I’ve recently found myself sitting in city council meetings or listening to testimony at the CO statehouse. People have asked me why I do these things or how I got started doing this kind of work. I feel that a part of the call in the bible for all Christians is to watch and to speak the truth to power. I’ve seen similar calls in many other faiths, not just in the Christian progressive church itself. However I speak as someone who describes himself that way, and I feel that the bible has very clear calls to change the way we distribute our wealth and live our lives.
But don’t look for answers in the bible, instead look for guidance and meaning. These are the gifts of the bible. There is no certainty to be had there for me or you. This is the fundamental challenge of Christanity, to continually question and to still find faith in the shit. It is understanding your importance and your insignificance at the same time, not certainty but belief in something greater.
Right now, I am struggling with the calls to justice I hear in the bible, and how different they are from the American Christianity I see portrayed all around me. These often ignored and glossed-over calls to action are throughout the bible. The Gospel does not contain the “christian values” of American politics. These political values are those driven by fear and fed by a desire to support the Empire that has sustained the church institutional. How could we have come so far from the roots of the teachings of our religion? Jesus was always subverting and undermining the Empire he lived under. How have we, those who worship in his name, now become the cudgel of Empire and enforcers of cultural monochrome?
I blame complacency in congregations and the power hungry in the priest class. We as congregants aren't comfortable sacrificing worldly possessions for the uncertainty of the kingdom of heaven. We don't want to hear that the system in which we live robs dignity and respect from the people whom we are trying to serve. We struggle to make mercy fit in a world where we are told to strike fast when we see an advantage. There will be no salvation if we stay in this cycle of blindness and misunderstanding.
As for the priest class, many are living on the edge of a knife. On one side is destitution and principle and on the other is security and compromise. We as congregants have a responsibility to our faith leaders. It is our support and community that can provide them the security to make choices of principle, and safe enough to keep our faith leaders from compromising to survive.
There are also those in the priest class who hold the title of faith leader who seek only to use that position to achieve purely selfish ends. They build systems and cult of personality that completely drowns out the word faith or any real connection to the divine. These are the people who have taken control of our church systems and our conversation.
It is so easy to be compelled to certainty by the strength of these people, that’s the trap. However this certainty is actually a sign of disaster and not success. Anyone who so boldly states contradictions of the spirit and claims to be speaking the word of god is dangerous. Only with the acknowledgment of human fallacy that we are all prey to, and with true humility, can any truth be examined in the spirit. There is a reason that god is called indescribable.
I’ve built these values based on the Gospel and I can't help but ask again. How have the values I find in my faith exploration become what I see around me all day?