It sounds as if you make dichotomies of things that are not mutually exclusive. Whatever else the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25 means, it certainly seems to indicate that the gospel message of “repent and believe” necessarily includes living it out in kindness to strangers (and the hungry and the sick and the naked and the sick and the imprisoned). To say it is not (or only) one or the other is to selectively read Scripture and impoverish the content of our faith. Also, to say that faith is rooted in God is not to say that it is not also rooted in displacement, in a God who displaced Himself to save his creatures who had displaced themselves, and who himself suffered displacement in Christ.
Sometimes analogies can foster understanding, and sometimes they confuse it. The analogy of Arizona and California only helps if we understand the governor of Arizona to be a murderous king attempting to kill all the children of Arizona under the age of two.
Thanks for the clarification. Sarah wrote primarily about how there is no “Us and them,” that we are all refugees, that the Bible is full of the stories of refugees, and that God incarnate in Christ identifies with refugees. She tied it in beautifully with Pentecost. Her only “political” comment was that based on those truths, we, as followers of Christ, should resist fear-mongering and division-mongering. She did not call for us to go march in the streets or disobey or even change the laws, but to consider how we — individually and in our families — could help and welcome others. Your initial comments — to deny that the story of Jesus had any bearing on the refugee narrative — was a non sequitur that seemed to entirely miss Sarah’s main point. Your most recent comment seems to suggest that we shouldn’t use Scripture to evaluate/critique/“cudgel” national policies. If we — the Church, followers of Christ — shouldn’t use Scripture to evaluate/critique/stand as a prophetic voice towards/resist the baleful effects of national policies that encourage fear and division; if we shouldn’t use Scripture to help us love our neighbors when national policymakers encourage us to fear our neighbors; if the Church shouldn’t use Scripture to preserve a community of Christian love and acceptance and welcome when national policies promote the opposite — then what is the place of Scripture in the life of the Church?
Again, it seems as though you miss Sarah’s main point. It is not she who desires to discuss immigration policies, but you. Her point is to not allow those proclaiming such policies to incite us to hatred and division, but to instead allow Scripture to incite us to love and welcome.
I work as a physician with an underserved population. I am pro-life. Behind each of those one million abortions is a story. Many of them are tragedies. Very few women wake up in the morning and say, “I think I’d like to have an abortion today.” Many of them don’t want to have an abortion; but they feel it’s the least bad option in their circumstances. I have heard many of these stories in my office: The patient who watched her husband killed by gun violence who couldn’t bring herself to raise a child in the violent neighborhood that she couldn’t afford to move out of. The undocumented immigrant who was raped. The patients whose unborn children have been given prenatal diagnoses of various life-changing or life-threatening diseases, who have no or limited access to health care. The homeless families.
If we really want to change the culture around abortion in this country, we could do better than changing courts and laws in our moral outrage. (Support for, and the number of, abortions in the US has only risen since Dobbs.) Rather than decrying its moral putridity, we might try to find and address the reasons that women feel that abortion is their least-bad option. Working for a more just society — one that provides housing, affordable health care, decent food on the table, maternity leave, the right to go outside without the fear of being shot, decent schools for the kids that do get carried to term — or even better, as the Church, demonstrating that just society, that Kingdom, that goes out of its way and out of its sheltered neighborhoods, and sacrifices time and money and gets our hands dirty to support women and children and families in their tragedies — addressing those injustices that are at the root of too many abortions — might do far more to change the climate of abortion than looking down on people from our supposed moral high ground.
It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn your statutes. - Psalm 119:71
Virginia speaks not just for many Canadians, but many Americans as well, when she writes of feeling “betrayed, threatened, and bewildered” by the assertions and actions of our government. (There might also be a few Ukrainians, EU members, Greenlanders, and Panamanians who share the same reactions.)
