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Tag Archives: Christian love
Somebody Can’t Breathe
My tenth column has been published on Spokane Faith & Values, thanks to Tracy Simmons.
Somebody Can’t Breathe
Has anyone noticed how many impressions the Universe has been sending forth, to the effect that somebody, somewhere cannot breathe? I can think of four for starts:
1. The Covid-19 pandemic strikes the planet Earth, bringing on a deadly disease that attacks the lungs, restricting the breathing of many of the earth’s inhabitants.
2. As Dr. Anthony Fauci and other knowledgeable health officials rise up to emphasize the benefits of wearing masks, a movement of “anti-maskers” rises up in return. We often hear them proclaiming that to wear a mask restricts their breathing, as well as other freedoms associated with being an American.
Although I do not identify as an anti-masker (and I do, by the way, identify as an American), I have also felt the restriction of breathing that we all certainly notice – however slight or negligible – when wearing a mask.
3. The world watches as a group of callous cops casually sap the life out of George Floyd throughout nearly nine minutes of brutal torture. During this time, Floyd repeatedly shouts: “I can’t breathe!”
Then, similar stories emerge. Many are the accounts of people of color who have been treated in a similarly heinous fashion. Many of them also uttered the words: “I can’t breathe.”
4. Wildfires have engulfed the Pacific Northwest. A few days ago when I stepped outside my house, I literally saw smoke emerging from the two big breaths that I took without thinking. After 10 minutes of a phone call with a friend, I went back inside the house, because my breathing had been affected by the sheer force of the fire that rages throughout the present day.
What does all this mean? I am no prophet, nor do I claim to know the answer. But one cannot help but have noticed the eerie commonality in all these events.
Are we allowing each other to breathe? Or are we virtually choking each other to death, in the ongoing Internet shouting match that is promulgated through social media? Are we giving grace and peace to those with whom we differ? Or are we, as the Scripture says, “biting and devouring” each other, in light of our unwillingness to love?
“The entire law is fulfilled in a single decree: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if you keep on biting and devouring one another, watch out, or you will be consumed by one another.” Galatians 5:14-15
The time-honored words of St. Paul are no less true today than they were two thousand years ago. But included in that warning is a note of hope. No matter how hard we may have wielded the power of hate in the first century A.D., we did not succeed in destroying ourselves altogether. Nor need we destroy ourselves now, if we but heed the call. The antidote to hateful behavior is the fulfillment of the law — in Love.
The words of Jesus have rarely rung more clear: ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for Me.’ (Matthew 25:45). If we make it difficult for any of us to breathe — literally or figuratively — then how can the Spirit of Christ breathe freely among us? Let us cease to restrict the breathing of the Lord and Giver of Life!
That man hung on a Cross and endured torture for hours on end, in order to spare a fallen humanity the fate that arguably, we all deserve. We need to come to realize, as a people, as a planet, that God is Love. We need to remember what this nation has all but forgotten. We are to love one another, rather than bicker with each other in mean-spirited pettiness — propelled by social media and especially by Facebook. In doing so, it as as though we seek to put Jesus Christ to death for a second time. We need not do so, nor is it humanly possible. He will always live and show Himself in this world, despite our efforts to eradicate Him. He will always be the sovereign source of life. But do we allow Him to live in our hearts?
Jesus gave his last human breath that we might live forever. We need to honor that act of sacrificial love, if His spirit is truly to live and breathe throughout our land.
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The Summer of Love to Come
In the summer of 1967, a movement generated from the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco evolved into the now famous “Summer of Love.”
I suggest that our current social distancing is the exact opposite of what that Summer of “Love” entailed. And this is not entirely a bad thing.
The form of love that was exalted in that movement was the passionate love known as eros in the language of New Testament Greek. In that same language, three other forms of love are described in different words. But all those words translate to the single English word “love” in modern English — even in the Holy Bible.
This linguistic cluster has created great cultural difficulties. The slogan of the Summer of Love, “Make Love Not War” centered around the notion that the passions involved in destructive acts of war could be more positively channeled through passionate acts of sexual love. So everybody basically took all their clothes off, did a lot of drugs, and thus inaugurated the so-called Sexual Revolution.
