In my last post, I explored some alternatives ways of looking at the reason Jesus died to views that say God is out to get you, out to get a pound of your flesh. I didn’t mention that another way of saying this is, what if Romans 8 is really true when we are told to imagine that if God is for us, none can be against us?
I thought it might be helpful to take a moment and ask — what does God’s grace look like if we believe God is not, nor ever was, out to get us? If we trust that God’s first word — as well as God’s middle and last word — is love and inclusion, not rejection and condemnation?
I’d love to hear from you, if you have come to such a place in your spiritual journey, how it has changed your own perspective. Instead of telling you a direct answer to it myself, I’d like to share a poem with you that reflects my experience & the experience of others I’ve seen be touched by God’s grace.
I hope it blesses you, and is a stepping stone to your own inner healing and peace.
And I’m not just whistling Dixie here.
Your progressive redneck preacher,
Micah
Recovery Festival
Like trumpets of war I heard rough southern drawl
echoing across the pine wood skin
and a fist hammering the untarnished face
of a podium in a storefront southern church.
“Are you saved brother?” he cries,
“The altar is open. Come on down,
we have room for more”.
I remember hearing that cry
amidst thirty verses of “Just as I Am”
feeling my heart pulled like metal scrap to lodestone
though to me it was already clear
Jesus I knew
and Jesus knew me.
Yet I found myself
feeling damaged
broken asunder
like glass upon pavement
now adrift on rainbowed pool of oil,
beautifully tragic beyond all cleansing,
by that preacher’s siren song.
That was not the day I gazed deep
beneath what others saw,
plunging beneath the waters
salty with tears
and cold with fears
that lay beneath
the splintered mirror
of my soul.
It came far later
amidst momma’s scattered boxes,
crates of jewels and receipts
gathering dust
after her manic shopping sprees
revealing my content, as well as their own–
my memories of hiding
little and alone
from the rising tide
her waves of emotion brought
the feeling of hands covering my ears
from shouts that rose
like the rhythmic shaking
of military bombs on Fort Bragg streets
when daddy lifted cups of “special punch”
to his not quite ever parched lips.
That salty wetness
rising from my own tears
was my baptism
which cold and crisp
against my skin
woke me anew.
In that moment I knew myself,
and began a long journey to wholeness.
His echoing shouts of salvation,
Gospel truth be known,
now taste like ash on my tongue.
His calls causing me to recoil
carrying still with them
the lingering smells of brimstone
hanging like a sulfurous cloud
calling me to my imminent end.
I find instead
beneath the wreckage in my soul
piling high as some abandoned lighthouse
rising just like those paint brushes, glue sticks, and cut fabric
borne of her creative projects dropped mid-stroke
and get rich quick schemes gone wrong.
Beneath an edifice that feels as high as the long-leaf pine,
I had thought earlier I was done with reflections on peace, but came across some resources which tie into a theology of peace-making. They focus on, of all things, atonement theology.
For those not in the know, atonement theology asks the question Why did Jesus have to die? I am coming to believe our answer to this question has a direct connection with our response to questions of violence and peace-making.
In the Gospel, we find God appearing as one of us in Jesus. Scriptures such as 2 Corinthians 5 tell us that somehow, God coming as Jesus, this human being who died the horrible death of crucifixion for our sins enables a bridge to be built so that people who have been cut off from or estranged by God can be reconciled to God and at peace with God.
To people who feel cut off from God this can be a very liberating message.
I still remember growing up in a very rule-based religion that pictured God as an angry King out for his pound of flesh if you did not live up to his standards. It was overwhelming for me to discover through friends in a Christian club in high school about a God who loves me, no strings attached. I heard about a God who thought I was so worth love, that God risked all – even suffering and death – to embrace me in God’s arms. I remember the turning point when, while listening to the words of a Christian rock song about the cross, I realized Jesus went through what he went through so I might know I am forever loved, forever embraced, and forever accepted by the Creator of the universe. It changed my life and is why I do what I do every day as a minister.
But one thing later bothered me: I understood that in Jesus God risked death to open wide God’s arms to embrace me in love. But why did we so often talk as if somehow it was necessary for God to forgive me for someone else to die? Why did we talk as if God required anything before God would forgive anyone? Where did this idea that God was out for a pound of human flesh come from? At times our way of talking about why Jesus died made God seem pretty bi-polar to me. I know something had to be off with how I grew up hearing God’s justice and love working together.
I also found many people who were not Christians saying “look, your God you claim is love is a child abuser. He beats and kills his son to save you. That’s not love. That’s sick”.
I would always answer saying “Well, you don’t understand the Trinity – the Son is God, the Father is God, the Spirit is God … so it ain’t like that”. Which, though true, didn’t answer the question – Why couldn’t God just forgive us without someone dying? Isn’t God “God” after all? Can’t God do anything? Doesn’t this picture of God paint God out to be at best a bully, and at worst a really violent person in a pinch?
After all, when we forgive each other, it doesn’t always have to have strings attached. And certainly I don’t have to wait til someone suffers or dies in your place before I can forgive you.
The last few years I’ve found a number of Christians also asking this. They point to Jesus’ teachings on non-violence in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 and Jesus’ own example of non-violence, and suggest that this picture of a God out for human flesh, who can only be appeased in somebody dies, and only then forgive us doesn’t square with Jesus’ call for us to be nonviolent in order to perfect like God is perfect. Nor does it fit how Jesus extended forgiveness in his earthly life, which we Christians say is out picture of who God is.
A number of theologians have suggested that a picture of God more in line with Jesus’ example is one where Jesus’ death on the cross is not about violence or bloodthirstiness in the heart of God. They are calling us to rediscover the many other explanations of atonement which Christians have embraced both long before what I heard in evangelical churches growing up appeared, and which now are being forged long after such explanations first became popular.
I want to suggest a few authors we can turn to in order to begin to explore what a God who is not out for a pound of flesh might look like.
First, let me suggest the writings and talks of C. Baxter Krueger, a southern preacher and theologian. In addition to writing theology in popular language Krueger also has created a line of fishing lures. (You can bet based on my previous posts on fishing that a theologian who makes home-made fishing lures is a man after my own heart).
