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Posts clarifying the relationship of Christian scripture and teaching to the evolution of Human Nature.

The Better Half

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As a member of the afflicted sub-population, I may admit freely that the Bible is all about men’s problems. As I observe in The Soul Comes First, Jesus obviously had a rich ministry to women, but there are few writings that address their unique concerns. I consider it a terrible loss that Jesus’ teachings to women are not available to us.

Some might doubt the existence of such teachings, but a number of the encounters in the Bible make it clear that Jesus recognized the oppressed status of women, and Luke records an encounter with two sisters [Luke 10:38-42] in which Martha becomes irate because her sister Mary sits and listens, foregoing her obligations as a hostess.

The recorded parables, however, are mostly about men. In the modern era, the context of business and financial probity is more relevant to women, but I would imagine that in their day they would have been hungry for stories that related more directly to their concerns.

How would they have understood the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids? As related in Matthew [25:1-13], ten bridesmaids await the arrival of the bridegroom to be received at the wedding feast. They bring their lamps, but fall asleep until midnight when the bridegroom is announced. The five foolish bridesmaids depart to by more oil for their depleted lamps, while their wiser peers enter the feast with the vials they thought to bring in advance. Upon their return, the foolish women are turned away by the bridegroom with “I do not know you!”

The imagery of the story is not obvious. The lamps could be souls or wisdom, but I believe the story holds together better if we think of them as virtue. The wise maids store their virtue, conserving it for the afterlife. The foolish maids do not. In their contemporary religious practice, the loss of virtue could be recouped by alms and sacrifice at the temple. What Jesus warns, however, is that that practice carries no weight in the kingdom of heaven.

The last leaves me to consider whether this isn’t just another dig at the priesthood, but in comparison with the parable of the landowner, I do see some special meaning for the women of the era. Masculine personalities are active, dynamic and at times brutal. Feminine personalities express their virtues in merging. I don’t think that it’s an accident that we have two groups of women, for it is in community that women find their strength.

More might be extracted from the parable if I better understood the marital traditions of the era. Clearly, the lamps are carried for some purpose other than to light the way to the celebration. Some sense of the special purpose of women in heaven is suggested in John’s vision of the New Jerusalem [Rev. 21 and 22]. The masculine virtues, represented by the twelve tribes, stand guard at the walls, while the feminine virtues manifest as the tree of life with leaves that heal the nations and twelve crops to feed them. I have an intuition that Jesus also is offering an insight in Matthew 25 that would be revealed by study of the marriage rites.

I once characterized Jesus’ stories as the “WTF parables,” meant to draw sharp contrasts between the retribution expected of men and the forbearance of a loving God. In this case, a literal interpretation of the story leads in the other direction. Why are the wise maids so harsh with their sisters, in contradiction to the practice of Jesus himself on the cross? Why are the lamps necessary at all to enter heaven, when the prodigal son brings nothing but his humbled spirit? It is here that we again see this as a story targeted to women: men were used to lording it over people, and as the prodigal sons they needed to learn humility. Women had different priorities – first and foremost the preservation of their virtue in a society so devoted to their diminution and degradation.

Steven Fry’s Challenge

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Rocket Kirchner addresses Steven Fry’s critique of God out at Dandelion Salad. Fry interprets the existence of suffering as proof that the Christian God is a fantasy. My response to one skeptic follows:

Here is the conundrum: If the “fantasy God” made a perfect world in which everything unfolded according to his will, then there would be nothing to love, because his will would be all. Since love requires an object to exist, the creation of such a universe would be a form of self-annihilation.

So we are granted the option to not heed the will of God – we are allowed our own free will. Unfortunately, many of us chose to play at being gods ourselves, and it is in imposing our will upon others that sin occurs.

