Saturday, July 7, 2018

Frame the Journey


Human Spirit

Frame the spiritual journey as a stark good-vs-evil battle of waring sides long enough and you'll eventually see the Church and those around you in the same way too. You'll begin to filter the world through the lens of conflict. Everything becomes a threat to the family; everyone becomes a potential enemy. Fear becomes the engine that drives the whole thing. When this happens, your default response to people who are different or who challenge you can turn from compassion to contempt. You become less like God, and more like the Godfather...”
John Pavlovitz (A Bigger Table: Building Messy, Authentic and Hopeful Spiritual Community)

The spiritual journey is not a battlefield; not even close. We have weaponized religion to hide what is actually fear of the stranger. We have bought into that fear as a means of justifying what is, in reality, racism, xenophobia and misogyny. People of other races and religions are not our enemies unless we make them so. Agnostics and atheists are not the enemy either. Our fear and its offspring, contempt, have been allowed to turn us against one another. It's time for this to stop.

No true religion teaches cruelty. Certainly, Jesus did not condone any of these divisive practices. To use the Christian religion as a weapon to punish and condemn others is simply wrong on every level. If we want to follow Jesus, we must lay down our arms and open up our hearts and become part of a brotherhood and sisterhood of compassionate people. Anything else is a false religion.

There is a big messy world out there in need of people to embrace it with compassion. It's time to leave an-eye-for-an-eye mentality behind, and replace it with a-hand-to-a-hand worldview. We have it in us—for instance, how many of us are glued to the story of the Thai children trapped in a cave? The whole world is praying for those boys and for the Navy Seals and others who are trying to get them out. We know how to do this—how to reach out and help one another regardless of creed or color or nationality. This is what the human spirit is supposed to be. The more we make our frame compassion, the less cruelty there will be in the world.

                                                             In the Spirit,
                                                                Jane

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