Krueger calls Christians to rediscover the foundational ideas that the early Christians, who helped put our Scriptures together into one Bible, embraced. Central to these ideas is the understanding of God as a Triune God of love. In his ministry Perichoresis (see http://www.perichoresis.org/) Krueger points to how losing sight of the idea of God as including in God’s own nature a community of love has led us to envision God as split between extremes of love and justice (by which we really mean vengeance), imaging an angry hateful God who is our Father and a loving caring God who is God’s Son who rescues us from the Father. This leads us to miss the point in so many aspects of our Christian lives.
Krueger beautifully explains how realizing that from start to finish God is a community of love, fully shared between the Father, Son, and Spirit and now fully available to us transforms our picture of love both on his website and in his books. A good starting place in exploring Krueger’s thought is the following blog on why Jesus had to die:
Another author I would encourage you to look at is James Allison. James Allison is a theologian who explores the connections between the thought of Rene Girard to modern Christianity. Girard taught that we get our theology wrong by thinking God is the one demanding a pound of flesh. Instead, he says that it is we, human beings, who are trying to demand a pound of flesh from each other from the beginning. And when God comes in our midst, it is not God demanding a sacrifice from us but we demanding a sacrifice from God. It is not sinners in the hands of an angry God, but a loving God in the hands of angry sinners.
James Allison gives a very thoughtful presentation of what the story of Jesus looks like if we understand that it is we, not God, who are the blood-thirsty ones, in his little article, “Some Thoughts on the Atonement”.
Recently James Allison and Brian McLaren both did a talk on this same theme and its implications to contemporary Christianity available as a pdf here and as a podcast here .
Allison has put some of this material as a Christian education course at http://forgivingvictim.com/. That resource, Jesus the Forgiving Victim, is on my Christmas wish list (hint, hint) because I think re-discovering how the Gospel dethrones violence of the strong to the weak is an important thing Christianity in our day needs to grapple with.
A final resource I would mention on the discussion of the atonement is Tony Jones’ A Better Atonement. This book explores the in’s and out’s of various approaches to this question of why Jesus died.
My own personal conviction is that the approach that sees in God this drive for a pound of flesh is not just at the heart of some of the mind-crushing legalism so many believers face, but also at the heart of why so many feel they must embrace the slave-holder Christianity mindset I have spoken of before. To feel right with God they feel they must scapegoat some other group, drive them out, sacrifice their humanity. It also I think is at the heart of how easily here in the Dixie-belt we wed our Christianity with calls to warfare or prejudice. It is also why I think too many Christians too quickly are willing to call for warfare against “culture”, against people with different values, or even against people of other faiths. Ultimately we become like what we worship, and if we believe God is out for a pound of our flesh, it is easy to let such an image of God influence us to feel it is OK for us to be out for the pound of flesh of others.
Discovering that Jesus is in fact the Prince of Peace I think is so important for us finding the way to join Jesus on the path of peace-making, in a world of violence, bigotry, bullying, and war.
Peace can Only Come with Justice; The Opposite of War is Creation
I think our exploration of peace would be incomplete, without taking time to recognize that peace is not just about lack of tension or conflict, but instead the presence of harmony, life, justice.
The Biblical term we translate peace is “shalom” and that word was not just the absence of tension or conflict. Rather, as Delwin Brown suggests in What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?, shalom is “fullness of health throughout the whole web of life … a peace that arises out of the interrelated health of all things”1. This Biblical peace is found not just in an absence of conflict but the reconciliation of all things that are out of harmony (2 Corinthians 5). This cannot occur without justice extending to all, even the most put down and outcast. It is the presence of such justice or fairness in our communities and world, beginning with our own personal relationships. For this to be present the real work of reconciliation has to go on.
A compelling picture of such reconciliation work is the one given by Desmond Tutu in his book No Future Without Forgiveness. In it he demonstrates that this requires truth-telling by all sides of those involved in conflict, a willingness for all sides to own their responsibility for the mess they find their selves in, to work to make amends in practical terms while changing future behaviors, and for both sides to extend mercy toward each other without giving up on the importance of remaining open to forging and continuing a relationship of good will. In his book, Tutu demonstrates how this process worked in the time after the dismantling of the apartheid system that crushed black South Africans under its boot, and he shares how such a process can work in our families and communities today. The presence of relationships restored to fair or just ways of relating, especially in relationship to people who were once oppressed, is a key dimension of Biblical peace. This is why again and again the Biblical prophets join Mary the mother of Jesus in celebrating how those on top in the world, the oppressors, will be brought down while those on the bottom, the oppressed, will be lifted up (see Luke 1:46-55). In her song in Luke, Mary is celebrating that restoration of equal footing between all God’s children which Biblical justice creates. So there is no peace without justice.
But in the Biblical visions of peace, shalom, there is also talk about life-giving powers blossoming. If you get a chance, look up the prophecies of the peaceable Kingdom in Isaiah. In those prophecies, we see deserts blooming with flowers, women who were barren having bawling babies, children who would have died young rising to ripe old ages, wastelands being turned to cities, and people planting fertile gardens. Such images speak to the fact that Biblical peace is also the presence of life-giving forces in our midst which war and violence against each other, and against creation destroy. When we say something looks like a battle-field, we usually mean it is chaotic, it is a mess, and often it is devoid of signs of life. The presence of Biblical peace means ceasing our war with nature, so we make space for nature to become life-giving again so endangered animals and lands with their beautiful plants thrive again.
It also making room for ourselves and each other to tap into such life-giving powers. That’s why the musical Rent says “the opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation”.
When we give ourselves as individuals and each other as a community the room to breathe and to tap into our own innate, God-giving life-giving powers that are woven into our DNA just as sure as a our skin-tones, hair color, and sexuality, we will begin to bring life into our world. Though this is pictured in terms of mothers giving birth it is also pictured in terms of planting gardens, writing and singing new songs, building beautiful cities and homes. This is imagery in Scripture is of creativity flowering. The presence of creativity, health, and life flowering is shalom, Biblical peace in action.
When Jesus, in Mark 1, tells us “the Kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe”, it is exactly this image of God’s peaceable kingdom in prophecies such as Isaiah, Micah, and Hosea that Jesus is talking about. It has come near because Jesus is showing us the path to shalom in his own life and teachings. He is inviting us to change our thinking and patterns of life (which is what metanoia, the Greek word we translate “repent” means) and believe that this peaceable kingdom is a possibility we can work toward. One might even say that Jesus is challenging us to see this peaceable kingdom as already a reality from God’s perspective, since Jesus has joined the prophets and seers of all times and places in saying God will make this come to pass.
