Is There Any Good News?

 A friend of mine engages in what she calls “positive self-talk,” and has accused me good-naturedly of sometimes being a “Negative Ned.”  I admit that almost two years of pandemic have made me a bit depressed and that even beforehand I had been discouraged by the state of our nation and the direction of my denomination (United Methodist).  Perhaps we could all use some good news amidst the gloom and doom of our most recent history.

John Krasinksi, known for his role in The Office, has hosted an in-home broadcast called “Some Good News,” to lift our spirits during these COVID times.  The stories are real, heart-warming, humorous, and an elixir for our current troubles.

In other good news we find ourselves in the Christmas season.  Perhaps the birth of Jesus can serve as a spiritual elixir to help lift us up from the downward spiral in which we find ourselves.  The big theological word to define the heart of Christmas is Incarnation, as in Emmanuel - God. With. Us.  There is something enlivening about the divine becoming human - good news, indeed.

What makes the concept of Incarnation good?  Where do I begin?

Incarnation affirms that the material world - flesh and blood, vegetable and mineral, earth, wind, fire and water - is good (Genesis 1:31).  Contrary to the fringe element of Christians who wish to evacuate the wicked world through some fantastical “rapture,” the Bible actually affirms that the earth is good, deserving of our attention, and worth saving.  After all, at the end of all things God is going to “come down” from heaven and dwell with us here (Revelation 21:3), in a renewal of creation.

Another big theological word affirms the goodness of Incarnation, and that is the word Resurrection.  One of our Christian creeds says that we believe in the “resurrection of the body,” which suggests once again that our bodies - flesh and blood - are good, deserving of our attention and worth saving.  There is a mystery regarding the exact form of this resurrected body which apparently is imperishable (1 Peter 1:4), and yet imminently recognizable as a “body.”  Jesus, resurrected, was known to his disciples.  He ate breakfast on the beach with them and invited Thomas to place has hand in his scars.  The good news of Incarnation suggests that even after death we will not be disembodied spirits floating about in the ether but we will know and be known by others - the blessed and beloved community that we were created to be will continue to exist - good news.

The early church struggled with this notion of divinity/humanity.  Some early theologians questioned how the divine could possibly still be divine if taking on human flesh, suffering on a cross, and dying.  They supposed it was all an illusion, a trick played on us, that the Godhead didn’t really go through all that.  But what became orthodoxy (the consensus of “right teaching”) is that while it remains an ineffable mystery, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” fully human and yet fully divine.

The good news of Christmas leads logically to wonder, if God was in Christ Jesus, is it then possible that God could live in us, as the hymn writer suggests - “be born in us today”?  Is there a spark of divinity in humans?  Are we capable of goodness?

Here’s a statistic:  As of today 62% of people in the U.S., 12 years of age and above, have been fully vaccinated.  That means the majority of people have made the decision for the greater good.  While surely some have been vaccinated out of a desire for self-preservation, I would argue that the many have done so out of a sense of public responsibility.  To be vaccinated assumes that we protect not only ourselves but also those around us, our families, certainly, but also our friends and neighbors.  In fact, by being vaccinated we protect even those who refuse vaccination.  To be vaccinated assumes that what we do with our bodies matters, and that we believe the bodies of others also matter.  This is an affirmation of Incarnation.  Good news.

During the Christmas break our church, in cooperation with our school district, sponsors a food program - cooking and delivering meals to children who qualify for free lunch at our public schools.  During the holidays this ministry insures that no child will go hungry just because school cafeterias are closed.  This is incarnational ministry which honors the bodies of children, which puts flesh on spiritual teaching - that we are to care for the poor, give water to the thirsty, and feed the hungry.  Good news.

Christmas teaches us about Incarnation.  It is Good News, indeed.    

 

Seeking a Seamless Garment

“. . . so that they may take hold of the life that is really life.”  1 Timothy 6:19

In the early years of my pastoral ministry I was drawn to the theological concept of the “seamless garment.”  The idea is to approach life with an ethic that is logical across a whole range of issues.  For instance, if one takes the stand for pacifism, arguing that life is precious and thus war is to be opposed at all costs, then one should logically be opposed to abortion because human life is hallowed even in utero.  Such logic leads to extraordinary measures taken to preserve the life of the seriously ill, even if such preservation leads to prolonged suffering.  It follows also that one would also be in opposition to the death penalty because life is of such intrinsic value that Christians must defend and preserve the life even of those who have committed heinous crimes.  Preserving life becomes the highest ideal.  

The seamless garment is attractive because of its inherent logic and simplicity.  If life is the ultimate value, then the complexity of decision-making is removed.  God created life.  Only God can take life.  Life is to be protected. Period. 

Against this ethic stands the weight and experience of human history.  

Wars are fought and justified, even by Christians.  Abortion is made available as an option.  The hospice movement provides alternatives to life at all costs with the implication that death may not be the worst thing that may happen to a person who is aged, infirm, or suffering.  And the death penalty is upheld in many states as a reasonable punishment for certain crimes.  Obviously, society has reasoned that sometimes individual lives can be sacrificed for a supposed greater good.

