Violence--What to Do?

I’ll be guest speaker at the First Existentialist Congregation at 11 a.m. this Sunday, June 16, 2013, reflecting on “Spiritual Fathers and Mothers,” 470 Candler Park Dr. NE, Atlanta, GA 30307-2113.

I would think regular readers might have hoped for a little “bucking up” in this blog after one or more of the recent acts of violence we’ve experienced either firsthand or through the media. I did write about Newtown, but not about the Boston Marathon bombing. You see, West, Texas had their devastating explosion and Syria and Iraq were  experiencing deadly attacks about the same time, and I couldn’t ignore their suffering. Then the collapse of the garment factory in Bangladesh. And more recently we have the killer tornado of Moore, Oklahoma.

And these examples are simply set against the daily violence throughout the world among and between peoples, nations, and religions, not to mention the violence visited hourly upon the environment and animals and habitats.

I’d guess that in a single evening of watching television, from news to ubiquitous crime dramas, the average viewer witnesses more violence than many once experienced in a lifetime, save those in war zones or crime-ridden neighborhoods. What to do?

Can we adopt the position of a Buddha-like character in my (unpublished) mystery novel Angus Dei simply that “Violence is”? Philosophically that’s safer, until violence happens to us or those we care about.

Can we rise above violence? Given that violence may come with any vote, purchase, tax, commodity, meal, etc., rising above violence hardly seems possible. An average citizen and consumer may be as guilty of violence as any army of Genghis Khan!

And for Jesus, the mere thought was equivalent to the deed. I feel the most violent after watching the news: I know exactly what to do with or what should be done to opponents and oppressors, Congress and criminals. That’s why I try not to wield my sword—my pen or my computer—in the evening!

And, after reading the morning paper, that’s why I need morning prayer time to recover my equilibrium and recoup my energy and generosity.  Presently I am once again using the Psalms to do that, but I am jumping over the parts calling for vengeance or vindication or the destruction of enemies. My training suggests that this is politically or spiritually incorrect, as I should be praying the psalms on behalf of those who are crying out for justice at the expense of their oppressors. Though I do lift those enduring violence in prayer, after morning prayer I don’t want to feel like I do after the evening news or an episode of Criminal Minds or The Newsroom.

During a retreat I led, the most significant thing that got said came from a woman who had the “ah-hah” realization that she was spending so much time listing justice concerns in her prayers that she had no room for “resting in God.”

“When I awake I shall be filled with the vision of you,” Psalm 17:15b (NJB) greets God. This could be our mantra in preparation for facing the world.

Alongside the psalms I am using the contemporary “psalms” of J. Barrie Shepherd from his recent book Between Mirage and Miracle. In the aptly-titled “Catch of the Day—Chebeague Island, Maine,” he compares his morning prayer to lobster boats going out to sea at dawn: 

Their dream, as mine—

afloat upon a steep and surging mystery—

to lure and catch a portion of life’s bounty,

a momentary savoring, at least,

of an elusive sweetness that lies hidden

in the old, encircling deep.

  

Related posts:

Newtown to Newcountry? “We Must Change.”

A Pre-emptive Peace

Copyright © 2013 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. Check out past posts in the right rail on the blogsite.

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God Is Not a Control Freak

God is not a control freak! Evolution should be enough to prove this point. Evil too. And free will.

And yet, when faced with tragedies, such as Sandy or Newtown or AIDS, many people expect God to be at “his” control panel avoiding them. There is much theological handwringing in commentaries and blogs, even by—or especially from—those uncertain about God’s very existence.

With his book, The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God, Process philosopher-theologian Charles Hartshorne helped me shed my need to believe in a God in absolute control when I was a college student in the early ’70s.  Who are you most likely to love, he posits, the most loving person or the most powerful person? Most of us would opt for the most loving. So it is with God.

Do we want a God who is all-powerful or all-loving? We can’t have both and be satisfied with a God who permits the Holocaust, genocide, war, and tsunamis.

But by the time I published my second book (1990), Come Home!, a book reclaiming Christianity for LGBT people, I found I wasn’t completely satisfied with this resolution, one that gets God off the hook for bad things happening to good and bad people. I had come to the realization that love is God’s power.

Our human notion of power is distorted, I came to believe, a notion of power that’s about coercion rather than persuasion, control rather than compassion. And a central thread of the Bible depicts a God of persuasion, a Good Shepherd more than a king, a Servant more than a master, Empowering more than in power. Yes, there are biblical texts that depict God and even Jesus as king, master, in charge—but that’s more our need than God’s, in my view. God demonstrates leadership, that gift of persuading us to do the right thing, to practice the way of justice and mercy. That’s the power of love.

The final phrase of the prayer Jesus taught his disciples is “deliver us from evil.” Putting this request last indicates to me its importance. When I began saying the prayer daily, I thought I was praying that God would keep evil things from happening to me. But now I believe—no, now I know that I am praying that I root out the potential for evil in myself: my indifference, my cruelty, my selfishness, my inattentiveness, my ignorance, my insensitivity, my sins. I should have “gotten” this long ago by the phrase that precedes “deliver us from evil”: “lead us not into temptation.”