Instead of a warning that disaster is coming, so you better get right, as many understand the phrase “the Kingdom is near, repent and believe”, Jesus is in fact saying something very similar to Gandhi’s call to “be the change you want to see in the world”. Jesus is calling us to do our part in making this vision of shalom, of peace, of life-giving harmony and creativity, a reality.
Think for a moment, if you truly believed this kind of peace was possible in your relationships, your families, your towns, your community, your world, what would you do differently? What choices might you make?
How would our Christianity look differently if our preachers really preached this, and our churches really believed it?
One suggestion that makes a lot of sense to me is what once NAZI soldier turned Christian minister and peace and justice activist Jurgen Moltmann says, in his book Source of Life –
How can we work toward the reconciliation of all things as believers? How can we work toward justice for all? Toward people making amends for inequity, seeking to restore what has become broken? Toward forgiveness and healing? Toward making room for life to thrive in all of creation? Toward all of us giving ourselves and others room in which to tap into our own powers of creation and life?
To close the blog out I’m going to include a video clip of the song “Did You Feel the Mountains Tremble?” which to me is unique among popular Christian music in affirming the fact that our future need not be fatalistic, but rather as Jesus said the Kingdom of God is at hand if we will embrace it. Let us do so, let us take Christ’s hand and in the Spirit’s power work to be the change we need to see in this world.
And I’m not just whistling Dixie here!
Your progressive redneck preacher,
Micah
1 Brown, Delwin. What Does a Progressive Christian Believe? (Seabury Books: New York, 2008), 88.
2Moltmann, Jurgen. The Source of Life: The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life. (Fortress Press: Kindle Electronic Edition, 1997), loc. 282-316.
This series of blog posts on Christianity’s call to peace with justice, in the world of war and violence, which grew out of the International Day of Prayer for Peace also was sparked by seeing the recent violence in Nairobi, Kenya, where the young lady my wife Katharine and I hosted as an exchange student attends classes.
One aspect I had not struck on was how conflict between religions can contribute to such violence and fear. Brian Mclaren recently discussed the attacks in Nairobi, Kenya, and what we can learn about him in his blog. I’m including an excerpt of it below.
What is striking to me is that none of the major world faiths were borne out of the desire to create more violence, fear, and disorder in the world. They were birthed each in unique times, places, and cultures by women and men striving to find paths of inner peace that flowed into communities that work toward harmony and wholeness. Though people may disagree on which faith tradition resonates with them, and some of us want to argue over which one is right, ultimately based on the reasons these faiths were borne, we can all be certain that any religion is being misused if it is being turned into a tool of violence and terror.
At the heart of every faith is the call to compassion, to love, to charity, and to service to the other.
We need to find creative ways to transform the ways we apply our faith, and relate to people of other faiths, into ways that build peace, understanding, and compassion not fear, loathing, discrimination, prejudice, and violence.
From my limited study of the world religions, I would say all faiths call us on some level to this. As one who has met God in the shining eyes of Jesus Christ, and been embraced by the love of the Holy Spirit, I know I can say that there is no excuse for any who claim to follow that Prince of Peace to use their faith to justify prejudice and violence.
Later on I may share on this blog where my own thoughts are on how Christians can change our approach to others faiths to one that is more understanding and compassionate, but until then, I think Mclaren’s piece is a good introduction to such a discussion.
Please feel free to add your own thoughts to his words.And by all means, let’s strive to follow in the foot-steps laid by the Prince of Peace.
If we want to move beyond the vicious cycles of offense and revenge that dominate the status quo – and result in suffering for Christians in the Middle East, American Christians can come together in six ways:
1. We must join together to condemn human rights violations whenever they occur and upon whomever they are inflicted. We must become vocal advocates for the rights of religious minorities – be they Christians, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, or secularists – from Texas to Timbuktu, from Tennessee to Tehran. There can be no double standards.
Here we must be careful to distinguish hateful extremists from peaceable believers. American Christians would be rightly appalled if Muslims were to quote crazy extremist pastors from Florida and Kansas to characterize all Christians as Quran-burning hate-mongers. Israeli Jews would likewise be appalled to be defined by the infamous “kick out all Arabs or make them our slaves” quote from extremist rabbi Meir Kahane. Hundreds of millions of Muslims are equally mortified when horrific statements about killing “first the Saturday people, then the Sunday people” are used to characterize all Muslims. Hateful extremists must be exposed – but never used to create guilt by association.
2. American Christians must stop supporting foreign policies that purchase American security at the expense of the security of others, including fellow Christians in the Middle East who have already suffered so much. And we must face – and publicly admit – the unintended consequences of past policies, over the last decade, and over longer time spans as well. Instead, we need to articulate a creative, positive, progressive, faith-inspired dream for a better world, undergirded by a coherent, constructive foreign policy.
3. We must seek solutions in Israel/Palestine that are Pro-Israeli, Pro-Palestinian, pro-peace, and pro-justice. That will require us to stand strong for Israel’s right to exist in peace and safety while standing equally strongly against the spread of settlements in Palestinian lands, the ongoing occupation, and other actions that dehumanize and oppress Palestinians. To pray for the peace of Jerusalem will also require us to pray for the peace of Palestine and the whole Middle East – a peace that depends upon justice and reconciliation.
4. We must realize that our continued addiction to dirty energy results in dirty foreign policy. The most profitable industry in the history of humanity has great power, and it has found ways to “externalize costs” upon us all. In response, we must become more aware of the true costs of our current energy policy, and we must become advocates of clean, sustainable energy and clean, sustainable foreign policy as well. There is a relationship between filling our gas tanks and what happens to our Christian brothers – and their neighbors – in the Middle East.
5. We must seek to understand religious violence, which will require us to understand violence in general – others’, and our own too. We need to see the close relationship between hate (for them) and love (for us), and between religious identity and hostility (as I explored in my most recent book).
6. We must build relationships – grass-roots, have-a-neighbor-over-to-dinner relationships, with people of other faiths. We must demand that our national and global religious leaders do the same – not only talk about other religions, but talk with their corresponding leaders – not just to solve problems, but also to build friendships, the kind exemplified, for example, by Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama. Through this kind of pre-emptive peacemaking, we must set in motion healing cycles of faith-inspired human-kindness that provide an alternative to vicious cycles of offense/revenge/counter-offense/counter-revenge.
When we do so, along with decrying the hateful actions of extremists, we can celebrate the heroic acts of kindness and solidarity of more “normative” people of faith – like the Egyptian Christians who protected mosques and the Egyptian Muslims who protected churches on many occasions over the last few years.
