Good Catch, Murr: Clearer Thinking on Israel and Gaza

 

Sometimes your kids point you in the right direction. 

The following is from a text exchange with a thoughtful middle daughter who wanted to make sure I'm reminding good church folks to pray for the entire Israel/Gaza situation, and not just part of it. Her comments (not published but answered here) helped to clarify a few things for me. Good catch, Murr.

Here's the thing: people aren’t grasping that, this time, there won’t be any winners.  Still, they insistently choose a side and get rabidly, predictably angry when others choose differently. For all concerned, especially Jesus' followers, it's another adventure in missing the point.

What’s also missed is how destructive it can become here. The anti-Semitism on display around the country and at a prominent intersection in our fair city is starting to look like Kristallnacht to me and Jews are justifiably scared. Some homegrown gutter savages, aping Hamas gutter savages, have concluded they’ve been anointed and empowered to attack and kill Middle Eastern looking Americans. Little ones even. I say ‘savage’ because I don’t believe they’re deranged kooks. They are Eric Hoffer’s truest True Believers with a twist of old-style godless nationalism or the new and less improved Christian nationalism. The banality of evil is running our streets with a high-powered weapon under its jacket.

Currently, both political parties are in almost complete disarray and appear to be nearly non-functional and unequal to the hour. I can foresee the Chicago convention next summer being a much uglier replay of the 1968 convention with the summer of 2020 as dress rehearsal. I’m listening to smart people on all sides saying pretty stupid things and I’m really getting worried.

Iran, Russia and China are watching - all very bad actors - and the likelihood of international blundering hasn’t been this high since the lead up to the War to End All Wars that ended nothing and unleashed decades of suffering. I’m telling anybody who will listen that prayer - extraordinary prayer - is the only way out because I see a high likelihood of a demonic element in all of it. The confusion level is a leading indicator.

 "Oh, that You would rend the heavens and come down!"  Isaiah 64:1

Christians who can’t see the need or won’t pray Isaiah-like prayers and prefer to jump on a meme team are lazy and beyond reprehensible. They are in gross dereliction of duty and rival gods have replaced their first love.

Christian nationalism, tribalism, maniacal Islamic terrorism and some strains even of Israeli grievance revenge are all motivated by a hidden but very nasty brand of evil. Without playing the equivalence game, I’m strongly convinced there are doses of spiritual darkness in all of it. With delight, the principalities and powers fiends, who are very real, are working overtime.

When people take strong, exclusive, my-side-is-the-right-side stands, it’s always informative to notice what they won’t talk about. To varying degrees, this time around, everyone has a reason to hang their heads. Again, no winners and plenty of losers who didn’t ask to be included. In Thomas Merton’s phrase, most of us are guilty by-standers with much to confess.

The whole thing is a horror show and I’m having trouble seeing Jesus in any of it: women and girls of all ages anally raped while tied to trees or their own beds, babies crushed under buildings, thousands on both sides of the barrier forced to leave home. Dozens of hungry, frightened old people in suffocating confinement as bombs collapse their tunnel prison. Intentional targeting and regrettable accidents makes for a slaughter of innocents even Herod couldn’t have envisioned. The weeping agony of thousands of fellow image bearers is tough to process. If Christians, Arabs, Jews, protesters, counter protesters and at least ten thousand apologists, columnists and talking heads could once see it for the unwinnable horror show it is, they’d realize picking sides is pointless because no one will win. Just stop it. I keep thinking of Mark Twain’s War Prayer.

Thanks again, Murr. After all this texting my thinking is a lot clearer. But I don't feel better.

 

 

No Virginia, Religion Isn't Dying

 The increasingly frequent announcements that the church in America is declining come with hand wringing and pearl clutching for some and thinly veiled glee for others. It's rare to hear a dispassionate religion-is-dying report because nearly everyone has a stake in it. Insiders are distressed to see loved and valued institutions and practices degrade and lose influence. Outsiders are happy to be done with the one unacceptable people's opiate we have left.

