomed. Needless to say, if you're of a different denomination than they, or perhaps a different congregation of the same denomination, well, you're doomed. I've actually had a conversation with a guy that went like this:

Me: So, are you saying that the people in your church are the only ones going to Heaven?

Him: Oh no. I wouldn't say that. The Bible says we aren't to judge others. But I will say that only people who follow the Bible correctly are going to Heaven. I believe the Bible teaches this quite clearly.

Me: So would you say, though, that only your church follows the Bible correctly?

Him: Well, yes. That's why I'm here in this church.

Me: So you're saying that your church is the only ones going to Heaven?

Him: No. I didn't say that.

Well… yeah, he did. And he's not alone. What's most unsettling about this view is that if you ask somebody who is deeply committed to it, "But what about those people who are humble of heart in following a different doctrine? Won't they be saved in the end by a loving God who reads the hearts of men?" they will answer, "No. I know that sounds like it would be nice, but the Bible teaches that 'there is a way that seems right to man, yet leads to destruction,' and, 'Many people will say to me on that day, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and I will say them to them, Away from me, for I never knew you'." There is no room in these people's minds for being mistaken about what the Bible "really teaches." So, to put things into their frame of reference, wherein a person meets God on Judgment Day and accounts for one's life, it seems to me it would have to go something like this: (1) Since they have said that correct doctrine is essential (the key) to salvation, God will use doctrine to judge them. (2) Obviously, their doctrine is imperfect (as is true of all doctrines), so they deserve to perish. (3) In response, a loving God could and would accept them in Grace and Mercy anyway, based upon humility of heart in their beliefs and upon their love for Him alone, but ... (4) They themselves have said this counts for nothing. Their bad. In this hypothetical scenario, such people would stand condemned, and solely by their own standards; not God's. To my mind, this is essentially why Jesus presented the scribes and Pharisees with a bleak and tragic outlook. They had created this same situation for themselves, and Jesus was stating the obvious. But I digress a bit.

My point? Drawing lines and taking stands are things to do—things we must do—between ourselves and God. Yes, they affect how we live and what we judge as right or wrong for ourselves. They sometimes divide us from others in beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. But are the lines we draw to be lines for other men and women as well? I think not. I think those lines are their business, between them and God. It is okay to disagree with some people. It is okay to not like some people. But it is not okay to presume the ultimate moral state of another, nor his or her ultimate standing in relation to God. Nor is it okay to hate. So, when I spoke in the previous post about divisive forms of Christianity "not being much a Christianity," I meant it. I take that stand. But in making such a statement, be it clear that I'm disagreeing with doctrine; namely doctrine that denies entrance to God's Kingdom from those who humbly desire to be a part of it. Perhaps I am also going so far as to not like some of my fellow Christians. But as for their ultimate moral state and ultimate standing with God? As far as I can tell, they're right here with me, as equals, in strength and weakness, in wisdom and foolishness, for good and for bad, warts and all. Who am I to deny them the Kingdom? I cannot and would not. Thanks be to God, who is no respecter of persons and accepts all of us who remain humble before him in all our disparate—and undoubtedly flawed—beliefs. May God rid me of all my pride, and keep me safe in an ever maturing humility.

This post has an underlying complication, which to my mind is a rather large one, that I will try to address in a later post; one that I started this past week but have yet to finish.

In the vivid darkness of God within us there sometimes come deep movements of love that deliver us entirely, for a moment, from our old burden of selfishness, and number us among those little children of whom is the Kingdom of Heaven.

And when God allows us to fall back into our own confusion of desires and judgments and temptations, we carry a scar over the place where that joy exulted for moment in our hearts.

The scar burns us. The sore wound aches within us, and we remember that we have fallen back into what we are not, and are not yet allowed to remain where God would have us belong. We long for the place He has destined for us and weep with desire for the time when this pure poverty will catch us and hold us in its liberty and never let us go, when we will never fall back from the Paradise of the simple and the little children into the forum of prudence where the wise of this world go up and down in sorrow and set their traps for a happiness that cannot exist. —New Seeds, chapter 31

There are moments in God, beautiful, mind-numbing moments, where the Love of God is glimpsed and all of life becomes crystal clear in its profound simplicity. To the human mind God is full of paradoxes, and the profound nature of that simplicity is one of them. It's an absolutely glorious thing. But true, the moment never lasts, and only the scar remains. And those scars, over time, remind us of God's Love while we are in our normal everyday living. We remember, though we cannot feel at the moment, that it answers everything. We hold onto enough of our memory of those moments that our view of life is forver changed. Even though we fall back to our weakened states of self-absorption, we never forget that Love rules all, and that we are on this earth to be part of that Love.

The souvenirs brought back to our house this weekend include a book of poetry and a poster from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial. I was greatly touched that my wife and daughter would pick these two gifts for me. I like to think that, perhaps, they say something of what I try to stand for in life; that even though I am weak and frail and full of selfishness, I carry the scars and do not forget their pain. The poster is of a very famous quote by Martin Niemoller, a quote which exists in many variations:

In Germany, they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist;

And then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist;

And then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew;

And then . . . they came for me . . . and by that time there was no one left to speak up.

Niemoller is a very controversial figure because in the 1930's he held anti-Semitic views. To be clear, I know almost nothing of Niemoller's life, but it remains that this quote (or rather, versions of it) appear on walls at both the U.S. and New England Holocaust Memorials. For good or for bad, Niemoller has become somewhat of a hero in relation to the Holocaust. It may be that Niemoller serves as a perfect example of his poem. He didn't speak up for those who were "different" from him, and in the end the system caught up with him—a lesson we should take to heart, I think. Do not believe that we stand alone, cherished and special, while others fall by the wayside. Hatred, fear and insanity are rarely satisfied in erasing only one or two "different" classes of people. Once a single class is done and gone, those who hate have nothing left to do, no one left to hate, until they can invent the next class that is not quite enough like them, and so must be eliminated. The poster I was given notes that the Nazi party created colored symbols to denote each class of people they needed to eliminate in order to cleanse society. Among them were the communists, the socialists, the Jews, the gypsies, the homosexuals, the Jehovah's Witnesses and the emigrants. Should this list give us pause? I think so. I think a list, period, should give us pause.

In those moments where one touches the Love of God, when one glimpses briefly through the gate of the Kingdom of Heaven, one learns that God's love is about a Oneness; about a Love that gathers us one to another in God and makes us all one in God's presence. To divide humans into groups, factions and classes is the antithesis of Loving them. A Christianity which divides and casts out, therefore and quite clearly, is really not much of a Christianity. Yet, to say so is to cause division, and here is where I will work on the complication—another day.