A colleague who has invested in these kinds of relationships recently sent me two photographs. The first is of an official sign warning Israelis not to venture into Palestinian territory:
The second is of a home-made sign that Israeli women activists placed over the official sign:
These Jewish women have an important message for Christians, a message that echoes the words of a Jewish man who himself lived in deeply conflicted, violent times in which extremists were all-too-ready to shed blood in the name of their God or their nation. We can refuse to be enemies. We can choose healing cycles of hospitality over vicious cycles of hostility. That doesn’t mean being silent denial about wrongs, but it doesn’t mean responding to hostility with hostility either.
It is indeed inexcusable for Christians to remain silent about the horrific violence being done against Christians around the world. But it is also inexcusable to respond to that violence in ways that only intensify fear, hatred, mistrust, misunderstanding, and revenge. We must speak out in ways that seek higher ground, a new way of holding religious identity and seeking religious reconciliation. We will often fail and fall short in our attempts, but I would rather fail in this venture than succeed in the alternatives. I hope you feel the same way.
The hate and evil of the Al Shabaab terrorists can not be overcome with corresponding hate and evil. Nor will it be overcome with silence and passivity. There is only one force that can overcome it. That power appears weak, but it is the strongest power in the moral universe, if we dare to believe it and practice it. It simultaneously calls us to speak the truth about evil, and to overcome it – with abounding good. May every new outbreak of evil inspire us to greater counter-action for good, following the way of Christ.
Recently I was reminded of the costs of war. First, as I mentioned recently, seeing terrorist violence break out in the city of Nairobi, near where the young lady my wife Kat and I hosted as an international exchange student goes to school shook me up making the real costs of war come home to me. Someone’s son or daughter always is threatened, and often dies in the face of war.
As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, hearing and watching that news made me think of this White Lion song:
Yet also recently encountered the cost of war on soldiers as well. This side is one I saw first hand while pastoring a church in Fayetteville, NC, a military town that supports Fort Bragg, NC. I had parishioners whose partners and family members came home scarred and damaged by the physical scars of war. More than one person I met returning from our recent wars also bore deep emotional scars.
Earlier this year, my wife Kat and I took our family to listen to a number of soldiers who sang and performed music of all kinds of genre about their experience of war. One who gripped my attention is the rapper “Soldier Hard”. Take a moment and listen to some of his songs:
War also has costs for family, as this song pictures so well –
My friend Chuck Fager, former head of the Quaker House, several times has told me that these dual costs of war – of the innocents and soldiers alike – is a part of why, as a Quaker, he has always stood against all war. That ministry, now led by Lynn and Stephen Newson, has a part of its central work being available to soldiers and veterans in the Fort Bragg area and beyond experiencing the emotional fall-out of war and helping them find options for putting their lives together after experiencing the costs of war.
Although I myself am not the radical pacifist that my Quaker brothers and sisters are, but instead relate more with Deitrich Bonhoeffer who opposed violence in all its forms but who when he saw the atrocities being committed by Hitler and the NAZI regime was willing to take on arms to prevent greater evil and greater violence from happening, I think that their witness is important.
Too often we American Christians forget that Jesus calls us to embrace a life of non-violence and, wherever and whenever possible, to stand against warfare and for peace. In the sermon on the Mount Jesus tells us both “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9) and “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:38-45).
Jesus’ call to us as believers is to strive to be people of peace, who live out the promise of the prophets of waging peace not war, by beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.
Too often we take the opposite tack and in our desire to pray for God and country, end up ending up on the band-wagon of almost endorsing wars and violence in the name of patriotism.
In reality, whether like Gandhi and some of my pacifist friends you don’t believe violence is ever the option even when bombs are falling upon us, or like Bonhoeffer that there is a line in the sand where you have to protect innocents, as Christians we cannot endorse violence as a knee-jerk response or a first resort. If turned to it has to always be a last resort, after every other non-violent means has been exhausted.
True Just War
For those of us who are not pure pacifists like my Quaker brothers and sisters, I think we need to consider what true just war theory teaches.
Here are the traditional tenets of just war:
A just war can only be waged as a last resort. All non-violent options must be exhausted before the use of force can be justified.
A war is just only if it is waged by a legitimate authority. Even just causes cannot be served by actions taken by individuals or groups who do not constitute an authority sanctioned by whatever the society and outsiders to the society deem legitimate.
A just war can only be fought to redress a wrong suffered. For example, self-defense against an armed attack is always considered to be a just cause (although the justice of the cause is not sufficient–see point #4). Further, a just war can only be fought with “right” intentions: the only permissible objective of a just war is to redress the injury.
A war can only be just if it is fought with a reasonable chance of success. Deaths and injury incurred in a hopeless cause are not morally justifiable.
The ultimate goal of a just war is to re-establish peace. More specifically, the peace established after the war must be preferable to the peace that would have prevailed if the war had not been fought.
The violence used in the war must be proportional to the injury suffered. States are prohibited from using force not necessary to attain the limited objective of addressing the injury suffered.
The weapons used in war must discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. Civilians are never permissible targets of war, and every effort must be taken to avoid killing civilians. The deaths of civilians are justified only if they are unavoidable victims of a deliberate attack on a military target.
Look over those various tenets of just war. How many conflicts that our country has been in really fall under these tenets? How many are truly justified?
I personally feel that as a society we are too quick to embrace violence, both in our relationships with each other and with other nations. We are too slow to weigh the cost of wars to our soldiers, to their families, and to the innocents effected by our conflict. We are too slow to seek non-violent solutions.
As someone who is not a pacifist, I think ultimately the question of war needs to be thought of in terms of Neimholler’s classic poem which says,
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out–
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out– Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out– Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me–and there was no one left to speak for me.
I think whenever non-violence can be chosen, it must be. However ultimately we cannot stand by as individuals or society and let people harm innocents un-opposed. And as with the Holocaust, there are certain tragedies that we may not be able to stop without a police force or military to defend the innocents. However I truly believe many more of the conflicts we face can be dealt with nonviolently than we often realize.
Seeking Just Peace-making
Glen Stassen, in his ground-breaking book Just Peacemaking: Transforming Initiatives for Justice and Peace, argues that we miss the boat by pitting pacifists and just war Christians against each other. In truth both approaches argue for the need to work to limit violence wherever possible. Stassen suggests “just peace-making” as an approach that can unite believers from both perspectives in putting aside differences to build non-violent alternatives to war.