The Christian proposition is that if we learn to submit ourselves in service to one another, we obtain access to enormous amounts of power. I won’t bother you with how that manifests in the New Testament – you’d simply assert that science disproves the possibility of the events that transpired. But to the person of faith, the healing accomplished by Jesus and the Apostles indicate that many ills that we suffer are not of God’s will. In fact, if we surrendered ourselves to the dictates of love as Jesus did, those ills would be unable to obtain purchase upon us.

So Rocket is right: we are misguided to refuse (or worse, misuse) the gift of love and then decry the consequences of its absence. And it is hypocrisy for Fry to say “God, you didn’t intervene to save the children!” when God created Fry and gave him wealth to so intervene. We were made in God’s image, which can be interpreted as “we are his intervention.”

And, given the huge amount of charitable work and giving provided by people of faith, to challenge faith is also counter-productive. The faithful understand that the world is imperfect. We simply choose to keep on giving, in part because we feel our hope sustained by the endless love that arises in our hearts.

Soul Cultivation

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The parable of the vineyard [Matt. 20:1-16] begins:

For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard.

And ends with the non-sequitur:

So the last will be first, and the first will be last.

I call it a non-sequitur because the bulk of the parable is a caution against the assumption of religious privilege. At the very least, after doing our work for the landowner (Christ and the Father), we don’t want to screw up the relationships by challenging the generosity shown to those that come later. But in that context, the final line seems a little harsh to the Hebrews. Are they really to expect that as the original subscribers to God’s burdens, they are going to be lesser than the Gentiles brought into the fold through Jesus’ ministry?

That doesn’t seem fair.

To make sense of the final line, I recommend treating it as a bookend to the first. Jesus is suggesting the process by which God prepares fallen souls to enter the kingdom of heaven. Early in the “day,” when the spiritual condition of the “field” is most rugged, the strongest workers are brought in to uproot the weeds and remove the stones. They enlarge the perimeter in which cultivation can be done. As the day progresses, less hardy souls are brought in to plant and irrigate. As the crop develops, gentle and sensitive spirits are brought in to prune and guide the growth. Finally, at the very end of the process, the final workers are brought in to gather the harvest – in Jesus’ metaphor, to guide the cultivated souls into heaven.

The first workers are spiritual pioneers. Not only do they clear the land, they prevent corruption of the crop. If they were called in first, the efforts of the later workers would be overwhelmed. Thus they must stay out in the field, performing their roles, until the workers brought in later in the “day” are safe in the kingdom of heaven. Only then can the pioneers enjoy the fruits of their shared labor.

Will there be no honor in heaven accorded to those early workers? In this parable, Jesus is silent on that point. It is in the parable of the talents that the point is made that those that do the work accrue the gratitude of their fellows, and will receive honor in heaven. Here, Jesus is attempting more to give them strength not to carry privilege and pride back with them when they come to heaven. That corruption cannot be allowed through the gates. If they receive honor, it will be because their fellows grant it to them, and privilege and pride are the surest way to lose that boon.

Walking with Grace

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Reply to this post by Caralyn out at Beauty Beyond Bones:

Hey, Caralyn-

Great post. I hope that somebody takes the time to stop you on the street and share what a light you are. I know that you get that here, but sometimes that affirmation doesn’t transfer until it’s expressed in the specific context.

This came to mind: a friend told me that one day she saw Princess Diana walking from her hotel to a limo in NYC. Diana stopped and simply waved her hand slowly along the street. My friend said that she felt the grace wash over her.

We can do that. We can call God into the world and allow his love to wash over others in a way that they can feel palpably. The trick is to only let go of the angels that are guided by our love when they land on somebody that will employ them to love others. Otherwise we need to pull them back into our hearts. As they come to trust our judgment with greater and greater certainty, they gather around us more densely. This is what Jesus meant when he said “To those that have, more will be given. And to those that have not, even what they have will be taken from them.”

I realize that for women this can be a little like walking off the end of the pier. Some men will misinterpret. But you don’t have to be visible to make it happen. You can be looking out a window, riding by in a car, or passing in a train.

