The Seven Deadly Sins for Our World Today

When trying to put the teachings of Christianity into practice, it can be helpful to have a list or template to work from. A framework for putting thought into action can be supremely helpful. How does a Christian function in society?  A list of do's and don'ts or at least guidelines distilled from the teachings of Jesus could be super helpful. Otherwise, it can all seem overwhelming.

Scripture gives us many of these: The 10 commandments and the Beatitudes are two of the best examples.

Christian tradition gives us still more. The corporal and spiritual Works of Mercy, derived from Scripture, are a shining example.  So too are the various monastic rules which have helped in this regard for monks and non-monks alike. The principles of Catholic Social Teaching, based on documents from the Catholic hierarchy, are a modern way of helping to understand a Christian's relationship with the world. Various protestant denominations have developed tight-knit communities and have cultivated a charism--a way of life--through which to interpret and live out the Christian faith--the Anabaptist tradition figures prominently here, although all Christian denominations do this to some degree.

Each of these frameworks has benefits and limitations. Yet each is a window to the whole of Christian teaching if one were to dig deeply enough. For example, the Beatitudes say a whole lot more about peace and nonviolence than the 10 Commandments, but you can arrive at those same teachings with enough meditation and study on the 10 Commandments--it may just take a lot more work to get there as the path isn't as direct.

Christians today often try to approach society using the lens of contemporary issues: Immigration, poverty, the environment, marriage, abortion, the death penalty and so forth. These are the thought categories of the modern mind. It's how we organize our lives. However, the issues themselves are defined by the secular society.  A Christian has to then take some extra steps to work out how these are relevant to a person of faith. It can be more confusing when Christians disagree on how best to deal with these issues. It might be better if Christians were to operate out of their own center and create the framework, first.

In other words, instead of Christians simply applying a Christian opinion on issues which have been framed by the secular world, it might be more helpful if Christians had a stronger worldview of their own to work from.

The list of the seven deadly sins was incubating around the time of the fall of Rome. It may have had roots in Greek philosophy. It was written about by monks and the Desert Fathers. It was eventually codified by Pope Gregory in 590. For better or for worse, it was a prevailing system for understanding life when the last vestiges of the western Roman empire crumbled, so it remained a cornerstone as Europe plunged into a thousand years of dark ages. You can see evidence of their prominence in the Canterbury Tales and Dante's Purgatorio, for example.

They haven't completely fallen out of favor.  Even in the modern era, prominent Evangelical leader Billy Graham used to preach about them. The Catholic Church and several Protestant denominations continue to stand by the list.  But they have certainly fallen out of the common street vernacular in our culture. Our whole culture suffers as a result, in my opinion.

What Are The Seven Deadly Sins?

Pride. Greed. Lust. Wrath. Gluttony. Envy. Sloth.

These are the fundamental issues in play underneath the sins of today which the church can correctly name and ultimately help heal.

Some of the sins have been neglected by Sunday sermons altogether.  When is the last time you heard a sweat-dripping, fist-pumping sermon on the sin of greed, for example? "Greed" is not even considered a sin by many. The power of greed runs rampant through our culture and the churches are nearly silent about it. Pride (which I discussed in a previous post) is the often invisible culprit behind so many other sins.

That's exactly why we need the list.

However, it doesn't help that some of these words are not well understood in today's parlance.

The list can come across as insensitive to the modern ear, and for good reason. Before you can start unlocking the wisdom it contains, you have to first explain and justify the list at all.  It doesn't help that it usually is delivered with archaic-sounding words.

Some of the other sins, such as lust, are simply poorly understand by modern people. The church as a whole got a bad reputation for being too aggressive in policing sexual morality that when the church calls out "lust" many in our culture refuse to hear the legitimate wisdom that may be there. For many, Christianity has a credibility problem when preaching about sexuality, and throw in an archaic word like "lust" and it just rubs many folks the wrong way. Many equate "lust" with sexual desire, which is thought by many today to be natural and healthy, but the concept of lust itself goes beyond mere natural desire and more into objectification and entitlement. We dance around "gluttony" so as not to offend those who have a weight problem, even though "gluttony" refers to more than simply one's relationship with food. Trying to explain why "envy" is not just a problem but is actually a sin will be met with blank stares by most--but it could be because to envy someone else is to have little faith in your own individual dignity endowed on you by your creator.

The thing I like about the list is that it is a deeper distillation of the Christian message than simply a stance on certain hot-button issues. There's theology here. There is a profound Christian worldview presented. It is a worldview that our modern culture is thirsty to hear. It helps us speak to and unpack some of the silent but significant dynamics in play underneath those hot-button issues.

We can still apply a framework such as the seven deadly sins to other contemporary issues.  We can hold the list up to immigration, abortion, etc. But instead of the church simply picking which of the pre-determined sides in a political debate it agrees with, the church instead can offer it's own way of looking at the situation which can critique all sides.

For example, it's one thing to say the U.S. treatment of asylum seekers at the border is wrong, but it is quite another to point out the underlying greed (for-profit detention centers), pride ("our nation/race is better than yours"), or even envy of the solid Hispanic families compared to our own fragmented society. I will go into more detail in a later post showing how to apply this Medieval idea to our contemporary issues, but that is enough for now to get the idea.

No list like this can be all-inclusive. I would never suggest that the Seven Deadly Sins is the only list of concerns for Christians. But it is an extremely useful framework to apply to our lives.

Conclusion

Christianity may often feel like it is fighting a losing battle against the wider culture. It helps if the wider culture is exposed to at least some vocabulary for understanding the Christian witness. It helps if Christians are bringing something to the conversation that is not already there.

This is why the answer to today's sin is the same as it has always been: We must repent, seek confession and forgiveness, offer penance and restitution, and ultimately hope to reconcile. We have to name sin first and then show a way to deal with it.

Because the church has in so many ways lost this language, we are abdicating what should be our primary contribution to the social narrative.

Our society is so polarized. So when the church enters the debate in the same way using the same language as the rest of the culture, it ends up confronting and edifying the same echo chambers and talking points. It encounters the same resistance. But the church can help society get to the root of it all. It can get underneath all those labels and talking points. It can get around people's defenses by talking in a new way, like Jesus did.

I think it's long overdue to recover the brilliance of the Seven Deadly Sins. Look for further installments in this series where we'll unpack how to approach modern issues using this lens.

***

This is an ongoing series on the Seven Deadly Sins.  Other installments so far:
Fasting from Division, Feasting on Inclusion
Pride: The Root of all Sin and Division

What Advent and the Christian Unity Movement have in Common

Advent could very well be the ideal season through which to understand the movement for Christian unity.

At least, that is true at this point in history.