These times have clarified for me in whom (or what) I have placed my trust and where my allegiance lies, and. While governing occurred in a rational and competent fashion, it was easy for me to place trust in the government for my sense of stability and well-being without even realizing I was doing it. It was virtually unconscious, and was only brought to light when government no longer seemed trustworthy. While a strong visceral reaction to the cruelty and lies of the last couple of months is natural, the depth and vehemence of my response surprised me. I have come to realize that it is the response of someone whose trust has been broken — and I have spent Lent repenting of misplaced trust and learning anew to trust in God.
My government’s betrayal of our friends in Canada and elsewhere has also led me to reassess where my allegiance lies — and where it should lie. As Alasdair MacIntyre has so trenchantly pointed out, giving allegiance to the nation-state is about as meaningful as giving allegiance to the telephone company. My primary allegiance is to the Kingdom of God, and I share more in common with a sister or brother in Christ in Canada then a fellow American who does not follow Christ. God’s Kingdom transcends nations, and our unity and love for each other should demonstrate to the world an alternative society, the life of the true Kingdom that stands in stark contrast to the nation-state’s parody of it.
So Virigina, I acknowledge that you feel betrayed, threatened, and bewildered — as do I, and many of your brothers and sisters south of the border. But also that that border is not an ultimately important one, and that the things that bind us together are infinitely greater than the human borders and lies that ostensibly divide us.
I find the discipline of the Daily Office particularly helpful. The recurring pattern of morning prayer, noon prayer, evening prayer, and compline (when I am able to make time for them!) repeatedly pulls me back from the crush of the daily into a quiet and open space where I am more prepared to connect, or reconnect, with God. There is something basic and grounding in returning to pray the Benedictus every morning, the Magnificat every evening, the Nunc Dimmitus before retiring, and praying through the Psalms all day. Over the years at various times I have used Phyllis Tickle’s The Divine Hours and the prayer books of the Episcopal Church and the Church of England as guides.
Posted in: We All Carry the Story of Displacement, Part II
Mr Polet,
It sounds as if you make dichotomies of things that are not mutually exclusive. Whatever else the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25 means, it certainly seems to indicate that the gospel message of “repent and believe” necessarily includes living it out in kindness to strangers (and the hungry and the sick and the naked and the sick and the imprisoned). To say it is not (or only) one or the other is to selectively read Scripture and impoverish the content of our faith. Also, to say that faith is rooted in God is not to say that it is not also rooted in displacement, in a God who displaced Himself to save his creatures who had displaced themselves, and who himself suffered displacement in Christ.
Sometimes analogies can foster understanding, and sometimes they confuse it. The analogy of Arizona and California only helps if we understand the governor of Arizona to be a murderous king attempting to kill all the children of Arizona under the age of two.
Posted in: We All Carry the Story of Displacement, Part II
Mr Polet,
Thanks for the clarification. Sarah wrote primarily about how there is no “Us and them,” that we are all refugees, that the Bible is full of the stories of refugees, and that God incarnate in Christ identifies with refugees. She tied it in beautifully with Pentecost. Her only “political” comment was that based on those truths, we, as followers of Christ, should resist fear-mongering and division-mongering. She did not call for us to go march in the streets or disobey or even change the laws, but to consider how we — individually and in our families — could help and welcome others. Your initial comments — to deny that the story of Jesus had any bearing on the refugee narrative — was a non sequitur that seemed to entirely miss Sarah’s main point. Your most recent comment seems to suggest that we shouldn’t use Scripture to evaluate/critique/“cudgel” national policies. If we — the Church, followers of Christ — shouldn’t use Scripture to evaluate/critique/stand as a prophetic voice towards/resist the baleful effects of national policies that encourage fear and division; if we shouldn’t use Scripture to help us love our neighbors when national policymakers encourage us to fear our neighbors; if the Church shouldn’t use Scripture to preserve a community of Christian love and acceptance and welcome when national policies promote the opposite — then what is the place of Scripture in the life of the Church?
Again, it seems as though you miss Sarah’s main point. It is not she who desires to discuss immigration policies, but you. Her point is to not allow those proclaiming such policies to incite us to hatred and division, but to instead allow Scripture to incite us to love and welcome.