I hope that you don’t mind my writing a sermon. I know that you’ve experienced this. I just want others to join in the process. When the joining of our little bubbles persists, the world will be changed. People will realize that they have a choice between the pain of the world the live in and the joy that surrounds those blessed by grace (which is to be given the support of angels in loving others).

Wishing joy, grace and love upon you in all things,

Brian

Perfect Time

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Sister Gloria chose the transfiguration [Luke 9:28b-36] for our reading this week. I was torn between two phrases: “Listen to him” was my first impulse, but later I was drawn to “his face changed in appearance.” When the lady next to me took, “Listen to him,” my contrarian nature took hold.

The thing that I wanted to explore with those gathered was what exactly the phrase meant. Was it that Jesus’ face expressed an unfamiliar emotion, or did he really look like a different person? When I began to speak, however, the power of the contemplative unity overwhelmed me again. I was confident that it was the latter.

Our avatars come down and occupy bodies, bodies that become corrupted by their struggle to bring us to grace. In offering “his face changed in appearance,” I believe that the gospel conveys the enormous power of this event. Jesus appeared in his perfected form. The transformation was accompanied by Moses and Elijah in their glory. The text relates that they “spoke of [Jesus’] exodus…in Jerusalem.”

Not quite. The reason they appeared in glory was because Jesus had progressed in his exploration of his age to the point that he was ready to work with Moses and Elijah to construct that future. This was not idle chatter, but interaction between those involved in doing a powerful work on human nature.

The Old Testament is the record of the struggle by God to prepare every person of faith to enter into direct relation with the power of unconditional love. The root of the process was the Law, which in application required rationality and discipline, but we also have the assignment of the Levites as philosophers and teachers, something truly unusual in the era. Moses guided this social transformation, and understood intimately the intention of every line in the law.

The problem was that advancing the into unconditional love was difficult so long as the people were preoccupied with migration. So the Israelites were given Canaan, but the possession of the land brought with it conflict. Awed by the military power of their enemies, and not trusting in God’s intervention to ensure that they would eventually escape domination, the people demanded a king. It wasn’t long before the kings began to compete with the priests for authority. It was Elijah that struggled with greatest integrity against this corruption, his final act of power being to annihilate the king’s horsemen that arrived to force him to descend the mountain for an audience.

So the three men looked into Jesus’ future, and when a confrontation arose, Moses would offer counsel that stymied the priests, and Elijah counsel to stymie the kings. Not confront, not intimidate, not destroy, but stymie. Those other paths had been tried, and found impotent.

So I see in this event a moment of exceptional power, unparalleled until the moment of his resurrection. Yes, even greater than the crucifixion: it is not recorded, as it is here, that “his face changed in appearance.” In that final submission to human brutality, Jesus was still trapped in the throes of his human manifestation.

Against this glory, we have the contrast of the three witnesses: Peter, John and James. Why them? Was it that among the disciples only they were ready to experience the grace of this moment, grace that once might have brought the warning “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” [Exodus 33:20]

Somehow that seems unlikely. The importunity of Peter is recorded in this very passage, and caused Jesus on one occasion to rebuke him with “Get behind me, Satan!” [Matt. 16:23] And of John and James, we know them as the “Sons of Thunder.” [Mark 3:17] No, I would hazard that these three were apt to act on their own counsel, requiring Jesus again and again to turn from his way to clean up after them.

The Greeks were not big on punctuation, and so most adopt a tone of gentle reverence when speaking in God’s place. But in this case, I can’t help but hear the cloud with the intonation:

This is my chosen son. Listen to him!

Me, Myself and Christ: Revelation

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My son Greg can become exasperated with me. As a young adult, he is concerned naturally with social acceptance, and seeks for answers to the problems of his generation in the conventional wisdom brought forth from the past. When he has had enough of my contrary pronouncements, he retorts:

You speak with a great deal of assurance, Dad!