The problems that arose from this massive disregard of common sense are obvious. And they linger to this day. What began as “love” morphed into mass jealousy. STD’s were promulgated alongside vicious rumors. Finally, the rate of abortions rose so drastically it propelled a right-wing reaction, pitting those who were “pro-choice” against those who were “pro-life,” in disregard for the realities in which such a toxic dichotomy were rooted.
Now we are faced with an almost opposing challenge. In an atmosphere of social distancing, we will be touching each other much less than before — rather than much more. While this has its own pitfalls, I would suggest that it might also bring unanticipated advantages.
Rather than exult in the false sense of community that spawned a Sixties travesty, let us all turn inward, and reflect in solitude upon our singular purposes, as individuals immersed in a culture that has changed radically overnight.
Maybe this is the time for each of us to get in touch with our own hearts — our own callings — our own life-purposes and destinies. We will serve the community of humanity in a far greater way if we all take some time to reflect, and to find out what each of us — as the unique divinely drafted individuals that we are — is really and truly all about.
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Pitfalls of Forgiveness: Part One
As most of you know, I am of a genetic heritage (Sicilian) that is noted for resisting the notion of forgiveness. Some of us seem to have an alarming capacity to take our grudges to our graves. However, because I am a Christian, and I take the Bible seriously, I would like to make sure that I forgive those whom I still begrudge. Yet I frankly find forgiveness of these people to be next to impossible.
But I’ve got to forgive them! Even if I didn’t identify as a Christian, I’d probably still feel a need to forgive them, if for no other reason than that a lingering resentment doesn’t feel good. Resentments against others eat away at one’s mental health. If I weren’t a Christian, I would want to let go of these grudges for my sake. But because I am a Christian, it is not only for my own sake that I must forgive. It is for God’s sake — for the sake of all that is good and just and kind in this world. Look what Jesus said:
Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your transgressions.
–Mark 11:25-26
So if we want to be forgiven, then we need to forgive. That much seems simple and sound. But whether or not you are conversant with Scripture, these words of Jesus are likely to strike a puzzling note. Aren’t we Christians the ones who believe that we simply are forgiven? As in, no matter what we do?
Well, yes and no. There are Christians and there are Christians. A Calvinist might believe this. An Arminian might not. We could get into Romans Six and all that, but this single Scripture definitely appears to contradict numerous biblical references to the security of the believer. Have our names not been written on the Book of Life since “before the foundation of the world?” If I am a Christian, and I believe that God has already forgiven me, then why would I need to forgive anyone else in order to secure His forgiveness?
Although I’ve read numerous studies on the matter, they seem by and large to be rationalizations. One suggested that Jesus speaks in this context not to “believers” but to “people in the world.” But that doesn’t hold water. Jesus is simply speaking to everybody — to whoever has ears to hear — whether they believe Him or not.
So I pondered this apparent contradiction for a long time. Finally, I arrived at a reconciliation within myself, as a result of performing the following dialectic:
Q. What’s bugging you?
A. I think I might be going to hell.
Q. Why?
A. There are three people in my life whom I have not forgiven.
Q. But aren’t you a Christian?
A. That depends upon what you mean by “Christian.”
Q. What do you mean by Christian?
A. A Christian (according to me) is a person who is in the process of being saved.
Q. Saved from what?
A. From the just consequences of our many misdeeds.
Q. Can you document this scripturally?
A. I can try. Romans 10:9 states: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” According to this Scripture, these are the two prerequisites for salvation.
Q. Do you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord?
A. Sometimes.
Q. Do you believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead?
A. Always.
Q. Then why would you not be saved?
A. Because I haven’t forgiven these three people, and God says I have to forgive them if I want to go to heaven.
Q. Do you want to forgive them?
A. Oh yes!
Q. Then why don’t you?
A. I keep trying, but I keep winding up going back to the grudges. It’s not that I don’t want to forgive them, it’s that I don’t feel I have the power to do so.
Q. But as a Christian, doesn’t your power come from God?
A. Well, if it doesn’t, then it ought to.
Q. Then why not ask God to empower you to forgive them?
A. Good idea. I will do so immediately.
Q. Anything else?
A. Yes.
Q. What?
A. As I asked God to empower me to forgive the triumvirate whom I begrudge, a thought came to mind. Something I’d never thought before.
