Our Trust in Things Not Seen

Overheard one of my people the other day describe Faith as 'belief without evidence." This upset me a little...basically made me feel like I haven't really been doing my job very well, but then here's the kicker: for half my lifetime (25 years - which is essentially my entire life as an adult), I have "served" as an ordained clergyman, even though most days I don't really believe in God...or at least not anything that would pass for God in 98% of the so-called "Christian" churches on this planet. I CERTAINLY don't believe in the Virgin Birth, the Physical Resurrection, the Substitutionary Atonement, the literal Inerrancy of the Scripture, and Christ's Bodily Second Coming...much less that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God in any sense other that we are all metaphorically God's Children, and thus brothers and sisters to one another. In fact, if I were re-writing the creed it would go something along the lines of: I Believe that Jesus of Nazareth was a bastard, born of a young woman in the usual way, that he was crucified under Pontius Pilate and that he was never buried at all, but rather his body hung upon a crude Roman cross until it had been entirely consumed by ravens and wild dogs, and that people have been trying to turn him into something he never was for their own purposes ever since. Not exactly the most inspiring set of beliefs, I know. Maybe it's a good thing I wasn't a First Century Christian.

What else do I believe? Well, I believe in Evil -- in cruelty, selfishness, deceit, deception, greed, avarice, lust, pride, gluttony, and all the rest -- believe in them because I see the evidence of them with my own two eyes almost every day. In a word, I believe in Sin. But not Original Sin; rather, just the plain old-fashioned ordinary sin...and I hate it, which means that often I also hate myself, and feel ashamed to be a member of the human race. Yet I also know (in large part THANKS to a healthy sense of shame and self-loathing) that "sin" and "hate" will NEVER be "conquered" by more of the same, and that the ONLY way to overcome them is through the Transforming Power of Love: through compassion, generosity, gratitude, trust, forgiveness, mercy, and random acts of kindness.

And yes, through Sacrifice. Like Jesus. Like Socrates. Like Abraham. A sacrifice which trusts the unknown mysterious power of a reality larger than ourselves, and submits to that reality in order to become at one with it. And yet, this act of self-sacrificing submission to the unknown is incredibly frightening and requires unbelievable courage...so much that often we tend to "chicken out," telling ourselves instead that it is irrational, illogical, naive, foolish and stupid...because (frankly) it is. Yet this is precisely the difference between "belief without evidence" and "a trust in the reality of things not seen." Because, let's face it: who could attempt this work of Ministry at all if we didn't believe in the Unseen Power of Transformative Love? And more to the point, why would we even want to try?

There are caveats, of course. There are always caveats. Being only human, there is naturally a dark side to our Love as well. When we allow our blind faith in the Transforming Power of Love to encourage and support the self-destructive addictive narcissism of others, we become enablers rather than healers. When we attempt to use the power of Love inappropriately to manipulate the behaviors and limit the freedom of others -- to keep them powerless and under control rather than allowing them to discover the liberating power of their own potential for transformation -- we become instruments of oppression rather than messengers of Good News. Not only must Justice be tempered with Mercy, we must also learn to temper our Mercy with Justice, to balance compassion with accountability. An honest sense of where we leave off and the other begins, together with a humble appreciation and acceptance of our own human limitations, create the kind of "healthy" boundaries which allow two souls to meet and touch, rather than fusing and becoming lost in one another. The slogan "hate the sin but love the sinner" has often been shamelessly twisted in horrible ways to justify all kinds of terrible treatment of our fellow human beings. Perhaps it is better merely to remember to "Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Judged," and to do unto others as we would have others do unto us....