Yes, who am I, to assert that I know better than all these others?

For me, the situation is far more ambiguous. My assurance is necessary to those that I attempt to comfort. To those seeking hope, how else can one speak? They need to believe that you believe in the choices that you are offering them.

But to believe that you represent the truth is far different than believing in one’s own authority.

To those familiar with the Yu Gi Oh cartoon series, I can offer a meaningful image. In the cartoon, the young hero finds himself in conflict with evil, and struggles to the limit of his abilities to overcome it. In the lurch, a larger self – ancient, powerful and wise beyond any human reckoning – comes to the fore.

Thus, to my intimates, I speak of myself variously as a “test particle” or “bait” or “a point of contact” or “a beneficiary of a privileged perspective.” So I’ll be dreaming about a troubled baptist, and suddenly I’ll see the scene as though looking over my shoulder and another presence asks “Is that you, John?” I’ll be driving to the aquatic center and have a cardinal from 400 miles away land on me with shame and grief regarding the priestly pedophilia scandal. I’ll wake up at midnight to a pope announcing “I am your father, and I am going to die and leave all this power to you.” I’ll be listening to the opening lyrics of He Reigns, allowing my mind to wander over the continents, and a Muslim leader shows up to say “Here’s another billion people for you to manage.”

To those that don’t understand the challenges of loving, this might seem all very exciting. Having carried the heavy burden of being blamed for things done in my name, to me it’s far more ambiguous.

There are two great challenges to loving, which is to grant strength to the loved one. The first is when the recipient does not adhere to the constraints of loving. Loving them is thus to empower them to hurt others. In consequence, unconditional love moves through our lives like the tide, peaking higher when we honor its constraints, and ebbing when we violate them. The mechanism of this operation is for love to love all things so that it feels the wrongs we commit, and transfers its ministry to those we have wounded. In seeking to serve ourselves, we are indeed our own worst enemies.

The second challenge is far more painful. It is to find the beloved surrendering themselves to us, becoming merely extensions of our personality rather than beautiful manifestations of infinite possibility. A loving personality is surrounded by grateful recipients of love’s strength, and that gratitude amplifies their influence. Unless such a lover is tender, it can overwhelm the weaker links that bind together the beloved, scattering its elements to the spiritual wind.

It is for these reasons that Jesus proclaimed himself as a servant, and testified as to his humble heart.

As if this wasn’t difficult enough, this little pseudo pod of Christ is wrapped up in hostility. The important work to be done is in “binding” and “loosening” things in the spiritual realm, and my interactions with them are at best tenuous. Thus I dream of the great flocks of birds I knew in my childhood, and finding, upon walking out to the deck, that a ravenous dragon is arising from the spot in the ground from which the birds arise. At an Easter service, I cupped my hands around the sun and spread its influence, only to encounter in the asteroids an echo of the ancient cry of grief “No! Don’t kill him!” I receive a visit by an emissary of the two-dimensional race represented as the eye in the pyramid, asking for assistance to travel across the Milky Way, and am warned six months later that the gift of energy caused the output of the sun to drop by ten percent. Or wake, much as I was waken by the pope, to find myself in the midst of a perfectly spherical personality, only to be guided across a great void to a tiny speck, the “most precious place” in its realm, the “only place where life is found”, and to be told “I want to help, but even the smallest mistake would be disastrous. I need people to guide me.”

When I was introduced to the modern interpretations of Revelation, I was told that the first beast, numbered 666, was man. Man, the creation of the sixth day, believing in his own power and being humbled by failure. But not only man was created on the sixth day: in the morning came the livestock. So the correct category is mammalia. This is also the fourth, greatest beast of Daniel’s dream. It is the intelligence of man in service to the destructive Darwinian instincts of our evolutionary predecessors.

The enemy of the beast is the man with the flashing sword of truth coming from his mouth. The birds are his allies. In Daniel’s dream, he is granted dominion over the power of the “Ancient of Days.”