Here are the ten principles of just peace-making he suggests on the website justpeacemaking.org :
Biblical basis: Matt. 5:38-42 – Turn the other cheek, give tunic and cloak, go the second mile, give to beggar and borrower; Jesus’ way of transforming initiatives
Nonviolent direct action is spreading widely, ending dictatorship in the Philippines, ending rule by the Shah in Iran, bringing about nonviolent revolutions in Poland, East Germany, and Central Europe, transforming injustice into democratic change in human rights movements in Guatemala, Argentina, and elsewhere in Latin America, in South Africa. Governments and people have the obligation to make room for and to support nonviolent direct action.
Biblical basis: Matt. 5:38-42 – Turn the other cheek, give tunic and cloak, go the second mile, give to beggar and borrower; Jesus’ way of transforming initiatives
Independent initiatives have several characteristics in common. They: (1) are independent of the slow process of negotiation; (2) decrease threat perception and distrust but do not leave the initiator weak; (3) are verifiable actions; (4) and carried out at the announced time regardless of the other side’s bluster; (5) have their purpose clearly announced in order to to shift toward de-escalation and to invite reciprocation; and (6) come in a series. Initiatives should continue in order to keep inviting reciprocation.
Biblical basis: Matt. 5:21-26 – Go, make peace with your adversary while there is time.
Cooperative conflict resolution (CCR) incorporates practices like: (1) actively partner in developing solutions, not merely passive cooperation; (2) adversaries, listen to each other and experience each others’ perspectives, including culture, spirituality, story, history, and emotion; (3) seek long-term solutions which help prevent future conflict; and (4) seek justice as a core component for sustainable peace. A key test of governments’ claims to be seeking peace is whether they initiate negotiations or refuse them, and develop imaginative solutions that show they understand their adversary’s perspectives and needs.
Examples: (a) President Carter’s achieving peace in the Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel; and (b) peaceful resolution of conflicts with Haiti and North Korea by former president Carter. Unfortunately, Carter’s resolution of the conflict with North Korea was cancelled at the beginning of the George W. Bush administration, which rescinded the promised delivery of oil for producing electricity so that North Korea would keep their nuclear generation halted. That administration refused to negotiate with North Korea for six years, contrary to the just peacemaking practice of cooperative conflict resolution, and as we see, the result was North Korea’s producing several nuclear bombs.
Biblical basis: Matt. 7:1-5 – Do not judge, but take the log out of your own eye.
Until recently, it was widely agreed that nations would not express regret, acknowledge responsibility, or give forgiveness. But finally Germany since World War II, Japan and Korea, Clinton in Africa, the U.S. toward Japanese-Americans during World War II, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and other actions (described by Donald Shriver in An Ethic for Enemies and by Walter Wink in When the Powers Fall) are being recognized as a crucial new practice that can heal longstanding bitterness.
Biblical basis: Matt. 6:19-34 – Do not hoard, but seek God’s reign and justice.
Extensive empirical evidence shows that the spreading of democracy and respect for human rights, including religious liberty, is widening the zones of peace. Democracies fought no wars against one another during the entire twentieth century. They had fewer civil wars. And they generally devoted lower shares of their national products to military expenditures, which decreases threats to other countries. Ties of economic interdependence by trade and investment also decrease the incidence of war. Engagement in international organizations like the UN and regional institutions is a clear predictive factor that they will be much less likely to engage in war.
Biblical basis: Matt. 6:19-34 – Seek God’s reign and justice.
“[P]eace is not only an absence of war, violence, and hostility; it is also a state of reconciliation, human flourishing, and natural beauty” (Just Peacemaking, 2008, 134). Sustainable development occurs where the needs of today are met without threatening the needs of tomorrow – where those who lack adequate material and economic resources gain access, and those who have learn to control resource use and prevent future exhaustion.
Biblical basis: Matt. 5:43ff. – Love your enemies, pray for your persecutors; be all-inclusive as your Father in heaven is.
Four trends have so altered the conditions and practices of international relations as to make it possible now, where it was not possible before, to form and sustain voluntary associations for peace and other valuable common purposes that are in fact working: (1) the decline in the utility of war; (2) the priority of trade and the economy over war; (3) the strength of international exchanges, communications, transactions, and networks; and (4) the gradual ascendancy of liberal representative democracy and a mixture of welfare-state and laissez-faire market economy. We should act so as to strengthen these trends and the international associations that they make possible.
Biblical basis: Matt. 5:43ff. – Love your enemies, pray for your persecutors; be all-inclusive as your Father in heaven is.
Acting alone, states cannot solve problems of trade, debt, interest rates; of pollution, ozone depletion, acid rain, depletion of fish stocks, global warming; of migrations and refugees seeking asylum; of military security when weapons rapidly penetrate borders. Therefore, collective action is increasingly necessary. U.S. citizens should press their government to pay its UN dues and to act in ways that strengthen the effectiveness of the United Nations, of regional organizations, and of multilateral peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peace building. They resolve conflicts, monitor, nurture, and even enforce truces. They meet human needs for food, hygiene, medicine, education, and economic interaction. Most wars now happen within states, not between states; therefore, collective action needs to include UN-approved humanitarian intervention in cases like the former Yugoslavia, Haiti, Somalia, and Rwanda “when a state’s condition or behavior results in… grave and massive violations of human rights.”
Biblical basis: Matt. 5:38ff. – Do not set yourself in revengeful retaliation by evil means, but engage in good means of nonviolent confrontational initiatives
A key factor in the decrease of war between nations is that weapons have become so destructive that war is not worth the price. Reducing offensive weapons and shifting toward defensive force structures strengthens that equation. Banning chemical and biological weapons, and reducing strategic (long-range) nuclear warheads from 3,500 to 1,000 each, are key steps. Arms imports by developing nations in 1995 dropped to one-quarter of their peak in 1988. But the power of money invested by arms manufacturers in politicians’ campaigns is a major obstacle to reductions. The need for movement on this front domestically can be seen in many recent incidents of gun violence.
Biblical basis: Matt. 5.1-2, 7:28-29 – Jesus taught the Sermon on the Mount to his disciples; Jesus’ strategy of organizing disciples.
The existence of a growing worldwide people’s movement constitutes one more historical force that makes just peacemaking theory possible. They learn peacemaking practices and press governments to employ these practices; governments should protect such associations in law, and give them accurate information.