I have also come to believe that everything that happens to us—good and evil—is an opportunity for what Thomas Moore calls soul-shaping, and what Henri Nouwen described as turning negatives into positives, the one-time alchemy of the photographer. The apostle Paul understood this when he said “nothing can separate us from the love of God” in the same epistle to the Romans that he opined “all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to God’s purpose.” In a mirrored understanding of the first sentence, everything may connect us to the love of God. Faith gives us a context of meaning in which even the evil we encounter may transform us into more loving and therefore more godly beings.

The public is invited to Henri Nouwen: The Wounded Healer, a spiritual formation course led by Rev. Chris Glaser, a student and friend of the late Christian author, Feb 28-Mar 3, Columbia Theological Seminary, Atlanta, GA. No prerequisite course is required. Glaser’s book, Henri’s Mantle: 100Meditations on Nouwen’s Legacy, is available on Amazon.

Copyright © 2012 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Suggested uses: personal reflection, contemporary readings in worship, conversation starters in classes.  This ministry is entirely funded by your donations. Please click here to make a tax-deductible contribution. Thank you! 

Newtown to Newcountry? "We Must Change."

Working from home a week ago, Wade mentioned he had received a CNN news flash on his phone that there had been another mass shooting. Busy finishing up the duties of my online course on sexuality and Christianity, I acknowledged this latest shooting with an “uh-huh” and continued working.

Only toward the end of the day did I learn the victims were children and the site an elementary school. I lost it. Tears immediately came to my eyes. First graders, six- and seven-year-olds, are particularly precious innocents to me. “Thy childish essence was from God,” Charles Dickens wrote of another such child. I lost it again when it was reported that wails could be heard coming from inside the fire station when their parents learned their fate. And the educators—principal, teachers, teacher’s aide—who  lost their lives, trying to protect “their kids”: OMG, OMG, OMG.

Moments of silence are being observed the day I write this, one week later, in memory of those so brutalized. Silence is good; it reminds us that there is nothing to be said adequate to this occasion. It gives us a chance to catch our breath and remember theirs. It gives a chance to reflect. But I’ve needed more than a moment. I’ve needed a week, which is why this wasn’t last week’s post. And even now it seems presumptuous, even dangerous to venture thoughts on the incomprehensible tragedy. I felt sorry for all those pastors and rabbis and imams who had to preach that weekend.

In his public reflections, President Barack Obama said of us Americans, “We must change.” Having both worked and volunteered in congregations, on campuses, and in community organizations, I have learned that those are the three most challenging and most resisted words. “We must change.”

Psychologist M. Scott Peck defined evil as “the unquestioned self,” which he saw at work both in institutions and individuals, an inability even to imagine one’s self or one’s group being wrong. I have used it to describe the church’s resistance to gay people. Whereas gay people, like all outsiders, usually grew up questioning ourselves, the church resisted questioning its prejudice and exclusion.

“We must change” is predicated on questioning ourselves and our institutions and overcoming our inertia, something we are reluctant to do. For Christians, this means also considering how Jesus would view us.

On departure from the presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned of the “military-industrial complex,” which he had earlier warned would take food from the hungry. But his original draft warned of the “military-industrial-congressional complex.” He was persuaded to take “congressional” out, but how needful the warning is today, as we witness congressional impasse and collusion with weapons manufacturers, other major corporations, and the National Rifle Association. (See the New York Times editorial explaining that the NRA actually represents gun manufacturers, not gun owners. Btw, in my view, the NRA’s proposal of a guard in every school is the solution of a third-grader [apologies to third-graders] that would only add to the body count and further burden insufficiently-funded schools.)

When the Virginia Tech mass shooting occurred years ago, I led a prayer for that campus during a regularly scheduled prayer service of a church I was serving in another part of the country. I was stunned to have another progressive Christian offer what amounted to a “rebuttal” prayer, deriding our horror at that violence when things like that happened all the time in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course we frequently prayed for Iraq and Afghanistan in that service. But that night, I felt particularly close to those on the Virginia Tech campus because I had spoken there, made friends there, one of whom I called to see how everyone was coping and if any I knew were among the casualties.

Similarly, I felt close to those on the campus of Sandy Hook Elementary School because my mother spent her entire professional life teaching first-graders, and I remember every day after school seeing how those innocents hung affectionately on my mother, even when they had moved to upper grades, because they loved her so and she loved them so. I could see her also putting her body between the shooter and those innocents.

At the same time, I am mindful of the ten Afghanistan schoolgirls, all under 12 years of age, killed in the blast of a Soviet-era landmine as they collected firewood for their homes on the Monday following the Newtown shootings.

“We must change.” That means me, and you, this nation and the world.

Copyright © 2012 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Suggested uses: personal reflection, contemporary readings in worship, conversation starters in classes.  This ministry is entirely funded by your donations. Please click hereto make a tax-deductible contribution. Thank you!