That is because the characteristics of Advent are so similar to the current moment we find ourselves in.

Nebulous 

The movement for better relationships among Christians--and ultimately for Christian unity--can be a difficult thing to understand. That is why a paradigm to understand what we are going through can be helpful.

To put it bluntly:  The movement for unity among Christians is a pretty difficult thing to wrap your mind around if you want concrete answers and clearly defined goals. It is often described as "nebulous."

We don't really know where God is leading us. For example, how can we have any kind of unity when people on both sides of a denominational division may think their way is the only way? Either one side is wrong or else we are being led to a truth that transcends our categories. We know Christ himself prayed for the oneness of all believers (John 17:21). So we have faith that what Christ has prayed for will eventually come to pass, but we don't know what that may look like nor can we see the path to get there.

It is easy to look at 2,000 years of Christian wars, reformations and schisms, with the number of denominations counted in the tens of thousands today--not to mention all those individuals and congregations that simply consider themselves "independent"--and then when we consider human nature on top of that, it is easy to resign ourselves to the conclusion that there simply is no path of unity at all.

[Of course, right at that moment, we might be tempted to just give up on unity and accept each other as we are and then boom!  Maybe there is something of a foggy first step to be found there after all... and so the path through the fog continues.]

Going through Advent is like going to the gym. It is like a workout for your faith. It is a time of waiting. We are practicing how to fan a small spark of faith into a flame of hope. We are also deepening our patience through which to endure the lengthy exile we are in. We have to sit and wait not knowing the answers. We learn how to go through life without all the answers.

Whether we like concrete answers or not, we simply don't have them in this situation. However, that doesn't alleviate us from the duty to work towards this goal and to sit in the tension in the meantime.

Advent is a time pregnant with possibilities--quite literally for mother Mary. Here was a young girl who found herself in a very precarious situation. She had a pregnancy that was very difficult to explain. She trusted in God but it was probably still unclear where that journey would take her or what changes her life would undergo. This pregnancy would eventually culminate in giving birth in the poorest, most humble of circumstances and then almost immediately fleeing as a refugee to Egypt to escape a brutal authoritarian ruler's destructive reach. But during Advent, Mary probably didn't know that. She had to simply endure the discomfort of not knowing and having to wait for the answers. Such is pregnancy.

And such is the moment were are in when it comes to the unity of all believers. We know we are called on this path. We know it is in line with what Jesus himself wants. But we don't know where it will take us. And people will tell us we're crazy because we can't offer a clear explanation of exactly what we're trying to do or what it will look like. People will be suspicious that there must be some hidden agenda. But like Noah, building an ark in the desert may seem like pure madness . . . until the floods come.

That's because when you say "yes" to God's invitation you aren't guaranteed a road map of what exactly are your next steps. If you had that, of course, it wouldn't be as much of a journey of faith, now would it?

The Kingdom: Now . . . and Not Yet

There is so much about the Kingdom Jesus alerts us to that is already realized but unseen--and other parts that are not yet fully realized. The unity of all Christians is one of those.  We have to live in the tension between the unity that Jesus prays for and calls us into and the disunity we experience. There is indeed a unity that is already present but we simply can't fully see it yet, even though it's right there. But there is also a true disunity. This disunity has real impacts on our lives and our witness--and it could dampen our hopes.

But it must be stated that Advent is not a time of passivity. There is much that can be done. I'm sure Mary had many daily labors during this time. She took each step that presented itself to her. She did the things she could do. She did today's work today and left tomorrow's work for tomorrow--she had no choice. And neither do we.

The movement for Christian unity follows likewise: We may not know what the "end game" looks like--but there is work to be done today. We can build better relationships among Christians. We can get to know each other in full respect as people of faith. We can do the things together that we are already agreed upon. We can forget about our differences and simply work together. Or perhaps through our differences we may find a stronger voice. We can't just say "there is no way to untangle this mess" and then give up. Advent is a time that speaks to living in this space and which hopefully gives us both the tools and the strength to go through it.

Pride: The Root of all Sin and Division

Prometheus, thief of God's fire.

The Medieval church understood that pride is the granddaddy of all the other sins.

How can this be?

Given all the widespread suffering in this world from wars, murder, rape, both illegal and legal theft of all kinds, a divorce and infidelity rate in the neighborhood of 50% for all marriages, how can pride be the biggest issue of them all??

I think the Medieval church was onto something. Because when you peel back the layers on all those sins, you often find the unmistakable footprint of pride underneath most of them, if not all.

Today, the church largely describes sin today using the same categories as the secular world. We debate the "culture wars" issues. We talk about immigration, climate change and racism. There is value in the church using terminology that is widely used in categories that people commonly understand. But the danger is that the church can get easily co-opted by political forces. It also diminishes what could be the church's ability to speak to the heart of these matters and provide its best witness.

What is pride?

Pride is the breaking of the 1st commandment. It is an inability to understand and accept the basic relationship between humans and God: God is God. Humans are humans. Humans are all equal in dignity to each other.

Pride is not knowing who we really are. It's not letting God be God and letting people who God created them to be. As a result, we over-compensate. We attempt to do what is not ours to do. Like Prometheus, we are on a fool's quest to steal God's fire and be in control of it—and then judge those poorly who don't measure up.

Why would we do this? A newborn baby seems content. Why would we put so much energy addressing something that babies already know does not need to be addressed? The answer: Shame. We put layers of masks and coping strategies over shame.

Shame is the message that we are not good enough. When we get the message that we are "not good enough" we start to throw our fundamental relationship with God—and our fellow humans—out of balance. That's because we can't actually do anything to earn or justify our own worth! That is a God-given dignity. But in a desperate attempt to cover up this pain, we pretend that we can actually do something to merit our own worth and feel good about ourselves.

Where do we get this message of shame? Bad parenting. Our culture. From other shame-ridden, prideful people before us. It can take a lifetime of introspection to discover all those messages buried deep within us that others gave us or that we simply picked up somehow. When someone tell us we aren't good enough, that implies the very false belief that it's our job to earn our worth and that we can actually do—or not do—something to devalue ourselves or that we don't have the dignity which our faith teaches us we all have.

Superiority Covers Inferiority

Pride always masks its opposite. Noted psychologist Alfred Adler has said that feelings of superiority (i.e. pride) always masks feelings of inferiority. Always. The most egotistical, prideful person is always a scared, insecure person on the inside. It may just take a while to see it. A prideful person seems so confident, so secure, so radiant in their own self-assuredness. But they are only working so hard to project that image because they feel the opposite on the inside.

It's kind of simple when you think about it: A person is driven to those things for a reason, so what is that reason? What is that wound, that ache or that fear? There must be a reason or else someone wouldn't expend so much energy doing it.