As when he first came, I recognize that Christ – the human perfected by unconditional love – can only become those things that he is allowed to be by those he serves. While he proclaimed his authority in the earlier era, in this era it will be to each of us to proclaim the authority of love in our lives – and thus to receive him as lord in our hearts. He is not our ruler, he is our example. And he is very, very, very close.

Take comfort. Take heart. None are forgotten, even those held captive by those that take refuge in the darkness. There is no hiding from the glory of the light that he brings.

Me, Myself and Christ: Immersion

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I had not set foot in church in almost twenty years when I began looking for a community to provide a moral foundation for my sons. I was pointed at the local Unitarian Universalist congregation, and found myself caught up almost immediately in their vision to establish commonality among all the world’s religions.

I was among them for only a few short weeks when disaster befell us on 9/11/2001. The minister was visibly shaken during her sermon that week, and one critic bemoaned the poor judgment she had shown in reaching out to an Islamic Center in the San Fernando Valley.

These two factors – the hope of uniting people of good will and the terrible cost of failing to do so – prompted me to start visiting the religious communities of the Conejo Valley.

The Catholic Church was not the first Christian congregation that I visited during this exploration. In fact, the evolving pedophilia scandal dampened my expectations that I would obtain any value in cultivating the priesthood. However, recognizing the strength of the Catholic community, I eventually concluded that I needed to experience the faith of the people in the pews.

The site was St. Maximilian Kolbe’s in Oak Park. The church has an unusual layout. The side entries funnel into an alcove before a pool of holy water. The crowd around the pool distracted me. I was feeling some anxiety, recalling my childhood impressions of the angry God. I turned toward the altar, and was astonished by the cross, set off to one side and dominating the space with a larger-than-life figure of Jesus suspended in front of crossed branches. Rather than anger, a deep enduring grief and sorrow beset me. Confronted with this image and personality of human suffering, my right hand went immediately to my heart, and without thinking, I held it out to him and thought “Use this for healing.”

Thus began a relationship that is so palpable and near to me that I never partake of the elements. That was meant for remembrance, and I am absolutely convicted that the time for remembrance is past.

There are several contexts in which that nearness manifests most powerfully. Early on, the passing of the elements itself would cause me to be overcome by sorrow. Tears would roll uncontrollably down my cheeks, and eventually I realized that the sobbing I heard around me was not unrelated to my emotion – a realization confirmed in part by the irritation expressed by celebrants. When Revelation Song was popular in non-denominational congregations, with the opening words I would almost collapse in grief, my entire frame shaking, and the people around me would huddle together in small groups.

I also experienced a particularly deep relationship with the crucifix at the Los Angeles Cathedral. Flanked by roughly shaped limbs and supported by the bruised torso, the peace-filled face embodies perfectly the savior’s surrender and victory. After my first Christmas midnight celebration, I waited patiently to address the cross, looked up into that visage, and – gesturing to the broken body – admonished “It’s time to clean all this up.” Later, I would stretch up onto tip-toes, pressing my hands against the sternum, trying to push strength back through the centuries to sustain him in his suffering.

And then there are the children’s choirs. They sing with perfect and innocent faith, free of the regrets felt by adults. At St. Paschal Baylon’s in Thousand Oaks, when they led the congregation in the Agnes Dei I felt the weight of heaven pressing down on me from above, an experience that persisted in other settings until I decided to push back.

Along with these emotional experiences came visions that I find very difficult to avoid reconciling against the verses of Revelation. I will summarize some of those in the final post in this series. I will conclude today with the culmination of my immersion in Christ.

When my father was working in the nuclear weapons laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, he and my mother liked to spend time in the mountains that in the last half of the twentieth century came to be known as “Sangre de Christo.” I was conceived there, and born in Los Alamos. For my forty-ninth birthday, I decided to take a trip out to Taos to connect with those roots. It was a remarkable experience in many ways, but the most important insight came as I drove down into the LA basin from the high desert. A palpable feeling of hostility mounted against me. I wasn’t wanted.