I want to close by sharing a link to the classic Lennon song, envisioning the future without war we build to.
Peace is a possibility. Let us beat our swords into plowshares, our guns into gardening tools.
I want to continue you looking at how to be peace-makers here.
Last week I shared some about how to find inner peace, but in continuing to look at the question of peace, I think it is important to realize such violence can begin not just in some foreign land, but right here in our homes. As a way of looking at that, I’d like to share a sermon I preached a few years ago about the problem of domestic violence in our homes. Too often as Christians we fail to realize the true horror of domestic violence, and our own need to begin being people of peace in our homes and with those closest to us.
Last year I was blessed to serve as a chaplain at a domestic violence shelter as a part of my CPE internship and in that setting I saw even more clearly the pain and heartache domestic violence brings, and the need for us to make ourselves people of peace and our churches places that work to combat such deadly and often overlooked violence.
And I’m not just whistling Dixie here,
your progressive redneck preacher,
Micah
Matthew 5 (World English Version)
21 “You have heard that it was said to the ancient ones, ‘You shall not murder;’ and ‘Whoever shall murder shall be in danger of the judgment.’ 22 But I tell you, that everyone who is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment; and whoever shall say to his brother, ‘Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council; and whoever shall say, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of the fire of Gehenna. 23 “If therefore you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has anything against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. 25 Agree with your adversary quickly, while you are with him in the way; lest perhaps the prosecutor deliver you to the judge, and the judge deliver you to the officer, and you be cast into prison. 26 Most assuredly I tell you, you shall by no means get out of there, until you have paid the last penny.
This is the word of God for the people of God.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
To introduce this message I want to share with you some stories I found in researching today’s topic, from Christians who have dealt with it. A number of these quotes come from the website hiddenhurt.co.ok .
“My meeting with Paul was really just a typical ‘boy-meets-girl beginning. I was an eighteen year old single mother. Initially, there was no attraction for him, but I developed one. He was good looking and very funny. He moved in with me.“I didn’t know what early warning signs were at the time, but boy, if I had known then what I know now! He was overweening at first, courted me with roses, charm and passion. But he was terribly posessive, and didn’t like me talking to other men, and had a sort of strutting, stereotypical masculinity. He could be very crude about women at times, and I found myself constantly justifying him to family and friends.
“The violence started, as I now know it does, with name calling, which graduated to pushing and hair pulling. It eventually became violent battery. I was ashamed, and covered the bruises. I feared him, but I also pitied him. I didn’t know that he used his story of a terrible childhood to manipulate me. All I saw was an abandoned child.“… I believed I deserved it. Many friends left me because I would not leave him. Desperate to hang on to the few I had left, I started to lie and say he was not hurting me, that he’d changed. In six months, I was not the young woman he’d met. Life depended on keeping him happy so he wouldn’t hurt me.
“At first, I believed him when he said he was sorry, and that he would change. I started to not believe it after a while. But by that time, I was terrified. I fully believed he was capable of killing me (he did go on to murder a male).“The sexual violence seemed to utterly despoil all my fantasies of loving and being loved. He would sometimes tell me I was a stupid, prudish bitch who needed a good fuck; he seemed to enjoy desecrating my highest ideals. I wondered if they were worth hanging on to.
“I didn’t know what to be to stop it; it didn’t occur to me to think it was strange that sometimes he said he was doing it because I was a whore, and at other times, because I was a prude. I now know that it was not about anything that I was or was not. It was about him. At any time, I was never permitted to say no. Strenuous refusal met with beatings.
“But you know, I never stopped thinking about escape. While I was busy telling him that yes, I was looking forward to marrying him so he didn’t beat me bloody, I was secretly looking for a way out. Being honest about leaving meant beatings, violent rape, death threats. I tried to leave several times; once I got the police to come and get him out. The lady across the road persuaded me to take him back.
“Of course, I sometimes felt that I loved him too…”
Another quick story:“I chased after the Lord, wanting nothing but to live my life for him. Yet something happened when I started dating Thomas.
“He was two years older than me. He was also the son of my youth leader. He grew up without a father in his life, and struggled a lot with feelings of anger and abandonment. I knew all of these things very well, but have always had such a mercy heart. To this day, I do not know why I didn’t listen to the wise counsel of my family and friends. I think that I thought I could save him.
“It was three months into the relationship that I knew deep down in my heart that something was wrong. The emotional abuse is what I saw originally. The way he could manipulate me was amazing. He was a brilliant talker. He was my first boyfriend, so I seemed to think that it was all normal.
“After about three months, was when the verbal abuse began. By this point, I was so brain washed that I thought I deserved what I got. The more the lies were poured over me, the I more I believed that it was true. All of the horrible names, all the horrible descriptions of who I was. My character was smashed. I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t seeing my family. I was so isolated. That fall I moved into my dorm room at a lovely, private liberal arts college. I wouldn’t listen to anyone about how I needed to leave him. I was so convinced that everything that was wrong with the relationship was my problem. That as long as I tried a little harder, if I could fix all the things that he said were wrong with me, that Thomas and I would be fine.
“Then the physical abuse started. The twisting of my wrist, the smack across my face, the shove to the ground, the hand around my neck. I was so weak. I weighed in at 90 lbs at this point. My fear, my anxiety level was sky rocketing. I couldn’t keep anything together. I felt so small, so vulnerable.
“Just a month after I moved into College, my parents withdrew me. They had no idea how horrible it all was, but they knew something was terribly wrong. It took two months after that for Thomas and I to completely lose contact. I changed my phone number and talked to the police. The longer I was away from him, the more I really saw what had happened. And that is when all of the healing had to start. I started seeing a counselor, and even at this point, almost two years later, I see her about once a month. Jesus Christ brought me through all of it a lot stronger. I was so angry for a while, not understanding why God let it all happen to me. And I still don’t know. I know it was my own mistake to not listen to the wisdom of my gut, and the wisdom of my leaders, to not have started that relationship with him.”
These are but two of the stories I read in researching today’s sermon, but there are hundreds, even thousands, not just of women but also men; not just of adults but also children; not only straight people but also gay and lesbian. All the stories have something in common: being physically, emotionally, sexually, and spiritually used and abused. And many, though not all, also recount how the church failed to be there for them – at times by simply not talking about the issue; and other times by encouraging them to stay in the abusive situation in the name of forgiveness.
