Once to ev'ry man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, some great decision, off'ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.
~ James Russell Lowell
Within the past week, I was reminded of this text by my friend Suzanne, who said of it “If we get beyond the obvious sexist language, there is a pointed message for every believer, a call to social decision and activism, even if our efforts do not end well. It is a powerful, discomforting hymn, and seems very apt for this moment.” A few days later, this same friend made the following observation: “Some of my Christian friends believe that Christianity is under attack. It is. From itself.”
Humanity, in general, and the United States particularly, has not been in such upheaval since the H1N1 pandemic of 1917-19, which was on the heels of WWI. The uncoordinated response of our civic leaders in the United States could be addressed here, but that is part of a larger discussion I’ll save for another time. What I find profoundly disturbing is the poor example set by mainstream christian church leaders, particularly of the mega-church variety, in how to address the pandemic – to the point, pastors seem to prefer large maskless, in-person crowds, rather than the safer live-stream or even pre-recorded services.
When some congregants are challenged with regard to going about maskless, they claim this is self-determined choice made “in faith,” adhering to “the will of God.” Pastor Tony Spell, of Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, LA, was quoted in the Washington Post as saying “We feel we are being persecuted for the faith by being told to close our doors.” I’ve seen posts on Facebook – and have actually heard regular church-going people say in public – that being forced to wear a mask is (1) an act of “faithlessness”, (2) “surrendering to fear” and (2) “an assault on my constitutional rights.” In a letter to the editor of a newspaper, one writer declared, “If we fall in love with Jesus, God will heal our land.”
Interestingly, citizens of the United States wrestled with these same issues during that H1N1 pandemic of one hundred years ago. Unfortunately, average citizens of the nation today don’t seem to have learned much in a hundred years about how to deal with the threat of viruses, despite all of our scientific advances. But, what seems worse is that great masses of citizens have not learned, in all that time, that self-determination and secular freedom cannot overrule public health orders, and neither can they overcome a virus. A virus is not an idea. You can’t argue with a virus. A virus is not a terrorist plot. A virus has no religion. If faith was indeed the medicine needed to eradicate the threat, I feel sure that the virus would have been eradicated in an instant, or maybe never have presented, at all. That the virus is still rampant means that people need to engage whatever critical thinking ability they might have, look for real solutions, follow advice from epidemiologists and act responsibly in public settings. A virus is not a political tool, but the presence of this one is certainly being used to polarize the masses, to profit from suffering, and to sow doubt and fear.
The attitudes recently displayed in my greater community, the disdain for rules imposed on the religious and non-religious alike, have made me think long and hard about my dealings with the general public and my understanding of my faith, and how frequently my understanding seems at odds with what I see acted out in public, particularly by those who identify as faithful christians. In the past few weeks, I've realized that I have thought on these matters much over the years.
I think it started in the 1970s when, as a youth, I remember being disturbed when I noticed Ichthys (fish) signs appearing in the windows of businesses in the town where I lived. Even as a naive youth, I felt there was something off, something fundamentally wrong with this. The signs seemed to telegraph the message, “we cater to Christians.” This seemed to me to go completely against the teaching of Jesus, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” This seemed to me to go completely against the teaching of Paul from Galatians 3, where he says “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Time has marched on since then. Today, it sometimes seems to me that the greater mainstream modern christian mission is intent on a type of control that is anything but reflective of that fruit of the spirit, listed in Galatians 5, self-control. The mission is now about mass control of the public and the marketplaces, dictating what people can be and do, as well as what they can't. Those christians that engage in exercising this control at the political level are using secular freedoms and contortions of the law as tools to accomplish these goals. Such goals have nothing to do with being responsible, honoring freedom, human rights, individual personhood or – do I have to say it? – with honoring God. These goals have been lobbied long and hard the halls of our local municipalities and state capitols, and now they seem to have been installed at the very pinnacle of our government, through a figurehead who is anything but godly.