Religion is dying. It's a silly claim.

It's silly, but it's not a new prediction. A ton of intellectual heavyweights have been sure that religion, especially Christianity, has run its course (several times) and is on its way out. The list includes Nietzsche, Marx, Weber, Oliver Wendell Holmes and novelists too many to mention. The death of religion theme even worked its way into a Matthew Arnold poem that pictures faith as an ocean with its "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar." No surprises with Arnold because you can't have a decent 19th century English poet without a club membership, interesting facial hair and a dose of delicious melancholy.

Mark Twain observed, "Man is the religious animal." Religion can't die as long as humans survive, but it can change - radically and perhaps suddenly. Could it be that for some, Christianity, God, text-based religions and institutional faiths are being replaced by other religions - rivals? 

Religion isn't being abandoned really. It's more accurate to say that in America, historic, traditional faiths are being replaced by rival religions. Nationalism? Ethnic loyalties? Political identification? By one definition, religion is whatever gets your final, highest allegiance. One trend that is prominent, popular and perhaps seminal and may qualify as a rival religion is the path to self-improvement. Many claim to be searching for the better or best version of Me. Jesus, Torah, Yahweh, the Gospels and especially the viability of local faith communities are no longer satisfying or worthy of serious consideration when compared to the pursuit of self-fulfillment.

In the current telling, three thousand years of Judeo-Christian bedrock is crumbling beneath our feet and losing out to the promise of Future Self.

I see replacement coming from the outside by those who, disaffected or disappointed with religion as institution, have abandoned it. A different disaffected set, those who still consider themselves on religion's inside, also want change things and appear to be signing up for a massive deconstruction project. A different and more violent kind of replacement. The whole religion thing or large parts of it has got to come down. Riddled with favoritism, systemic racism, longstanding sexism, aligned too closely with the wrong kind of politics, it simply must go. Detonation first, then rebuilding. Only when there are ashes can you have a rising Phoenix. If the Phoenix is a hen, then it's a broken eggs and a better omelet thing.

It may sound hysterical to ask if the lazy French monarchy was really so much worse than the bloody Reign of Terror. Still, deconstructionists should always swing the hammer slowly. The replacement church and Christianity may be worse, much worse than the things torn down. Once level the city to make room for improvements and there's no turning back. "Oops" doesn't earn a pardon or restore what's lost nor reclaim the damage done to the lives and well-being of good people shoved aside for the next new thing in church life.

If the highly imitative, market and production driven, eye candy approaches that are currently favored by too many church planters and innovators is indicative of where the tearing down is leading, we may be in for a very big and unsatisfying "Oops!" from today's bright lights when their project to make all things new unravels.

Last Things

One last thing: All I'm saying to those who've abandoned religion in general and Christianity in particular is that your disaffection may be coming from a position of unearned cynicism, and it could lead to merely chasing a Future Self chimera. That's a poor substitute for discovering a Savior God who desperately wants to make Himself known and who is inviting you into the Great Dance of a Trinitarian relationship. Don't forget also, the original Chimera was part snake.

One more last thing I say to insiders: Be careful what you tear down. Be careful too to mind the speed with which you deconstruct the things you don't currently like or appreciate. A guard dog with no teeth and a muffled bark will be unable to protect you or your family. The last thing you want in a religion is easy demands, no rigor, no teeth. When personal preferences and tastes - especially in my faith - become the loudest voices I hear, the bad guys will get in and take all my stuff.

Religion isn't dying. We will always be religious and always display allegiance to something or someone. Dylan was correct in saying we have to serve somebody. If the bright kids are right and current trends are away from Jesus, church, the text of Scripture and traditional approaches, any pale alternatives will be discovered to be tasteless and unworkable substitutes soon enough and by enough people. 

Maybe there's a new Great Awakening around the corner.