The seamless garment argument assumes the ideal - what life should be (will be) in the kingdom of God.  If the world is what God created it to be, then there will be no war, no unwanted babies, or accidental pregnancies, no disease or suffering, no murder or violence.  The seamless garment argument presupposes a return to Eden’s innocence and tranquility.  What the seamless garment naively fails to reckon with is the unfortunate and inevitable reality of sin.

Sin is at the heart of our human predicament.  While God created all life and called it good, there is in the human heart a tendency toward selfishness, even toward evil.  This proclivity toward sin by necessity calls for the need for law to create limits on evil.  

There is also a harshness to the logic of the seamless garment that refuses to acknowledge human frailty - a frailty that leads us toward errors in judgment and sometimes costly mistakes.  The vulnerability of human beings calls for a response of mercy from followers of Jesus.

The necessity of both law and mercy in the human community introduces complexity into the ethical issues we face requiring a certain amount of Christian humility - a humility that the seamless garment fails to recognize.

War is evil indeed, but could the world ignore Hitler’s regime without allowing a greater evil?  Abortion is a horrible choice, but is it fair to criminalize pregnant women while men bear no cost, no responsibility, no fault?  Euthanasia seems like a morbid and terrible act, yet do we value length of life at the expense of life’s quality?  The death penalty seems just - “an eye for an eye” - and yet it is meted out disproportionally to people of color, and even sometimes to those who are later proved innocent.  

Clearly, society has often decided that some lives are worth sacrificing for the overall good, but where and when do we draw the line regarding how many lives, or whose lives?  The seamless garment removes such a question from consideration.  How appealing it is not think about the complexities of law and mercy.  But when life confronts life, when sin must be reckoned with, simple answers are not sufficient.  Sin must be met with law to maintain order.  But the law must be seasoned with mercy lest it become another means of death-dealing.  The interplay of law and mercy cannot be simplified.  Until the kingdom of God becomes real on earth as it is in heaven, we must struggle to find a way that honors life without making of it an idol.  

Perhaps life is not the ultimate good.  Perhaps the ultimate good is love.  What would love call forth from us in the face of sin?  How does love mediate law’s demands?  How might love help us navigate the complex decisions that must be made in the dialog between justice and mercy? Even these questions lead to complicated answers, but arguably more fruitful ones for the common good.       

The First Letter to Timothy includes a rather cryptic reference to “life that is really life,” without defining what “real life,” is.  The implication is that Christians are called to something more than mere existence, that there is a quality of living above and beyond the ordinary.  In context, the reference refers to living with a spirit of humble generosity toward others (verses 17-18).  One might call this love.  A generosity of spirit which shapes how we view war.  A generosity of spirit that tempers the conversation between pro-life and pro-choice factions.  A generosity of spirit that affects our approach to end-of-life decisions.  A generosity of spirit which informs our attitudes toward crime and punishment.  What the logic of the seamless garment lacks is this spirit of humble generosity.  I wonder if the best we can hope for is to stitch together a patchwork quilt of our best intentions, guided by the willingness to love and be loved - to offer the same generosity of spirit toward others that we hope would be shown to us.  As some have previously said, “Be kind, most people are having a hard time."  

  

  

America's Original Sin

Jim Wallis of Sojourner’s fame wrote a book some year’s ago in which he described racism as America’s “original sin.”  I have no reason to critique his opinion on the matter.  Racism is a fundamental problem that has haunted American history from our nascent days, weaving it’s evil threads into our continental psyche long before the United States of America was a self-governing nation.  Indeed, racism is an American problem, infiltrating continents North and South, beginning with the institution of slavery and leaving its wicked residue to plague us with social ills for centuries.

However, I would step back a bit and propose that behind racism is a deeper, more original “sin” of which racism is but one of many troublesome symptoms or poisonous by-products.  America’s original sin is Greed - capitalized.  Behind slavery was love of mammon which unavoidably leads to wickedness in many forms.  Slavery was born out of a desire to maximize profits at the cost of human souls and bodies.  As Christian scripture informs us, “the love of money is the root of all evil.”  Perhaps it is an overstatement to exclaim that mammon, or the love of it, is the source of “all” evil, but the biblical warning should alarm us to the insidious nature of greed.

In America greed has been institutionalized in the form of capitalism.  “Greed is good,” serves as a mantra for much that is wrong in the American economy.  This is not meant as a wholesale rejection of our nation’s economic system, but as a warning for those who would embrace capitalism without a critical assessment of its frequent harmful side effects.  While there is a kind of genius behind capitalism in its most basic sense - that a person through hard work and perseverance might prosper - America’s history of slavery, racism, child labor abuse, migrant worker mistreatment, and major bank bailouts provide plenty of evidence pointing to the ways in which capitalism can become malignant.  The increasing divide between the wealth of labor and that of management is a testament to the power of greed to rob society of reason and decency.  If capitalism is unregulated by checks and balances on human avarice, the result is bound to be human suffering.  

