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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