Does God’s Word give us any wisdom about situations of abuse like these stories depict? Does it speak to some of us who are victims of abuse? Or family members of abused? For that matter does it speak to any of us who may be abusers ourselves?
I believe that our Gospel reading describes clearly the pattern of behavior that leads to abuse. As it does so, it gives us a Word for abusers. It also gives us a message for those who are victims. Finally, it provides a challenge for all God’s children.
To being with, I said that our Gospel reading describes the pattern of behavior that leads toward abuse. Jesus of course is answering a question not so much about abuse directly, but about murder. Jesus warns us that we often think that murder is simply an act, where we kill another person. So we say “sure I cussed Gary out” or “I hate Terrence to the core, but I haven’t shot them in the head, so I’m golden”. Jesus says, no, you’ve got it wrong. Murder does not happen in a vacuum, out of the blue for no reason. Murder is the end result of a way of thinking, a way of relating. If you have that way of thinking, that way of relating in your life and heart, you already are on the path of the murderer. Murder begins in the heart. The answer Jesus says is not just to avoid killing people but to avoid the attitude toward others, the way of relating to those in our life that lead to murder.“Yawn”, you might be saying, “preacher you said you were going to talk about abuse. What does this have to do with that?”
Turn to someone and say “Abuse is murder writ small”. Turn to someone else and say “because when you abuse another, you kill a little part of them every day”.
You see the pattern of behavior that Jesus describes leading to murder is the same pattern that leads to abuse. In fact, if you really follow the news you would be amazed at the times a man or women kills their spouse and children in a fit of rage – and often kills themselves as well – when things are studied by the authorities, they find that man or woman had a history of abusing their spouse and children emotionally, verbally, and physically. This is why I say that abuse is murder writ small. The ultimate end result of the attitudes and actions in abuse are murder. A person being abused is murdered a little everyday. And often the physical abuse will escalate to the point of accidentally killing someone; the emotional abuse can become so damaging one is driven to take their own life.
Let’s take a moment and look at the pattern of behaviors Jesus describes.
First it begins in one’s heart. Jesus begins by describing the first step toward abuse and murder is being angry without cause. This does not mean that anger is a sin. It is talking about the tendency to outburst of anger and rage, not based on real injustice but as a reaction to situations. For example, I have had people in secular jobs I have been in who came to me, knowing I was a pastor, describing a spouse or friend blowing up at them because they didn’t make their coffee just right or because they talked to another person without anything romantic going on, but their spouse was irrationally possessive and jealous. We should become angry when we are mistreated, we should speak out and act to stop mistreatment. But this bursts of rage, outbursts of anger, at times over trivial things, is a sign that something is not right in our heart. It may be a sin of possessiveness, it may be emotional damage that needs to be worked through. But these outbursts of rage without cause, or not in proportion to what has gone on is the first step toward abuse.
Elsewhere in the book of James the Holy Spirit inspires the Lord’s brother to write, “Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness” (James 1.19). Again when someone is quick to blow up into a rage, this is the first step toward both abuse and murder of passion. Jesus says allowing yourself to blow up like this, over tiny things is sin. It is murder writ small.
This does not mean feeling angry is sin – but allowing your feelings to cause you to blow up at others. If you have this problem, you need to address it right away. You need to go to God about it, ask for help to learn to control your anger. You need to avoid the sin of blaming your anger outbursts on others. All that is is making excuses. For some people praying, meditating, and having Christian friends to hold them accountable is all they need to stop anger outbursts from escalating to abuse. But for many people – and almost all for whom these outbursts have moved from just feeling upset to blowing up in abusive ways – this change cannot happen without real professional help. Get help!
You may say “God can heal me” but remember, God can use others to help you heal. Saying “God why don’t you change me” when you don’t pursue the help available is like the man who said “God save me from the flood” and refused to take the boat, the raft, and the helicopter that came offering to rescue them. That person didn’t want rescue on God’s terms. Don’t be like that with your relationships. Get help now.
To those in relationships where people seem to be blowing up about little things – be careful. Yes, at times, all of us blow up at others in frustration. But if the person you are with has a pattern of this, how do you not know they won’t get worse, not better?
Turn to someone and say “you deserve God’s best, not leftovers”. Turn to someone else and say “don’t be a doormat to anyone”.
When you stay in a relationship with someone who blows up at you at the smallest thing, when you excuse it as if it is nothing, you are paving the way for being turned into a door mat your whole relationship. If someone consistently does this they need to be told “you can’t be in a relationship with me unless you get help”. The road from angry outbursts to actual abuse is a slippery slope of but a few steps.
The next step on the journey is words that kill. We say “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me,” and then we read in the news about young people committing suicide because of verbal and emotional abuse – words that kill. This is not just true of teenagers – many adults are driven to suicide by constant verbal and emotional abuse. This is why in Proverbs 18:21 we are warned “Death and life are in the power of the tongue”. Our words can kill.
So Jesus describes two types of abusive speech, words that kill. First insulting another and next calling them ‘Raca’, which is to say “fool” or “useless person”. As one of our stories illustrates insulting another can become a form of abuse. When we say “you are so stupid”, “You are so ugly”, and phrases like that we may not be hitting someone with our fists, but we are emotionally hitting them. We kill them a little each time we do that.
“Raca” is a term sometimes translated “fool” that is from the town Jesus grew up. It means “empty-head” or “useless”. We have a lot of words like that in English, like whore, the b-word, f-er,… most of which like them I don’t use in church. But we can say similar things without cursing. Those words treat another person as if they are garbage, as if they are trash. And you can see if you think of it how anger outbursts, fits of rage, can naturally lead into these words that kill.
Friend, if you have fallen into the pattern of tearing down the person you are with, you are not acting in love. You are killing them with your words. You are tearing down their self-image. Jesus says that these sort of words kill, they are murder writ small. They are verbal and emotional abuse. If you love the person you are with, you cannot let yourself keep doing this. And if you say you love God, you need to stop, get on your knees, and ask God for the power to change. You cannot verbally abuse another person and stay in friendship with God.
This is why Jesus says if you are abusing another, doing these words and actions that kill, you need to leave the gift on the altar. Don’t even worry about it – God doesn’t want it from you right now. You can praise Jesus all you want to with your lips, you can give big offerings, you can appear religious and even be a pastor in a church. But you will not be right with God while you are killing others with your words. And as I said with anger outbursts, if this is a pattern in your life you probably cannot change without serious and professional help.