The next day, Monday, I was driving out to work from Agoura Hills to Camarillo, and could not shake his presence. The urgency and strain of his struggle on the cross came closer and closer. I was in tears as I descended the steep and winding Camarillo grade in freely flowing traffic, wracked by grief and trying to project that I was endangered. But he refused to let me go. He knew that he was dying, and refused to die until the work was done. We wrestled, back and forth, and finally the image of that first encounter in St. Max’s came to me, and our equanimity was restored as he pronounced:

Our heart is beating still.

Sorrow Drowned

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Matthew 14:13-21 begins:

As soon as Jesus heard the news [of John’s death], he left in a boat to a remote area to be alone. [NIV]

Sister Gloria chose this for our reading last night. She asks two of us to repeat the reading, and when she offered me the first repetition, I knew that I was in trouble. Jesus’ grief came over me, and – struggling to control my breath – the first line came out four words at a time.

I, too, have been drawn to the solace of the water. The day that I wrote Darkened Lives Matter, I was overcome with sorrow and left work to walk the pier at Port Hueneme. Fishermen tended their lines above the rhythmic swells, the ocean full of billions of years of assurance that whatever life it surrendered would be replenished.

But that was not solace enough for Jesus, for in the loss of John – his cousin and only vocal supporter – Jesus had a foretaste of his trial. In the march to Jerusalem that follows, I feel a certain grimness in him, as though hope had been stolen.

For over what had John lost his life? A meaningless confrontation with the queen over the minutia of the law. If not John, then who among his followers would grasp the essence of the New Covenant, the covenant of forgiveness, healing and love?

Then comes the next sentence, and I found his grief braced by the consolation of purpose:

But the crowds heard where he was headed and followed on foot from many towns.

He was not alone. These many had arrived, not just to reflect on the greatness of the one lost, but to tender John’s authority among them to Jesus. Embraced by their faith, Jesus offers them the healing communion with the father.

As the day comes to a close, the disciples counsel him [NIV Matt. 14:15]:

This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away so they can go to the villages and buy food for themselves.

I did choke on these words. The suggestion itself seemed painful. Jesus’ response as offered in the King James is revealing:

They need not depart.

This is a foreshadowing of the miracle of the loaves and fishes that follows, but I felt something in the emotion below. It was as if to say: “But…I find comfort in them. We need each other, these people and I.”

When the morsels of food are gathered, Jesus “look[ed] up to heaven” and broke the offering. This final act of beseeching was the culmination of the grief. It was a supplication: “Dear Father, give these gathered a sign that they are not alone.”

And so those that partook did so with angels gathered at their shoulders, awash in the infinite ocean of God’s love.

Infestation

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In decrying injustice, we tend to focus on the tall nails – the people with power that misuse it. In the end, though, these people really do not amount to much, because the power accumulated in love is so much greater than the power that they can scrape together here on Earth.

Rather, it’s the “scraping together” that is so hard to overcome. It’s like a disease of a certain type. We have these gifts all around us to use in healing the wounds left in us by selfishness. These gifts include food, air, light and companionship. The disease is to consume those gifts and do nothing with them while others do the work of bringing love into the world.

Anyone that has had the flu knows what it’s like to host this kind of activity. Jesus’ teaching on the matter reflects that reality. At the end of the parable of the talents, he commands [ESV Matt. 25:30]:

…cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

This metaphor is the prop for conservative political philosophy. Indeed, the only coherent definition of “Conservatism” holds that institutions are extremely difficult to create, and are the first thing to collapse when resources are wanting. Therefore they must be conserved at all cost against the locust-like masses.

