Fearless Faith

We could all use a break this week, one that’s timely and well-deserved, but we can’t engage it haphazardly. It needs to be done with intent and purpose so that we will appreciate that something good resides within. Seeking what is life-sustaining is more than just doing what we would like to do, including pounding away at others who do not share the same view. The object is to find our place, even for a short while, in the greater communities that encompass our lives. Only by living through them can we authentically convey their worth and celebrate their spirit.

Care communities include a broad array of potentials including social organizations and informal niche gatherings. They include elements of those things which speak most dearly to our soul, the part in each of us that longs to belong. Churches of old often provided the rigid foundations that we still encounter today, but more and more there is a case to be made for a different kind of church that is waiting to be discovered, one comprised of much more that life rites and destination weddings. Faith communities in particular depend heavily on the traditions of the church to lead them into the future. It doesn’t mean they should use religion as a sword against one another to see who comes out on top. “Blessed are the peacemakers…” is not the absence of overt hostility, it also addresses systemic violence in our culture. Get used to it. If you claim Christianity as your guiding light, you are also called to action. It isn’t going away, no matter how much we prefer to disregard its accompanying mandates.

Could it be that we have it backwards and that movement toward that new future will come from unexpected places? Honestly, much of what qualifies as religion is pretty sketchy these days, a front for simply continuing to do whatever we want to do under the guise of a sanctioning and almighty presence whom we define. You can’t have it both ways. Either you love God or you don’t. Either you love your neighbor or you don’t. To dismiss the ‘other’ is to dismiss ourselves. To sow division and hate is to dishonor God, plain and simple. The emperor has no clothes.

We don’t like to face the music in that regard, our religious egos are too fragile to allow such an afront. It is much more comfortable to sit at the head of the table than to subsist off that which is thrown on the garbage pile at the end of each banquet. Shall that be our goal in life, to live recklessly at the expense of others? What if the great equalizer death comes upon us unaware? What if economic calamity falls upon us for no logical reason? What if natural disasters take all that we thought we owned through righteous positioning? Where we will find ourselves?

Don’t harangue others for the faith they cling to, for you may well find yourself in their shoes when you least expect it. We can do better as ambassadors for Jesus, and we don’t have to curry political favor in order to make it happen.