I would like to take a moment to explore the Gospel of Luke. When I read Biblical passages these days, I am looking for the deeper meaning behind the words. Meaning, I am not just looking for the dates, context, and scribes, though these are important pieces to the puzzle. I am looking for what the crisis might have been that caused the author to write it and how does the scripture speak to that crisis. I am seeking the wisdom that the passages hold for me in the moment as I read them. The wisdom found in sacred texts can shift as the reader shifts…that is one of the reasons why they are still valuable to modern seekers.
As Moses climbs the mountain, he arrives at his soul’s summit out of breath, bone-weary, and hungry; hungry to know the truth of what it is he searches for. He is an embodiment of humanity’s search for the truth of its Being.
Surely this is a new religion isn’t it? Offering a new take on Jesus’ words? How amazing that so-called Evangelical “Christians” seem eager to follow what so blatantly contradicts Jesus’ teachings. It is curious that the new Koch Republican Party continues to court the Evangelical vote successfully since Buchanan and many of the thinkers in this cult were in fact atheists “who looked down on those who believe in God.”
It’s clear that the mind of a child can comprehend the interconnected nature of man’s place in the world in its most simplistic form. When do we lose that awareness? What are we taught or told along the way to make us numb to or forgetful of the image of ourselves as not only part of our environment, but as protectors of it? What role models do we have that ensure we become the kind of person who will “watch out” for others bent on destroying or exploiting the Earth?
Historian Nancy MacLean’s book, Democracy In Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, is scarier than a Stephen King novel or a movie such as “The Exorcist.” Yet the former is non-fiction through and through! The author declares she is offering up “the utterly chilling story of the ideological origins of the single most powerful and least understood threat to democracy today: the attempt by the billionaire-backed radical right to undo democratic governance.”
I offer this sharing in the wake of the tragic mass shooting at a high school in Florida – a shooting that took place on Ash Wednesday. Knowing that the vast majority of my fellow Americans are not progressive Christians, nor have the majority even heard of progressive Christianity. So, I sometimes write with that larger audience in mind – seeking to appeal to their basic Christian understandings – even if that means employing or coming across as assuming a certain amount of conventional Christian rhetoric or perspectives -and then working from that place to help people shift to a more progressive understanding. It’s important to meet people where they are. With this caveat in mind, let those who have ears to hear, hear.
While Trump’s comment will now make it more difficult for immigrants from “shithole” countries to enter the U.S., the challenge, however, will be particularly arduous for its LGBTQ asylum seekers. These people flee their countries to avoid criminalization, torture, violence, public persecution, political scapegoating and moral cleansing.
Rejecting or reinterpreting traditional religious beliefs has always undermined family relationships, communities of faith, and the general coherence of the public. Many who haven’t crossed the threshold of a religious building in decades (if ever) hold rigidly to the privileges they believe religion provides them. Toy with those beliefs and you are unwittingly challenging the rights of the privileged, rights they too frequently enjoy denying those who do not share their beliefs. And those who do participate in religious communities with regularity are often invested in language and ritual they believe is integral to their experience. “Without reciting the Lord’s Prayer when we gather, how will we remember who we are?” they worry.
Language is more important than many of us realize. More precisely, the specific words we choose to use impact our way of thinking, our social behavior, and many other perspectives of our lives. It’s actually a fairly recent development in the human brain in terms of our long history as a species. The frontal lobes of our brains have actually expanded to handle its expanded work requirements.