Friends, if you are in a relationship where someone is tearing you down every day, you need to that the Bible says love builds up (1 Cor. 13) not tears down. God made you for better. You don’t need to take it. You know sadly some people are a like a drug, we get them in our system and we are hooked. At first they feel good, but they things go bad and they begin to destroy our heart, our life, our family – just like drug abuse does. But we begin to believe the words used to kill our souls that we are worthless, useless, a waste of space. Friend, you are not, never wore, and never shall be useless or a waste.
Turn to someone and say “You are a Child of God, in whom God is well-pleased, you deserve better than that”. Turn to someone else and say “don’t settle for less than God’s best”. God’s best for you is not being used, abused, put down day in and day out. Just like the alcoholic has to give up the bottle to get well, you need to give up whatever relationship is tearing you down in the name of love. For love builds up, doesn’t tear down.
The next step in the path to murder of course is a refusal to stop, which leads to murder. The end result of abuse is murder, because who knows when the person wailing on you – or you, if you are the person abusing another – will not stop soon enough and someone will die? And truly who knows when your acts of hurting another will become too much and that person will take their own life instead of enduring another day of a truly living hell. Jesus may not directly describe the physical abuse that a person with fits of rage who tears you down through words that kill will engage in if they are allowed to continue and refuse to seek help, but jumps directly from that to the end result – murder. But other Bible verses make it clear that physical violence, abusing your spouse and children is a sin before God because it is killing them a little every day.
Notice these words of God’s:
Psalms 11:5 The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.
Zephaniah 1:9 In the same day also will I punish all those that leap on the threshold, which fill their masters’ houses with violence and deceit.
Malachi 2:16-17 “I hate […] a man’s covering his wife with violence, as well as with his garment.” says the Lord Almighty….”You have wearied the Lord with your words.” “How have we wearied him?” you ask. By saying “all who do evil are good in the eyes of the Lord, and he is pleased with them,” or “Where is the God of justice?”. (NIV alternate translation)
Friend, if you are in a relationship in which someone is hitting you, kicking you, wailing on you, God does not want that for your life. God made you for better. Get out now, before it is too late. You do not know when they will cross that line and kill you – or worse yet, damage your children beyond repair.
Friend, if you are a person physically hurting, hitting, kicking, using, abusing anyone else – I don’t care if it is your partner, your spouse, the person you date, your children, their children, whomever – you need to get on your knees before God. You need to repent. Jesus says to leave your gift at the altar, and set your pattern of violence right before you approach him. That means finding help to overcome your abusive pattern of life is more important than coming to church, saying your prayers, or giving your tithes. It definitely is more important than being a church leader. I can’t tell you how many pastors, deacons, elders, Sunday school teachers I have known over the years who on Sunday would talk a good talk about Jesus’ love, and Monday would beat the tarnation out of their spouse or child. They needed to put that gift back at the altar. You are in no position to lead for God while you are locked in a pattern of abusing others. If anyone here is locked in a pattern of abusing others, you need to repent of it to God and go get help to change.
A final word, to the church. Too often we make the situation worse. We mistake Jesus’ command to forgive with the need to go back to the person and have them in your life. Forgiving another for their sin does not mean you go back into a situation where they can sin against you. No. It means you give the situation to God and begin to work through your anger and pain, so what happened does not hold you back. Too often people get the message “forgive, work through your problems” and get the message that they need to stay with someone who is using and abusing them. This, friend, I believe is never God’s will.
Even these words of Jesus’ get twisted into a weapon to hurt victims when people say “look! It sees go and make peace before you come to the altar” and they the victim to go and try to reconcile with the person who has used and abused them. Friend, that is twisting Scripture in a particularly evil way. I say this because if someone is abusing another person, the onus is not on the victim to “fix” the problem. The onus on the victim is to get to help and safety, and to get away from danger.
The onus to fix the problem is on the perpetrator. They must take the initiative, they must change, they must get help, and they must prove they have changed in order to have any type of godly relationship again with the person they have abused. And by change I do not mean moving from beating a person 3 times a day to 3 times a week.
When I counsel couples with a history of abuse, even if they have a desire to reconcile as a couple, I encourage them to consider separating while they both get help. The reason? I do not think a victim needs to stay in a relationship being beaten and put down everyday waiting patiently for someone to stop treating them like a punching bag. No. If that person says they love you and wants to change, they will not stand in your way of you both separating until they get help and change. And they will not want you in a situation where because of their brokenness and sin you will ever be able to be hurt by them again. If they are insisting you give them a chance to learn to stop beating up you up with their fists and their words by you staying where they can keep hurting you, how much do they really love you? If they really want to make it work, they will move out and give you space until they have learned to change their behavior and they will prove to you they have changed before ever asking to come back. Family of God, we need to make sure we support the victims of abuse, we stand by them, and we become a safe place for them to find help, and we quit making them feel blamed for wanting to be treated like a human being.
To close, I want to let you hear the words of a Savage Garden song that reflects on the experience of abuse.
Last week I began to discuss being people of peace in the midst of a world of violence, stemming from having heard about the attack on a Nairobi mall on International Prayer for Peace Sunday. I shared that this got at my heart because of our experience hosting an exchange student in our home from Kenya. I want to return to the question of being people of peace, but before I do I’d like to share with you a poem I wrote remembering this short year of blessing with our exchange student.
This experience was such a gift, and reminded me how interconnected we all are. It opened up my heart in a lot of ways that really matter, and reminded me how small the world is in the big scheme of things.
And I’m not just whistling Dixie here,
your progressive redneck preacher,
Micah
Kenyan Breeze
You came into our life
unbidden as a cool breeze in August
as unexpected as snowfall on a march Morning
yet just as refreshingly welcome.
You came,
as full of life
as momma’s garden
alive with ripe tomatoes, cucumber, and dill
with ladybugs crawling and dragonflies dancing.
Yet the life about you most resembles
the fireflies of autumn
that make music with their twinkling lights
shining around me like the circling fairies of children’s tales.
So you came, shining with your own bright glory,
beautiful as an ocean wave
and your time with us just as fleeting.
I would not trade that moment
anymore than the moment when
the salty waves cover me with their embrace
announcing even after through my damply dripping hair
I am loved
a child of God’s creating
inviting me to endless joy
even though it fades so quickly.
And so, sweet African princess,
your sojourn in our family
though short, will not be forgotten
not until I forget the dance of morning sunlight on the waters
progressiveredneckpreacher 