Christianity is inherently political. The faithful path taught and demonstrated by Jesus of Nazareth was arguably just as much a political vision for the future of the Jewish people as much as it was a path to spiritual salvation.
What an existential conundrum it is for us human beings as we long for someone to see us for the truth of what we are, while at the same time fearing to be seen for the truth of what we think we are and that others might perceive. A very tiring dance.
The Christmas story is the greatest story ever told. It’s why we’re still telling it two millennia later. We’re telling it all around the world. The story of God who loves the world enough to come all the way down to be present in the world, not as a soldier, but as a teeny, tiny, vulnerable infant.
“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” in Luke 23:34 has always troubled me, because it is the first of the seven utterances by Jesus on the cross. I’ve been taught that the act of forgiveness is a sign of spiritual mettle and grace under fire. And, as an African American, the act of forgiveness appears to be our immediate go-to place in the face of unimaginable racial horror done to us.
The church isn’t just dying. In many parts of the United States, it is already dead. At least, its impact is. The pews are still warm, the offering plates clanking with coins, and the bodies are present. However the church itself is wasting away and has become irrelevant.
Everything that God called forth comes from the Water, everything we know in our world today was created except for the Water, it was already here. Even among scientists there is continued debate about where Water came from, how it got here. No matter the angle, Water’s presence in our reality is a precious, life-giving mystery.
Some of the most egregious acts in civilization find their justification in Scripture, from genocide to slavery to deadly homophobia. History proves that the Bible, read with nefarious hermeneutics, in the hands of powerful figures can cause catastrophe.
It is a sad thing to close the doors of a church. Hard as it is for the congregation’s members, however, the event has a far deeper, though often unseen and uncalculated, impact on the health of the community in which that congregation was practicing its increasingly irrelevant faith. As churches age and weaken, their focus necessarily turns toward survival and away from the world outside their doors.
For most Christians, the question is, “Can you strip Jesus of his supernatural powers and still achieve salvation through Christ?” If we take the Godhead out of Jesus, what are we left with? Is there some other element that we enter into or move through by knowing him?
So what does it mean to be a warrior for beauty? In order to understand it, we must first look at what beauty is, and then we must turn toward what it means to be a warrior.