The person with not a single hair out of place is a person who feels very much out of place on the inside. The student who cannot be satisfied with any grade below an "A" is someone who has already graded themselves poorly. Hard work, achievement and respectable appearance can be worthy efforts, of course. After all, we have work to do while on this earth. But if those things are done out of a compulsion to pretend we can earn our place over and above others, then we are out of sync with God, we are our of sync with our nature, and sin can and will result.

Pride is always a coping mechanism attempting to cover for shame, self-hatred and self-doubt. That pain is to severe so we put layers of masks on top of it, trying to hide it, trying to muddle through, trying to keep up until such a time comes when we can actually deal with it. At least that's the foolish quest we on.

By Grace Alone

Given how important this issue is, it is easy to see why Christians become embroiled in bitter theological debates over small nuances of doctrine. It's easy to see why Protestant Reformers, for example, have been so fervently committed to the "grace alone" theology expressed by Luther and so many other Reformers. I don't necessarily agree with them or their approaches, but I do agree that there is  something so important at the heart of that issue, that if you get that wrong, that is seems like everything else would be wrong by consequence.

In this blog, we often severely critique the impulse of Christians to split the Christian community over what seems like tedious theological points. People are going to have theological differences of opinion and practice. We ought to relax about that and allow people to stretch and grow in their thinking rather than let those differences result in denominational splits. But those points do matter. It is easy to understand why those points are considered so important.

We end up using our very theology to establish our own merit! My church is better than yours. My theology is better than yours. No matter how hard we try to run from this sin, we keeping getting caught up in it in increasingly slippery and sly ways. I would argue here that the root of Christian division is not differences in theology, doctrine, national origin, culture or practice—it's pride. And a divided Christianity does a poor job of witnessing against all the other sins in our world which are ultimately rooted in this same division.

Pride Establishes Hierarchies Where God Has Not

Pride is a symptom of our fallen condition. We aren't good enough. We must be in control. It's the false self, the ego. We must augment ourselves, we must market and "sell ourselves" we must be on top of the hill otherwise we'll just wither and disappear like dust in the wind.

But in doing so, we throw our fundamental anthropology out of whack. We judge some people to be better than others. Suddenly, we group people by race, by culture, by gender, by national origin, by economic class, by material possessions and by church doctrine and all the other false gods in our lives. We've got to get on top of the hill before they do! We've got to somehow be in control of the things that are really only God's to control. We start doing things that are really God's job. We create hierarchies to judge the worth of ourselves in relation to others: My yard is tidier than your yard.  My church is better than your church.  My race is better than yours. My immigration status makes me more worthy than yours. My sins are better than your sins.  

It's the same works righteousness that the Protestant Reformers fought so hard to resist. It's a perennial problem in the human condition which religious traditions have been trying to address since the beginning of time.

The Opposites of Pride are Humility and Calmness

Understanding that God is God and humans are humans leads to calmness. It leads to humility. And out of that humility our true natural dignity shines all the better. This is where true achievement is to be found! This is the paradox.

The Medieval church understood that pride is the deadliest of the deadly sins. It is the root of all division. By definition, it divides and establishes hierarchies of worth and merit. Let God be God. Know who you are in light of that and then see your brothers and sisters in that same light. There is a feeling of calmness in this. You don't have to do anything to earn your worth. That being said, there is value in human achievement, rightly understood. There is value in calling out sin in our fellow humans, rightly understood.  But our daily work must be to re-center ourselves in a proper theological anthropology so that our work can be to help unravel—rather than re-assert—pride and its very deadly consequences.

***

This is part of a series on the Seven Deadly Sins.
Other installments:
Fasting from Division, Feasting on Inclusion

A Divided Christianity Limits Its Witness

Collage of Christian culture, from:
https://tinyurl.com/uzzy7nl

In my work, I try to build relationship between Roman Catholics and evangelical Christians. I often encounter resistance from all sides.

One complaint I hear is: Why bother? There are are so many other issues of division in the world today that seem much more serious. Lives are hanging in the balance. Few people today, especially in the first world, are losing their lives over Catholic and evangelical tensions.

That certainly is a fair point. Tensions between Christian denominations have definitely subsided from where they once were. After all, the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-reformation helped lead to the 30 Year War, one of Europe's bloodiest. Prejudice still exists, but it doesn't manifest into that scale of bloodshed anymore. We've come a long way.

But in the western world, Christianity has been the dominant religion. In a sense, it has been the one constant of the western world. Christianity has provided the moral framework in no small way for the west--beginning with the Roman Empire, through the Dark Ages and Medieval world, to the Renaissance, Enlightenment, "discovery" of the New World and its impacts in terms of colonialism, world wars and a rapid increase in technology.

All of these are complex topics, of course, but the point I want to make here is:  The western world did all of these things operating out of--and challenged by--the moral and ethical framework of western Christianity.  

How successful Christianity has been at intercepting sin in the midst of this could have a lot to do with how united Christianity has been.

Christianity and the Western World

We all need a solid moral, ethical and spiritual grounding in order to resist the pervasive temptations and sins that are endemic to the human condition. Greed and its twin brother selfishness run rampant so easily. Pride easily divides and pits one group as "better" than another. In day to day life, it certainly can feel like times marches slowly, but stepping back it becomes apparent that we are in the middle of a sharp exponential growth curve in technology, population, pollution, wars, etc. Older cultures had thousands of years to adapt to changes. We have just a short time. The western world has presided over so much rapid change in so short of a time.

My grandfather still worked with horses and was the first to use mechanized tractors on the farm. In 100 years time, we went from horses to cars, airplanes and spaceships, from the telephone to smart phones and from typewriters to word processors.

But while the western world has been overwhelmingly Christian, the lived reality tells a different story: You have your church and I have mine. I have my beliefs and you have yours. I don't have to talk to you. I don't even have to acknowledge you.

We're not just divided--we're isolated from one another. We can't expect uniformity in our beliefs as an axis for unity. After all, if you were to talk to 10 people you will get 12 theological opinions. But the problem is that we haven't found a way to maintain some semblance of unity in light of all this.

We've not just divided in terms of doctrine and beliefs--we are also just as much divided in terms of race and national origin. As MLK so famously said, Sunday at 11 am "is the most segregated hour in the nation." Blacks, whites and little enclaves of tight-knit immigrant community churches dot the landscape.

It's a strange message of: Leave me alone, I'm going to practice my faith which draws all people and even the entire cosmos to Christ. It's somewhat understandable as in this finite world we often don't know how to transcend so many divisions. I sympathize with people who simply give up and keep to themselves. But we should at least recognize the need to try and admit that division is not what we are called to.