Posted in: Looking Up, Looking Out: Reflections for Ascension
Maybe it’s more than an accident of language that in the liturgical calendar, the season soon after Ascension Day is called “Ordinary Time.”
Posted in: The Injustice of Abortion
I work as a physician with an underserved population. I am pro-life. Behind each of those one million abortions is a story. Many of them are tragedies. Very few women wake up in the morning and say, “I think I’d like to have an abortion today.” Many of them don’t want to have an abortion; but they feel it’s the least bad option in their circumstances. I have heard many of these stories in my office: The patient who watched her husband killed by gun violence who couldn’t bring herself to raise a child in the violent neighborhood that she couldn’t afford to move out of. The undocumented immigrant who was raped. The patients whose unborn children have been given prenatal diagnoses of various life-changing or life-threatening diseases, who have no or limited access to health care. The homeless families.
If we really want to change the culture around abortion in this country, we could do better than changing courts and laws in our moral outrage. (Support for, and the number of, abortions in the US has only risen since Dobbs.) Rather than decrying its moral putridity, we might try to find and address the reasons that women feel that abortion is their least-bad option. Working for a more just society — one that provides housing, affordable health care, decent food on the table, maternity leave, the right to go outside without the fear of being shot, decent schools for the kids that do get carried to term — or even better, as the Church, demonstrating that just society, that Kingdom, that goes out of its way and out of its sheltered neighborhoods, and sacrifices time and money and gets our hands dirty to support women and children and families in their tragedies — addressing those injustices that are at the root of too many abortions — might do far more to change the climate of abortion than looking down on people from our supposed moral high ground.
Posted in: What Does It Mean to Be a Bi-National Denomination When the Rhetoric Between the Two Nations Becomes Bitter?
It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn your statutes. - Psalm 119:71
Virginia speaks not just for many Canadians, but many Americans as well, when she writes of feeling “betrayed, threatened, and bewildered” by the assertions and actions of our government. (There might also be a few Ukrainians, EU members, Greenlanders, and Panamanians who share the same reactions.)
These times have clarified for me in whom (or what) I have placed my trust and where my allegiance lies, and. While governing occurred in a rational and competent fashion, it was easy for me to place trust in the government for my sense of stability and well-being without even realizing I was doing it. It was virtually unconscious, and was only brought to light when government no longer seemed trustworthy. While a strong visceral reaction to the cruelty and lies of the last couple of months is natural, the depth and vehemence of my response surprised me. I have come to realize that it is the response of someone whose trust has been broken — and I have spent Lent repenting of misplaced trust and learning anew to trust in God.
My government’s betrayal of our friends in Canada and elsewhere has also led me to reassess where my allegiance lies — and where it should lie. As Alasdair MacIntyre has so trenchantly pointed out, giving allegiance to the nation-state is about as meaningful as giving allegiance to the telephone company. My primary allegiance is to the Kingdom of God, and I share more in common with a sister or brother in Christ in Canada then a fellow American who does not follow Christ. God’s Kingdom transcends nations, and our unity and love for each other should demonstrate to the world an alternative society, the life of the true Kingdom that stands in stark contrast to the nation-state’s parody of it.
So Virigina, I acknowledge that you feel betrayed, threatened, and bewildered — as do I, and many of your brothers and sisters south of the border. But also that that border is not an ultimately important one, and that the things that bind us together are infinitely greater than the human borders and lies that ostensibly divide us.
Posted in: What Spiritual Disciplines Connect You to God in a Disconnected Age?
I find the discipline of the Daily Office particularly helpful. The recurring pattern of morning prayer, noon prayer, evening prayer, and compline (when I am able to make time for them!) repeatedly pulls me back from the crush of the daily into a quiet and open space where I am more prepared to connect, or reconnect, with God. There is something basic and grounding in returning to pray the Benedictus every morning, the Magnificat every evening, the Nunc Dimmitus before retiring, and praying through the Psalms all day. Over the years at various times I have used Phyllis Tickle’s The Divine Hours and the prayer books of the Episcopal Church and the Church of England as guides.