A political minority is now in the process of reversing decades of modern human progress. Biblical scriptures are being used to return America to the way it was a hundred years ago or more, to deepen systemic racism and implicit bias, to allow the “free” market to tell us what we need (and deliver it at the highest cost to any people on the face of the earth), to dictate what people can do with their bodies (without offering public support for the policies imposed), to tell people how they must define their personhood, and at times suspending their rights. Scripture is being used to divide and rule. People are being told on the one hand that their lives are self-determined (via their Constitutional rights) and on the other that they must live by faith (via their religion). That “results may vary” is beside the point; if you don’t succeed, it’s surely because you lack faith or don’t work hard enough.
But it is patently incorrect that the church universal is a “by faith only” institution. For one thing, the exercise of religion by faith alone is fatalistic, is it not? Declaring all circumstances and situations to be “God’s will” is asserting that results (good or bad) are inevitable. This is not what scripture is intended to teach; if this were the case, we might as well bury our heads in the sand and give up. But if Jesus taught anything, it is that we must never give up, especially not in the face of hardship.
All that I have said above is merely a prelude for what I will do next, which is to unpack a portion of Mathew, Chapter 10, from my understanding of it. [And I apologize if it seems like I am leaping around; but all that is written in this essay seems related and cohesive to me.] In this section of Matthew, Jesus has empowered the disciples to heal and has commissioned them to go, first, into the Jewish communities to preach and heal. They have been told not take anything with them, to seek the hospitality only of those willing to offer it. Jesus tells them to use their judgment and inner wisdom in their encounters. Then he says, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword,” and then he enumerates a list of “divisions.”
Of all the passages in this complex gospel, I have considered this one much over the years. For a long time, I thought this uncharacteristic of Jesus. But over time I have come to a different way of thinking. What has Jesus been preaching, since Chapter 4? “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” For Jesus, the kingdom of God is here, but people are not living it—for myriad reasons, but primarily because their hearts and vision are not properly aligned with a few vital truths. Predominant among these truths is that social equity is mandated within the kingdom; no one is better than anyone else, or worse—unless they act in a way that does not respect the rule of law and the individual.
When Jesus talks about dividing people from family or other groups, I’m fairly certain he is talking about separating people from ways of thinking and understanding that have been promulgated by custom and culture, ways of being that are rote, formulaic, even work-around rather than genuine, practical or direct. What specific results of this cleaving are possible? I believe the cleaving intended to separate people from ideas of caste and class, wealth and poverty, strength and weakness, so that individuals are understood based on who they are and how they act, rather than based on an assigned label, to be treated formulaically according to some custom or rule.
The first time we hear “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” it is delivered (in Chapter 3) by John the Baptist. John’s message is no less violent than when Jesus talks about bringing a sword, but the resulting message is the same. “Bring forth fruit worthy of repentance.. Even now the axe is laid on the root of the trees; therefore, every tree which does not bring forth good fruit will be cast into the fire.”
After years of thinking about these passages, the meaning that they hold for me now seems so uncomplicated. John and Jesus sought to divide us from the delusion of division.
To divide us from divisions, what could that mean? Well, I think that is about making us whole, healing us for the work of the kingdom. What is kingdom of God like in such a case? It is a place – even a political system – where everyone has personhood, place, and role, where every challenge and need is appropriately met, at a shared cost. As Martin Buber wrote in I and Thou , “All real living is meeting.”
And so, I return to the sentiments expressed by James Russell Lowell, from whose longer poem, entitled “Verses Suggested by the Present Crisis” (published in the Boston Courier on December 11, 1845) the hymn text quoted above is derived. A later verse proclaims:
We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great,
Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate,
But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din,
List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,
—
"They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin."
And still later in the poem:
They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires,
Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new-lit altar-fires;
Shall we make their creed our jailor? Shall we, in our haste to slay,
From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away
To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of today?
And with these thoughts, I conclude by proclaiming that the sword continues to be wielded, “the soul is still oracular,” and “the kingdom is at hand.” I hope that mainstream christianity will find its way out of the wilderness it has created for itself and for all of us.
I personally believe that every moment is alive for new and thoughtful choices, always ready for healthy repentance and renewal, if one will allow oneself to be divided from division.
But, please, do not be divided from your facemask, at least until the pestilence is gone.
© 2020 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com