A Divided Christianity Limits its Witness

Look at how this plays out in terms of national allegiance: Do we really consider Christians in Mexico to be our brothers and sisters in the faith?  Or are they just "those people over there"? Are we suspicious of them trying to sneak in and steal from us? The vast majority of Mexicans would identify as Catholic, Pentecostal or evangelical. Since we are not united in the faith, forces that want to suppress immigration get us to hate each other. Those forces would have little sway over us if we knew each other and respected each other as members of the same Body of Christ. We would know and trust each other as members of the same Church.

This wouldn't immediately solve all immigration issues, but it would make us less likely to fall victim to dehumanizing propaganda. But because it's considered "okay" to be divided then it becomes so easy to further divide the church into ethnic and national and class-based groups--and most importantly, it becomes easier to divide the church up politically. Division itself is considered acceptable which sets the stage for further divisions of all kinds.

A study was done recently on the terrifying practice trying and killing accused witches over the past several hundred years.  Researches noted that it was perhaps Christian disunity and competition between Protestants and Catholics which fueled some of the harshest and most regrettable periods of witch persecution in Europe and America. It begs the question:  How is Christian disunity today being used to divide and conquer?  How is this disunity manipulated to pursue political goals? Conversely, how is politics manipulated to pursue religious goals?

The Power of the Church

I got into this work because I believe the faith community can be a necessary tonic to the evils of the world.  I still believe that. Churches have stood up to the evils of the world i many ways, from the way churches helped the Civil Rights movement to the movement for justice in Latin America in recent decades and so many more examples.

I don't what to join with you, fellow follower of Jesus, just because you share the same liberal or conservative views. but I do want to join with you because we are rooted in the vision of the Kingdom and we make decisions about what is right or wrong from that place. Our home is in the Kingdom that Jesus calls us to recognize. It's not because we are liberal or conservative and then go to church based on those allegiances, it is because we carry the church in our hearts and make decisions about the world from that place.

Even with all of our theological and denominational divisions, Christianity provides a unifying framework. Even if we disagree on the application of certain issues, Christianity still gives us common language to confront sin. It gives us readings and practices. It gives us a unifying vision for membership in Christ's body and of the Kingdom of God. It gives us something in common with which to engage the rest of the culture. Even with that, it still takes everything we've got to resist the temptations of sin. But our denominational divisions prevent us from speaking that voice clearly.

With Christianity divided, the secular world eats us alive. The world of power and money can pick Christianity apart, co-opt certain groups for this or that benefit. They use Christians for their gains. Nowadays, it's no secret that there are denominations and sects of Christianity aligned with the political right and with the political left. Christians think they have chosen their allegiances but the more sinister truth is that perhaps those interests have chosen Christians to bolster them. They have coaxed Christians to ignore certain thing or to soften some edges and dampen their message in the name of compromise and collaboration.

Could a more united Christianity do a better job of maintained its center and not be so easily swayed by political, financial or military interests in the larger culture?

Maybe there are far too many folks who like Christianity so fractured because it is just easier to manipulate?  And then to pit one side against the other?

A more united Christianity may not stave off all the world's problems. After all, the relatively united church of the Middle Ages did help in some of this but it was still all too often a pawn for political powers. It's complex. Nevertheless, I will argue here that a divided Christianity limits its witness to the world. People don't have to take it seriously because Christians can't even agree on what it's about.  Disunity limits its witness to justice and peace. It limits the ability of the Christian message to be a healing and prophetic tonic for a very fractured world. Indeed: the fractures of Christianity resemble more this world than the Kingdom we are called to.

Fasting From Division, Feasting on Inclusion

Is this not the fast that I have chosen:

To loose the bonds of wickedness,

To undo the heavy burdens,

To let the oppressed go free,

And that you break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,

That you bring the poor and homeless into your house;

When you see the naked, that you cover them,

And not hide yourself from your own flesh?

 -- Isaiah 58:6-7

Super challenging passage from Isaiah. 

Can we fast from injustices?

Can we fast from the pleasures that come at someone else's expense? Some of those things may be enjoyable or simply things we think we need to do for our own protection.

Such as:

Our pride which maintains divisions, hatred...? "My church is better than your church."

Our hurt and anger left unaddressed which lead to walls between people and ultimately to wars? "I only take care of those inside my walls."

Our consumerism and greed which scorches the earth...? Our consumer engine which produces abundance but yet leaves far too many with nothing.

Our fears which compel us to justify anything and everything, no matter how sinister, in the name of revenge or self-preservation....? After all, so much evil (if not all of it) is done by people thinking they are defending themselves. Someone else is considered a threat that must be controlled or neutralized, so we tell ourselves that gives us license to jettison all our ethics and morals in order to neutralize this perceived threat. "Be not afraid."

So let's fast from pride, from hurt, from greed, from fear.... let's stop constantly gorging ourselves on the buffet of these negative conditions, emotions, thoughts and orientations... THIS is the fast that God calls for here in this beautiful passage! Let's fast from these things which are not of God so that we can feast on the goodness, mercy, and love that IS of God! It takes true bravery to do that after being cloaked in fear, anger and all the trappings of this world all our lives.

Let's fast from lust which distorts true beauty and desire. It obscures our ability to see the full dignity of each other by reducing people to objects to be consumed.

Let's fast from apathy, sloth and sadness... justifiable feelings, no doubt, but they can be a trap leading us into inaction.

Let's fast from the gluttony which compels our rabid consumption, always seeking a high and never being satisfied.

Ultimately let's seek out, heal and fast from whatever is behind all of these feelings... whatever pain, trauma, fear, self-doubt is driving all of these unhealthy coping mechanisms.

Saying we ought to fast from these things is one of the most profound passages in Scripture. It is clearly articulating that we are tied in to systems of power, privilege and injustice. We are tied into these systems every day and bear responsibility even when we are not directly or consciously perpetuating injustice. It is part of the fallen condition of the world that we are stewing in this sin.

It also means by consequence we are inherently connected to everyone and everything--we are all part of the same human family, the same biological family of plants and animals, and the same cosmos. It is our "same flesh" after all, as the passage states. There is a oneness to all. That's why the things which promote division are sinful--division is not of God. It is imaginary but consequential. It causes us to miss seeing the Kingdom of justice, mercy and wholeness which is right here, right now... to miss seeing God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, who are always right with us, permeating everyone and everything.

I've heard of churches talk about the "sacrifice of praise" or the "sacrifice of worship." I'm not suggesting those are in any way bad. Others fast from food or various vices from time to time. But at least in this passage, God is clearly saying that's not the sacrifice wanted by God. The message is pretty clear and doesn't give us much wiggle room to try to make it say something else.

