Where My Heart Lies

He had tattoos on his face, not the gorgeous curves of the Maori tattoos that follow the contours of eye and jaw, but a crude and motley assortment, seemingly done without thought – jailhouse tattoos – a Celtic cross on one cheek, unbalanced by a larger pair of dice on the opposite temple.  

He caught me out in the open.  I couldn’t escape.  I was struggling to start the mower and he came, walking rapidly and talking a line I’d heard before – a story I couldn’t confirm and which didn’t really make sense.  His message: I’m a good guy.  I work and am willing to work more.  I have an emergency and can you help?  

When sis and I were about four and six, dad took us to town in his new ’53 Chevy to run some errands.  He parked on main street, fed the meter, and left the two of us to our own devices.  (I know, I know, but this was 1952.)  

Time passed and dad didn’t return.  Looking out the windshield, I noticed that the meter was running out.  I only knew that when a meter runs out bad things could happen and it had to do with the police.  I sort of panicked.  

We jumped out of the car.  I sent sis one direction and I went the other.  I entered stores and begged for some change, no luck until a shoe salesman gave me a nickel.  I fed the meter.  Dad returned and was annoyed at what we had done.  Oh well…

Now, this guy didn’t qualify.  He asked for a small loan.  I said I don’t loan money but I would give him something.  He’d probably done this to a hundred people or maybe not.  I didn’t care.  

Jesus, and a shoe salesman, taught me that it’s not about the merits of a beggar’s case, it’s about me the giver.  It’s about where my heart lies.  Whether my man was in the same position as a kid looking for a nickel or not didn’t matter.  I just wanted him to be. 

Our Civil War

The shooting death of Michael Brown, and now others being picked up by the media, has revisited feelings that the black community has known for generations and the rest of us have ignored.  From what I understand, the Brown incident began with two young men walking on the street and an officer ordering them to get up on the sidewalk.  

It’s so easy to decline into our primitive, superior, dominating attitudes.  It’s about people, feeling marginalized, stepping out into the street and making it their turf and coming up against an angry and perhaps frustrated police officer.  It’s one attitude pushing up against another attitude.  

I think we need to wake up and realize that we’re still fighting the Civil War, just on another level.  I think America has racism, lots of it, and we’ve been sticking our heads in the sand over the issue.  The civil war, an act of violence, produced winners and losers and nobody’s heart was changed.  Instead, the disease morphed into more subtle forms of hatred and pride.  Violence begets violence even if the moral victory is won.  

We’re not going to become a decent nation unless distributive justice is preached from pulpits, taught in classrooms, and embraced in our homes.  Kids don’t hate by nature.  They have to be taught.  We’re not going to have peace through war, but by getting out on the street and standing with the oppressed and by voting and demanding accountability from our leadership. We need to abandon our televisions and our games and get out into the real world where there’s work to be done.  Racism is evil, and yet both the perpetrators and the victims need to be loved for genuine peace to become reality. 

Human Behavior

Culture is the accumulated wisdom, art, and irrationality of a people, calcified into traditions that can’t be changed.  In a story reported this week by Reuters a woman has been forcibly removed from a hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone, by her family after she tested positive for the Ebola virus.  Too many people there distrust doctors but Ebola is contagious and carries a death rate of sixty to ninety percent and she’s now on the loose.  How many people have to die horribly from this disease before the learning curve overtakes the culture? 

Here in America our stuff has to be big and noisy and wasteful.  This is irrational, unless making an ego statement is rational.  And there’s a lot more that has developed into our present culture: Racism, Greed, Misogynism, Denial. 

And most, if not all, cultures are locked into compulsive human reproduction, even in the face of evidence that this habit we have may result in catastrophe.  I’m saying that cultural mores play a huge part in destructiveness and abuse and we, the human race, may be approaching a tipping point.  I think it’s highly unlikely that humans can change their collective thinking - their cultures - in time. 

Now enter religion.  Some folks want to say that God is going to intervene.  Jesus is coming back to rescue us and kill and torture the bad guys while the planet goes up in flames. 

I think it’s more likely that human behavior is going to result in a massive natural disaster causing a kill-off of billions of people.  Then we will say that God did it. 

Seven Reasons I Think America Is Just a Wannabe Nation

1.  Most Americans I have met who self-identify as Christians deny or ignore selected teachings of Jesus.  (i.e. Love your enemy.) 2.   I have a sense there is more interest in owning Jesus than following him.  Spiritual struggle, the bearing of one’s cross, is pushed aside in favor of spiritual “arrival,” where privilege trumps accountability. 3.  It seems that Americanized Christianity wants to rule, not serve.  Doesn’t this stand in direct opposition to Jesus’ desire for all his followers to be servants? 4. “Us” and “them” attitudes are fostered by too many people.  Jesus rebuked his disciples for wishing fire and brimstone on a village that rejected him.  I haven’t been seeing his accepting attitude enough. 5.   Is there a push by Christians in America to enshrine their religion with official government status and deny constitutional rights to other faiths?  How does this fit with Jesus supposedly saying, “My kingdom is not of this world.”6.   There seems to be a powerful interest in warfare and violence among Christians, who supposedly worship a man who was a victim of violence. 7.  Why do I have a problem with people who say they are “saving babies,” but who seem to relish killing adults? I have to admit that I have all of these inclinations myself.  We, the human race, are poxed with insecurities and aggression and lust for power.  Fear and hatred boil to the surface when we are stressed, and we are majorly stressed and divided right now.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could just chill out, and see with new eyes the beautiful souls of all our sisters and brothers, just because everyone has come from the creative hand of God? 

Nobody listens to me.

Nobody listens to me. I just can’t make people understand what’s wrong with them! Let’s say that someone grievously offends me.  Let’s say that this someone was a serial killer who tortured and murdered innocent people. I feel hatred for this creep.  I have fantasies about what I would do with him if he were under my power.  It would be about doing to him what he did to others so he would know what it was like.  I imagine him begging for mercy and saying that he was sorry. But now that I’m older and more experienced with people I know that torturing the torturer or killing the killer may or may not bring some desired result.  Many criminals behave the way they do for deeper reasons than we understand and it isn’t likely that messing with them is going to move them in any significant way. There just isn’t going to be justice if justice is getting satisfaction for us.  Some criminals simply need to be locked away for the safety of society and nobody is going to change them with punishment. Even images in scripture depict this too-human desire for revenge and project it on God.  The gospel of Luke tells the story of the rich man and Lazarus, depicting the rich man’s agony in burning hell.  I have little investment anymore in these images.  I think that God may have a better way, and if not God, then who? I wish I could remember the author who proposed this, but in my readings this theologian speculated that what’s best in terms of justice is for the offender to truly see the damage he or she has done, and the product of that vision would be deep and excruciating grief.  I think that it is an extremely rare case to accomplish this drastic change of thinking through human intervention. In his writings, Paul hints that in the life after this life, we will see things clearly, with vision no longer obstructed by our human failings, even malformed or damaged brains.  Wouldn’t this be a surprising truth even for criminals when “judgment” is that person’s judgment on himself? This is iffy for me too.  I’m not sure I want to see and have to deal with my own brokenness.  And yet, because God is love, I am also trusting that I will see the good part too, the parts of myself that I haven’t seen as beautiful or intelligent or loving.  All I can say is bring it on so I can see the real me because the real Lord of the universe will be standing with me.