David Stockman, former manager of the OMB during the Reagan Administration, has bewailed the influence of crony capitalism in which corporations and politicians pander to one another, rigging the economic system so that free markets are no longer truly free, and national interests become indistinguishable from corporate profits.  The Trump family fortune is but one example of how crony capitalism has benefited a very few at the expense of the many (For further reading on this subject try Andrea Bernstein’s American Oligarchs).  In the post-Reagan years the unchecked growth of Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, etc., testifies to the failure of government to pull the reins in on corporate interests.  If we “follow the money” we should not be surprised at the reluctance of politicians to be more restrictive of the corporations that fund their election campaigns.

Our present course of unchecked capitalism will inevitably lead to increased human suffering, not only in America but also around the world.  U.S. profits have often been built on the misery of other nations.  Trickle down economy has proven false.  Greed leads to evil consequences.  As corporations grow more powerful than governments, who will make sure that economies serve the public good?  Has not the time come to break up trillion dollar monopolies in the interest of competition and sustainability?  I write this simply to sound an alarm.  When members of the Fed make ethically questionable stock market trades do we look the other way?  I am not an economist and cannot prescribe a solution. I am only making an appeal for a more measured, regulated, sustainable, and hopefully, human, approach to capitalism.  

Bob Dylan once sang that you have to serve somebody, “It may be the Devil, or it may be the Lord.”  Jesus said one cannot serve both God and mammon.  Who will we choose?

Cobalt, Capitalism, and Christianity

 As it is written, “The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.” 2 Corinthians 8:15

These days there is economic and political turmoil in the Congo over the mining of cobalt.  Cobalt is a mineral which is one of the basic building blocks for batteries, essential elements for the wave of new electric vehicles which are destined to flood the market in developed countries.  As more prosperous countries compete for this resource, its value will increase, but not necessarily leading to the growth of wealth for the citizens of the Congo.  The flow of supply and demand is often at the mercy of the big players in global politics who are themselves frequent partners, maybe even at the service, of capitalist corporate interests.

Electric vehicles, hailed as an answer to global warming concerns, may in the long run do little to address international inequities in economic well-being, not to mention the dire consequences to the ecology of nations where mining takes place.  Not only does mining have catastrophic consequences for the environment, but what are we to make of the problems presented by the disposal of these batteries when their life span has run out?  The world has yet to come to terms with the long-lasting toxicity of the waste produced by the marvels of modern technological innovation.

Rainforests are being decimated, not only for agricultural reasons, but to create mines that extract nickel, another basic element of the growing demand for batteries to power our cars and other electronic devices.  So we are preparing to exchange one form of pollution for another.  The solution to one problem becomes the creation of another, and the effect on climate improvement may be negligible.  In other words, the slippery slope is getting slipperier, and the solutions are not simple.

The environmental cost, of course, is but one part of the equation.  The costs of advances in technology continue to benefit developed and developing countries at the expense of poorer nations who are often ill-governed and ill-equipped to negotiate with powerful corporations who exploit the available natural resources without regard to consequences to the people in undeveloped nations.  The profit motive is the driving force of capitalism and is generally regulated in developed nations - not so much in what once was known as the Third World.  Unregulated capitalism leads to ethical abuses, environmental destruction, and economic exploitation in the countries that can least afford it.

Against this bleak picture there is a Christian perspective that can offer a more hopeful way forward.  The apostle Paul offers guidelines for the followers of Jesus in the city of Corinth, encouraging equitable distribution of resources - the one who has much, does not have too much, the one who has little, does not have too little.  This guideline is similar to the description of the early church we find in Acts, Chapter 2:44-45, and 4:32-34, in which the people of God shared all things in common, and there was not a needy person among them.  Such a simple directive which historically has been difficult to live out.

Churches usually address these passages during the stewardship months of October and November, addressing the budgetary needs of the church for the ensuing year.  But these passages are intended to describe a way of life by which a Christian community is governed from day to day.  Unfortunately, church-goers in the United States are often more devout capitalists than we are Christians.  We are acquisitive by nature and we are never quite sure we have enough, so we are constantly seeking to accumulate more.  We are acquirers of property and overly concerned about protecting and insuring what we have so that “share, and share alike,” seems an impossible goal.  

What this suggests is a failure to trust our neighbor.  We do not have faith in the community to come to our aid in time of need so we surround ourselves with possessions as a hedge against the future.  And if we do not trust our community, we may find ourselves not trusting in God.  Against this tendency Christians would be wise to listen to the words we hear in 1 Timothy 6:17, “Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.”

The Christian ethic of “enough,” has a lot to offer to the world.  Our theology of creation assures us that God has made the world “very good,” and there is enough for all.  We hear so often that there are in fact more than enough resources - food, shelter, material goods (life’s necessities) - to provide for everyone on the planet.  The problem has always been not one of resource but of distribution, or in modern parlance, logistics. 

 

We may be fooling ourselves if we think the world will ever adopt an economic ethic of sharing all things in common so that everyone has enough.  But what might happen if the Christians of the world agreed that the one who had much, did not have too much, and the one who had little, did not have too little?  As followers of the One who said, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head,” perhaps we might find the willingness to explore a new way of living in this world so that no one might be in need.  Perhaps such a hope is naive in a world hardened by cruelty and cynicism, but perhaps such a hope is the only thing that will save us.