This passage urges us to increase our inner circle to include more. Destroy that which separate and limits and increase that which welcomes and invites. Let's challenge ourselves to consider whatever limits or separates us from others and reflect on that in light of this passage.

***

This is the first part in a series on the seven deadly sins.

Multi-Generational Trauma and Christian Disunity

One of the deadliest days Catholic-Protestant tension: Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre by Francois Dubois. Wikipedia Commons.

I often encounter so much resistance from Christians to the cause of Christian unity.

I am often left baffled.

In my humble opinion, there doesn't seem to be enough theological justification for this resistance. There aren't enough cultural reasons, either.

That's certainly debatable, of course. Many would challenge me on this.

But I still get a sense that there is something else going on—some people have an almost visceral reaction toward other Christian groups that is hard to explain through merely doctrinal differences alone.

So what is driving this?

It's like there's an invisible force. Or a ghost, perhaps.

Well, in a sense, I think this is true.

In this blog we often explore the symptoms of a fractured people—in particular, divisions in Christianity. Those fall along doctrinal lines, national origin lines, racial lines and class lines. But they also fall along historical lines.

I'm amazed by how many Christians want to be isolated from other Christians. For example, there are many evangelical Christians in the rural U.S. South who just want to be left alone. They don't want any relationship with any other church, even within their own denomination. Is this just personal preference or is there a back story? Is this what Jesus asks for those who follow in his way?

Perhaps we today don't have a living memory of persecution. Perhaps we don't remember being abandoned or being rejected or having to uproot our family and travel westward to a new country just to get away from all the strife back in Europe. We didn't personally experience the nasty and cruel ways various Christian groups treated each other—up to and including wars and death.

But somewhere deep down in our bones we feel the result of this wound. The memory may be gone but the trauma—and the coping mechanisms—remain. We are only at the beginning stages of understanding how experiences of trauma can be passed down to subsequent generations. But we know it experientially:  Once you start attempting to heal any of these divisions it becomes abundantly clear right away that past is prologue.

Coco

The Disney Pixar movie Coco does a fantastic job of showing how this multi-generational trauma works. This family in Mexico that just seemed to hate music. They did everything they could to avoid music and punish harshly any family member who attempted to play music. Nobody remembered  why and nobody really bothered to ask. It's just the way it was. They just hated music and wanted to be left alone.

[spoiler alert follows!]

As the movie progresses, we discover that the reason this family hates music is that a great-great-grandfather was presumed to abandon his family to pursue a life on the road as a musician. He left a wife and young daughter to fend for themselves, never to see them again. Through great difficulty and innovation, his wife built a new life—but utter contempt for music and anything related to it was painfully stitched into every moment of their lives going forward. I imagine every sound of music brought with it painful memories and grumblings which her daughter and grandchildren picked up on. I imagine they didn't want to see her in pain so they also did everything to shield her from music. Music brought her pain, and it was painful for her daughter and grandchildren to witness this, so music ended up bringing them pain, too—they appropriated her pain. Hating music just became part of the family ethos.

We eventually find out the truth is still more complex—the father intended to leave the road and come home but was murdered by a jealous music partner who wanted his songs to himself. Tragic misunderstandings often play a huge role.

Christian Prologue 

How much do the historical treatments of Christians to one another matter today?

They matter a lot—it is the pain on which so many of our patterns and attitudes have been built. The pain and coping patterns remain long after the original incidents are forgotten.

I can prove it. What happens when you read the word "Viking"? Do you imagine an adventurous seafaring people from Northern Europe? You probably imagine brutal terrorists. Their descendants today are the quite peaceful Scandanvian people. But yet to this day the word "viking" conjures up foreboding. That's because for a period of time the Vikings terrorized much of mainland Europe. Their time attacking coastal Europe was a long, long time ago. Yet this period was sufficiently brutal and psychologically traumatizing enough to carry their reputation forward to the present day.

The church of the western Roman Empire (now called the Catholic Church) actually attacked and sacked Constantinople, the seat of the eastern church (now called the Orthodox Church). Certainly wars between Christians have been common throughout the years, but this was more explicitly tied to religious divisions itself, at least on the surface. It was a thousand years ago but if you unpack the layers of frosty relationship between Catholics and Orthodox, you will quickly notice the impact of this and other similar events.

Catholics murdered Protestants. Catholic and Protestants murdered Anabaptists. And many Christians persecuted pagans, Jewish people and Gypsies.

A colleague explained to me how the Civil War, for example, split denominations in many ways. The different experiences in the North and the South—the suffering, the years of hunger, the humiliation of loss, the feeling of abandonment by their brothers and sister in the faith on the other side of the Mason Dixon line—have left lasting scars that remain to this day. Many today on one side don't even know why they have such feelings toward those on the other side, but they know they do.

Think of how much fear and misunderstanding Christians have for Muslims. Some of this is just stirred up by political forces today. But this negative view of Islam has its root in history. Europe experienced serious defeats during the Crusades. Empires of Muslim people made inroads into Europe in Span, Turkey and Southeast Europe. This menacing, looming shadow was just beyond the sea, ready to strike at any moment. Perhaps they see Christians the same way—it's all perspective.

Actually, Muslim people are as normal and peaceful as people in any nation. But we've been kept apart for so long where fears turn people into caricatures. Just like walking through a dark forest on Halloween, where every noise makes you worry there's a giant or monster right around the corner. This is what fear does. This is why it's so important to get to know people in the present day to dispel those fears and to make sure political forces aren't using those fears to manipulate us.

Going Forward

Even when memory of an event is long gong, the reaction to that pain is often still with us. It may still be in the drivers seat, whether we know it or not. It's actually harder when we are unaware of it—because we are triggered and reacting and there doesn't seem to be a logical reason for it, but logic is not enough to build the bridge. We have to find out what's driving out reactions to one another.

When you start reconciling with people from another group, you may start crying over pain from centuries ago—pain you never even dreamed was relevant to you at all. That's how multi-generational trauma works.

That is why we can't enter a dialogue as isolated individuals. We all come with a history and out of a context, and we all need to respect that. Unity requires lots of reconciliation with the past. It requires lots of apologies and amends and at the very least an awareness of its impact on us today. Even a thousand years later, the pain doesn't simply just go away on its own until it is lovingly healed.

***

This is part 3 in a series around remembering the voices from the past: All Saints Day, All Souls Day and Day of the Dead in Hispanic cultures. Reformation Sunday in Protestant churches. How do narratives we have inherited from the past—accurate or not—affect who we are today?

Part 1: A Tale of Two Americas
Part 2: Family Separation: My Personal Story

Family Separation: My Personal Story

My grandmother immigrated to the U.S. on the SS George Washington.