Unfortunately , the trap that has snared so many Christian Conservatives is built right into the parable of the talents. It is the convention that money is the measure of value, and so we weigh the contributions of our companions by the wealth they have accumulated. As explained in The Soul Comes First, however, Jesus’ reference to wealth was intended to be ironical. The parable was offered to a collection of disciples that didn’t have two minahs to rub together on the road to Jerusalem. Jesus didn’t inspire them with wealth – he inspired them with courage, purpose and faith. The disciples were being cautioned to mind that investment, and seek to expand its reach.

If on the cross Jesus took sin into himself to heal its effects, how would infestation have manifested in the project of Christ? Today I see it in ministers that substitute rigid rules for compassionate and creative problem-solving. It manifests more subtly in the queen bee that organizes social pressure to protect husbands and ministers threatened by those that seek to put love before convention. But it is also in those that come to church on Sunday seeking forgiveness for the sins they commit every other day of the week.

In my own case, I’ve been struggling for some time with another manifestation of infestation – a purely spiritual manifestation. In the great struggle against selfishness, there are personalities that live by the zones in which pressure builds. They siphon away energy, creating little kingdoms without contributing to the creation of a world guided by love.

Addicts call theirs “the monkey on my back.” In my own case, it’s been described as a fairy that chops at the side of my head with an axe. It’s been a source of injury to me. I’m not certain that was its intention, but in trying to manage my influence on the community I love, it’s drawn in all kinds of sin. Inevitably, it’s become infected itself.

Down at LA Ecstatic Dance yesterday (my last dance with them, unfortunately), Ataseia got me on the massage table and tried to push it out. He was really conscious of the process, pulling its roots out of my back and arms to push it up into my left shoulder, and then through my neck and up toward the crown chakra.

The immediate benefit has been a greater sense of connection to the left side of my body. But I’m not ready to let it go yet. It’s tied to one of those kingdoms I mentioned, and now that I’ve got it up in my mind, it’s time to cast some light into that realm. They’ve had their reasons for hiding, but now it’s time to put their talents to good use. While the rulers of that realm will resist the loss of autonomy, I’ve found that most subjects will embrace enthusiastically the opportunities presented to them.

It’s not the last such problem I’ve got to deal with – there is something wound about my waist that doesn’t respond to reason.

I offer this today to stimulate similar introspection in others. Each of us has a world inside, and some of those worlds are rich enough to support independent personalities. To discipline them to loving is necessary to our own immersion in Christ.

He that Lives By the Gun, Dies By the Gun

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The parable of the Good Samaritan is offered by Jesus in response to a challenge by a Hebrew lawyer, an expert on the law, who asks “Teacher, what must I do to attain eternal life?” Jesus responds with a question of his own, prompting the lawyer to summarize the law. Rather than listing the main categorizes and precepts, the lawyer says [NIV Luke 10:27]:

‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

To which Jesus affirms:

You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.

Obviously the focus is not this life on Earth, but the life of eternity lived with God. It is in this vein that we should also interpret his warning to the disciple in the Garden of Gethsemane [NIV Matt. 26:52]:

Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.

This is not a prophesy of human retribution, but one of a piece with his testimony that eternal life can only be found through him. When we depend upon violence for our security, we sunder ourselves from the spirit of love that forgives all sins – the same spirit that thereby gains the power to heal the wounds in our souls.

So to those that both:

  • see gun ownership as a necessary antidote to governmental over-reaching, and
  • threaten those that see violence as the greatest wound to civil society:

You may be able to assert your power in this world, but you surrender participation in the world to come. You may assert your freedoms in this society, but unless you lay down your weapons of your own volition, you will be left behind when the Prince of Peace welcomes souls into his kingdom.

You see, love amplifies all things, and to allow into heaven those that believe in violence would be to allow violence into heaven, and amplify its presence. That would be to betray those that have invested and suffered  in peace for His promises. He will not bend to the ‘freedoms’ presumed by the NRA, even if they are enshrined in the US Constitution.