I hesitate to write the above headline, because the story I'm about to tell is not anywhere near as traumatic as the family separation currently happening to asylum seekers at the U.S./Mexico border. Nor does it compare to the brutal family separation that occurred during slavery, the disappearances during Jim Crow, in Native American "boarding schools" or currently in a culture of mass incarceration and immigrant detention. I hate to compare one person's trauma to another's, but some hesitation is warranted here.

Nevertheless, I think my story does a good job of showing how separation of any kind leaves long lasting trauma that affects our behavior and attitudes for generations to come—and how this trauma needs to be healed before full unity and wholeness in society or our institutions can be achieved.

***

My grandmother immigrated from what is now modern day Slovakia to the United States (Ohio) in the early 1920s. She was 17 years old. She remembered saying goodbye to her mother. At that moment, she instinctively knew that she would never see her again. That turned out to be true.

She did return once to see her family back in Europe in the 1960s. She saw her brothers, sisters and extended family. I'm sure it was wonderful to have that reunion. It must also have been bittersweet to realize all the life together they were not going to experience.

Her first born son Emery joined the Navy and went off to the Pacific theater of World War II. He was 17 or 18—the same age as my grandmother when she left home for good. While overseas, he married a Philipino woman. They had three children, many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They moved around a lot but always stayed in the Pacific rim. They settled on Hawaii, which was a halfway point for their respective families—and close to neither!

Growing up, we would see them as often as once every year. Their visits were full and fun. We actually saw them more frequently, and had more in-depth interactions with them, than some of my other aunts and uncles who lived a lot closer. We made sure to make our limited time together count. But there was always a pain. Uncle Emery and Aunt Betsy just couldn't be a regular fixture. We didn't see them at random weddings, funerals or 4th of July cookouts. We didn't just run into each other in the grocery store. No matter how close we were, the miles between us were always there. I have only seen some of my cousins once in my life.

These experiences of immigration brought out the best in people. It helped them to be daring, entrepreneurial and full of vigor. There is an energy that immigrants have that is hard to find anywhere else. But in these cases, it also brought lasting wounds for both themselves and their families. Some of those wounds have remained for decades, and it's the 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants who have to do the work to restore and heal.

Fast forwards several decades: I come of age. Without considering any of this history, I am surprised by how much hostility my family has to any of my plans to move around. Go to a faraway college? Move to another city? Move out of state? Travel abroad?? All those ideas were met with anger, resistance and disapproval. I actually hid those plans from my folks up until the last minute because I just couldn't bear all the guilt and negativity, which I saw as an affront to my own ideas and initiative. And it was. But today I see some of this in a new light.

I'm sure a lot more factored into my family's reactions than our immigration history, but I bet they factored in a whole lot more than any of us ever realized.

You see, nowadays communication and travel are different. It is relatively easy to get a plane ticket. Highways are well-developed. Phone calls are cheaper, if not downright free with you plan. Social media and video chatting are everyday realities rather than something only imagined on Star Trek. And the Soviet "iron curtain" no longer divides the world. 

But somewhere embedded in my family's consciousness is the idea that people who leave never come back. It's a permanent separation. You might as well be dead to them if you are going to leave your hometown. When I was about to make an out-of-state move, I watched them steel themselves emotionally as if they were preparing for a funeral. Their reactions seemed so over the top, so out of proportion—but today I see it differently. Their reactions were based on the 1920s rather than the realities of 2020.

My experiences are not unlike those of the character Miguel in the Disney Pixar movie Coco. The movie does a phenomenal job showing how trauma can continue to impact people in a family generations after the initial incident occurred, even when the initial incident is unknown to present day people. My family's fear of dividing the family was putting us at risk of causing a rift in the family again.

Multi-generational trauma is a significant factor at the foundation of just about every division in society.

Many people today don't understand why we should do anything to atone for slavery, for example. Or the brutalities of colonization. Many don't understand why we would bother do expend energy trying to mend Christian disunity, especially when some of the wounds are 500-1000 years old! But the more we come to understand how multi-generational trauma works, the more clearly we understand the imperative to do the good, ole fashioned Christian work of seeking forgiveness, atoning for wrongdoings and working toward restitution. Very few things are simply "in the past." People say that history does not impact them, but it clearly does, whether we realize it or not.

Multi-generational trauma impacts the Christian family tree as much as it does any other family. We'll explore that in the next post, stay tuned!

***

This is the second part in our series commemorating All Saints and All Souls Days, as well as Day of the Dead in Hispanic cultures. Reformation Sunday in Protestant churches. The voices, experiences and wounds of people in the past have a greater impact on us today than many of us even realize. On the path toward unity, we have to consider the role of multi-generational trauma plays in our divisions.

Part 1:  A Tale of Two Americas

A Tale of Two Americas

This blog focuses on issues of unity, especially among Christians. We look at how disunity manifests itself along theological, racial, cultural, economic and nationalistic lines in our society.

We want to follow the gospel mandate to repent, repair the damage and offer restitution on the hopeful path toward reconciliation. That is a page from good, old fashioned Christianity! But one giant obstacle in the way is a poor self understanding. We can't do any of this well if we aren't honest about ourselves or the situation. This may require shattering some long-held golden calves. But I believe we can do it.

As the churches following the liturgical calendar move toward commemorating All Saints Day and All Souls Day—and Day of the Dead in Hispanic cultures—and Reformation Sunday in Protestant denominations—it is a good time to ask: Who are we? Where did we come from? What narratives do we tell of our past that define who we are today? Who do we want to be going forward and where do we ultimately want to go?

There are two Americas.

We have a very difficult time admitting it. But in order to be healthy and whole and to become the people we want to be (and think we are), it is necessary to come to terms with this. The truth will set us free.

We have indeed been an experiment in freedom and equality. When the U.S. was founded, we attempted something no other nation in the modern era has ever attempted, at least not on the scale we were attempting. Smaller communities were the model but there was never anything so grandiose. And yes, through the years, very often our stated ideals of freedom and equality have pushed us (often kicking and screaming) to live them out more fully.

However, perhaps more importantly, you could say instead of "freedom and equality for all" what we have instead created a pocket of power and privilege for a few in the guise of freedom and equality for all. As noted evangelical writer Jim Wallis often says, racism is "America's original sin."

There are other words that can accurately describe American society:

Apartheid.

Caste system.

Rigid social hierarchy.

Forced labor camps.

Forced patriotism.

Genocide.

Privilege.

Concentration camps.

Internment camps.

Forced family separation and re-indoctrination of various groups (slaves, natives, migrants, immigrants).
Militaristic empire.
Colonizers (both neocolonialism and good ole fashioned regular colonialism).

All of those are accurate and factual descriptions. 

"We don't like those words! That's what other countries do, not us!" We tell ourselves: "Sure, we've made a few mistakes along the way, but we're not like them!"

But when your idea of freedom and equality for all is to do the following, perhaps we are not being honest with ourselves:

1. "Clear the land" of the first nations people and cultures already here as if they were simply annoying weeds.

2. Kidnap, capture, and import slaves, dehumanize them and write the laws to regard them as property—and then even after slavery to keep them in forced segregation and oppression—perhaps in unconscious fear that if granted true equality and freedom they might do to us what we did to them.

3. Beat down on successive waves of immigrants who might steal the power and privilege we have amassed for ourselves—also perhaps in unconscious fear they might do to us what we did to them.

Different Words for Different Folks

One of the ways we perpetuate these divisions is that we use different words for ourselves than we use for others. The U.S. was populated by migrant workers, immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. But we don't like those words, so we call ourselves "settlers" instead. How come Mexicans crossing the border today without documents aren't called "settlers"? They meet that definition as well as any European from three centuries ago did.

The U.S. started as genocide toward native people and continued with a string of forced labor camps (what we usually call "plantations" (you know, where slaves were imprisoned)) where the inmates were subject to brutal life sentences and continual torture—and so were their families for generation after generation.

In all this, the U.S. has then maintained a rigid social caste system. On top of the social caste system are white (preferably northern European), Christian (preferably Protestant) heterosexual, cisgender males. There are some anomalies and complexities in this that must be named but that is the overall system.

At Home and Abroad

Whatever freedoms we may legitimately enjoy here, we brutally deny to most everyone else on earth. Seriously, for every place on earth that we hold up as an example that we have genuinely helped become a democratic, freedom-loving society (er... usually by force), there are probably a dozen more where we have installed and supported autocratic regimes—keeping the third world poor and vulnerable so our corporations can exploit the people and land without resistance or interference. It was actually a Catholic Maryknoll missionary priest who played a large role in uncovering these maneuvers.

The refugees and asylum seekers currently at the U.S./Mexico border begging for mercy were driven in no small way by U.S. policies that wrecked their homelands, either directly or indirectly. This includes the drug wars (Colombia), embargoes (Cuba/Venezuela), destructive trade policies (Mexico) and overthrowing democratically elected governments (Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, etc).

We maintain that industrial military complex through forced, obligatory patriotism here in the U.S ("Support the troops" who are "making the world save for democracy.") However, people around the world simply do not universally cheer us as their "liberators." Some do, but many do not. So often, we have betrayed the people who have helped us. We get upset when we hear about how communist and socialist governments have attempted to force their systems onto their people, but when we have "brought democracy" abroad is has generally been through force and military rule.

Despite all this negativity, there are bright lights to report.  For example, we have historically settled permanently more refugees than everywhere else on earth combined (not since Trump's restrictions but previously). Granted, that's only a small fraction of the world's refugees. It must be said that we certainly do not take in the most refugees—not by a long shot. But the ones we have taken in we have granted permanent status. That's the difference. It's still a very good mark for the U.S. Granted, we should also ask how many of those refugees we have created in the first place through our policies and practices.

It must also be said that even though historically the U.S. has been a leader in pushing for freedom and equality for all, we are nowhere near the leaders in world freedom anymore. Lots of studies have been done from lots of groups to measure the relative "freedom" of people all over the earth, and the U.S. does not rank anywhere close to the top of freedoms today. This is especially true in post-9/11 America where all the infrastructure for a police and surveillance state has been quickly and firmly put in place. In addition, there is too much disparity in power and privilege along economic, racial and social lines.

Conclusion

I'm sure folks could point to other areas where we have done an exemplary job and other areas where we have been dismal. But that's the point—both have been true. And this is why democracy in the U.S. is always fragile and that fascism and white nationalism are ongoing threats just around the corner. We have always been dangerously closer to that than we usually care to admit—lynchings, McCarthy "red scare" hearings, Japanese internment, family separation of native peoples and "re-schooling," not to mention slavery and native genocide. The list goes on and on. I believe it was Noam Chomsky who made that point—we have always had the infrastructure for fascism, especially in post 9/11 America. We just haven't had a leader or a populace willing to exploit it to its fullest... yet.

A nation of freedom and equality does not have a military many times the size of the next closet competitor with bases in 150+ nations worldwide. A nation of freedom and equality does not mandate saying the Pledge of Allegiance or standing for the national anthem—those quasi-religious gestures would have been abhorrent to our founders. It's not what you do in a genuinely free society. It's just not. By Definition.

So there you have it. A tale of two Americas. We are not all bad. We have done some great things for freedom and equality in the world, even if most of those gains are historical. But it's time we let go of any paternalistic, comic book fantasies about what our country is. We can do this. We need to first be honest about who we are, what we have done and what we are planning to do. Only then can be actually be the people and nation we aspire to be. We have to quit saying "We're #1 We're the best!" We just not. Let's face it—that's kind of juvenile. Life is more complex than that. Besides, Christians in particular should set their gaze on the Kingdom that Jesus announced rather than wordly things, statuses and titles. But admitting it is the first step on the road toward repentance, restitution and reparations and ultimately reconciliation.

A lot of folks say:  "This can't be true because of such-and-such positive thing about America." But that's it—we have two sides and need to acknowledge—fully—both.

Let's go back to church and learn the 4 R's:

Repentance, Restitution, Reparations and Reconciliation.

Christians at the Southern Border!

Our fellow Catholic, Pentecostal and evangelical Christian
brothers and sisters in need--shut out at the border.
Photo by ABC News.

Christian dis-unity paves the way for the secular world to divide people for power and profit.

I have never once read an article warning about the masses of "Christians at the southern border."

I've been both an advocate and concerned citizen on all issues related to immigration for over 20 years. This includes looking the whole system of immigration as well as concern for migrants of all types: Refugees, asylum seekers and both documented and undocumented immigrants.

By contrast, whenever the United States seems to be stoking the fires for yet another war in the Middle East, I commonly hear about those so-called "Muslim nations."

In this blog serious through "Respect Life" October, we've been looking at how we talk about and encounter each other lays the foundation for how much we respect we have for each other—including respect for each other's lives.

In the gospels, Jesus seems to warn us about getting caught up in the labels society gives to people. Jesus ate with sinners and tax collectors and encountered all manner of people in genuine, respectful dialogue—especially people that his society warned him not to, such as Samaritans and lepers.

It is easy to infer that the reason we never hear about the "Christians at the southern border" is because that would likely increase sympathies for them, and there are forces at work that don't want that to happen. Likewise, those who are itching to go to war throw out the "Muslim" word since that is likely to decrease sympathies based on some egregious misunderstandings about the Islamic faith. Let's not fall for it.

The vast majority—if not the entirety—of immigrants coming to the U.S. from south of the border would virtually all identify as Christian in one form of another—Catholic, Pentecostal or evangelical.

By contrast, the populations of Middle Eastern nations are far more mixed. Each of them has a sizable Christian population, including some of the oldest Christian communities in existence. And few of those nations are "Muslim" in the strict sense of the word referring to a theocratic government.

Doesn't our mutual membership in the same Body of Christ mean anything here?

Do our loyalties to our national identity mean more than our identity through Christ?

Some of Jesus' most astonishing statements recorded in the gospels speak to this.

"Hate Your Father and Mother"

Jesus seems to want us  to deny our tribal bands of loyalties and to embrace the universal family revealed to us through Christ. This is how I understand the challenging verse in Luke 14:25-27 when Jesus says that whoever follows him must "hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters." I don't believe that Jesus is actually telling us to hate anyone —that seems hard to square with the guy who urges us to love one another up to and including our enemies! But I believe he is urging us to see beyond the loyalties based on family, race, religion, national origin, denomination or whatever false divided us and prevents us from seeing the oneness of all.

So when Jesus says "hate your mother" he's not asking us to hate the person but rather the title and the special privileges that come with it. That may be hard to do when it comes to such an important relationship like father and mother, but I get his point. I think of this this way:  Jesus is saying don't love someone less just because they are not a fellow American, a fellow white person, a fellow authorized, documented citizen or a fellow Christian. See past those labels to know—and ultimately love—the people behind them.

Conclusion

I'm not suggesting, of course, that we should reserve sympathies only for Christian immigrants or Christian majority nations. I believe the vision Jesus calls us into reaches far beyond those terms. But our mutual identification as believers who profess Christ, or at the very least searches who follow Jesus, who are baptized into the same Body of Christ, including people who are members of our own particular church or denomination, should count for something. It should count for a whole lot.

Our faith and trust in Jesus' words in the Gospels can help strengthen us to stand firm against the forces that would try to divide us. I'm not sure who people wants to sow division. Underneath it all, it is probably about power and money, as most evil is. Let's approach the world as Christians first and foremost, who care for members of our community and who reach out in genuine respect to those outside our community. Let Christ set the terms of our encounter with others do that we don't let selfish or political interests define, label and demean people for their own selfish gains.

How different of a world it would be if we were regularly reminded of our bonds to one another rather than reminded of our perceived differences. But since the rest of the world can't be counted on to do this, we must commit to doing this ourselves.

***

This is part 5 in a series during October on Respect Life.

Part 1: Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue is a Respect Life Issue

Part 2: Yes, Even "Those People"

Part 3: Dialogue: A Contemplative Practice

Part 4: White People Talking About Racism:  Do It Anyway

White People Talking About Racism: Do It Anyway

Through the month of October, we've been talking about dialogue as the example Jesus modeled for lifting up the dignity of disenfranchised people and for bringing back into community people who have previously been excluded outright or who have been relegated to the margins. In this post, we will talk about a certain type of dialogue in regards to race in America. After all, race is one of the primary ways that society is divided, in particular the Christian community.

***

A lot of white people avoid talking about race in America on general principle.

In some ways, that is understandable. It is seen as a high-risk, low-reward scenario. The risk is high that someone could be offended or that one's personal work or reputation could be jeopardized, and the prospects of making the situation of race any better for anyone seem pretty low.

So it's easy to see why people of goodwill opt out.

I don't think that's the right approach.

I take great solace from the poem Do It Anyway (copied below) (attributed to Mother Thersea but originally written by Dr. Kent Keith): I think it's something we need to do anyway.

If the majority of us who have any sensitivities or empathies around race stay silent, who will do the talking? Surely, white supremacists will show no hesitation. And young people who are vulnerable to this message may not hear a counter narrative.

There is a chance we will be seen as dominating the discussion. That is not something to take lightly. But if we don't talk, the burden will fall on our African-American sisters and brothers who run the risk of re-traumatizing themselves trying to explain race *yet again* to an unsympathetic audience.

There is a chance we will be seen as trying to make the conversation about ourselves, trying to pat ourselves on the back for thinking we are "woke" or for trying to appease our white guilt.

There is a chance we will stay something stupid or at the very least insensitive.

All of these are serious considerations. That is why we must enter the conversation as sensitively as possible and to listen, listen, listen, and then listen again, as one my colleagues frequently says. But enter it we must--knowing we will fail, knowing we will say stupid things and knowing there may be doubts as to our integrity, selfishness or value to the conversation.

If we can allow a bit of grace for each other, when we do air out those unconscious biases and say things that genuinely *are* insensitive, we can lovingly correct each other. If those thoughts are never spoken out loud, they may linger for years and continue to infect our perspectives and decisions. If we speak them out loud, there is a chance they can be challenged.

After all, I remember a time when I was less woke that I am today. And I am hopeful for a future when I am more woke than I am right now. As easy as it is to condemn my fellow white Americans for their insensitivities, I have to remember how easy it is to have them.

I seriously doubt how successfully we can scold people into a change of heart. It can make me feel good in the short term but what good is it if, well, no good comes from it?

After all, God loved the world into existence, Christ loved the world to its redemption and the Holy Spirit continually loves us in the process of sanctification. If that weren't enough, Jesus told us the first and foremost commandment is to love one another, up to an including our very enemies. How could we see anything other than love as the vehicle for change?

All things equal, I do believe it is better to talk about race than not talk about it. Please understand, there absolutely *are* risks in talking about race. We have to continuously take personal inventory and be always consciously on the alert for dominating the conversation. We have to lift up African American voices, as they are the ones directly living with the effects of racism and whose voices have been silenced all too often. But we white folks are the ones who can use our privilege and our relationships to have the tough conversations and make the tough decisions in the personal, private and public spaces that we inhabit.

After all, many African Americans report feeling exhaustion over talking about race, and we've been asked to do use our privilege to make the situation better, and that includes talking about race, especially with other white people. Just be sensitive to how you are doing it, such as making a  priority of listening to the experiences of the black community and avoiding the traps of making it too much about ourselves, but do it we must.

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered;

Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;

Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;

Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;

Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;

Build anyway

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;

Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;

Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;

Give the world the best you've got anyway.

You see in the final analysis, it is between you and God;

It was never between you and them anyway.

by Mother Theresa and/or Dr Kent Keith

***

This is part 4 in a series during October on Respect Life.

Part 1: Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue is a Respect Life Issue

Part 2: Yes, Even "Those People"

Part 3:  Dialogue: A Contemplative Practice