Q. Really? What thought is that?
A. Since God knows all things, maybe God knows that ultimately, at some time in my life, I am going to forgive all three of them. Therefore, though I haven’t forgiven them yet — and would certainly go to hell were I to die on this very day — I am still nonetheless going to go to heaven on some future day, because by the time that future day rolls around, I will have forgiven them. And God knows this! I may not have forgiven them yet, but I will forgive them. I will then be free to depart gracefully from the present planet, and take up my throne in heaven.
Q. Your throne? Isn’t God the one on the throne?
A. 2 Timothy 2:12 & Revelation 20:6, dude. We’re all gonna be reigning in heaven. Remember: you are dealing with a person who actually reads the Bible. I’m not a person who blindly swallows every lie that comes out of the mouth of the preacher on the pulpit. Nor am I of the camp who absolutely refuse to open the Book, for fear of its contents. Nor am I —
Q. Excuse me!! What about 1 Corinthians 8:1?
A. Oops — I forgot. You actually read the Bible, too.
Q. Well, what about it?
A. What about what?
Q. Don’t dodge the question — what about 1 Cor 8:1? Paul clearly states that the pursuit of knowledge leads to arrogance, whereas the pursuit of love leads to encouragement and spiritual growth.
A. All right, I’ll admit it. My problem is that I’m too hung up on learning, reading, absorbing, acquiring information, and gaining knowledge. And despite all of that intellectual focus, the plain fact is that I just don’t have enough love in my heart.
Q. And Who is Love?
A. You know the answer to that. Luke 15:9 & John 4:8 come to mind. God is Love.
Q. Then Whom shall you seek, if you are to learn how to love?
A. Deuteronomy 4:29 & Jeremiah 29:13 hold the answer to that one.
Q. Wasn’t that a bit indirect of you?
A. Was Jesus always direct?
The Questioner is silent.
Obviously, I’ve arrived at a resolution that is quite pleasant, if tenuous. It would seem that my next move along these lines should be to forgive the three people whom I continue to begrudge. So, in Parts 2-4 of this series (if I ever get around to writing them), please expect me to go through great efforts to forgive the triad of traitors who so treacherously trapped, tricked, and traumatized me. I’m not going to mention them by name — of course. But I’m definitely going to delve into it.
Why? Because I must. It’s not just being Sicilian. It’s that I spent way too much time on the streets. There, the concept of achieving peace of mind over a troubling individual was virtually synonymous with the notion of getting even with them. If I wanted there to be peace between me and someone with whom I was quarreling, I didn’t even think about forgiving them. I thought about intimidating them until they were too scared to mess with me. It was only then that I would breathe my long-awaited — though highly temporary — sigh of relief.
Let’s put it this way. I may have Mafioso blood, but I sure didn’t have anything against any of these people before I had to spend twelve years on the streets.
TO BE CONTINUED
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Tuesday Tuneup Six
Q. Do you know who I am?
A. I really wish you would stop asking me that.
Q. Why have you summoned me?
A. Because today’s the Big Day.
Q. You mean, Tuesday?
A. Well – that, too. But it’s not just any Tuesday. Barring the catastrophic, I will finally be with my daughter for the first time in two years, and with my ex-wife for the first time in 16 years. And my ex and I will be sleeping under the same roof for the first time in 28 years.
Q. How did all this come about?
A. I believe you asked me that already, two or three Tuesdays ago.
Q. Can you run it by me again, please?
A. Whew – I barely know where to start. And I disdain to unveil personal information about my family here. Let’s just say that I’m a person who was on the streets for about twelve years in the San Francisco Bay Area. I learned a lot about people during those twelve years, and a lot about life. Of course times were hard, and moments were miserable. But I was given valuable information during that period of time that I have since been compelled to share.
I have noticed, however, that not everyone wants to hear this information. They would rather cling to old stereotypes that make them feel comfortable, because the truth would cause them to look inward, into places within themselves of which they are afraid.
Of course this has been disturbing to me. When I was homeless, I watched as old friends of mine, people with whom I had thought I would be friends forever, began to reject me one by one. They didn’t return emails or phone calls. They got all bent out of shape over relatively little things that gave me the feeling that, if any of these people had landed on the streets, they wouldn’t have lasted more than a week or two.
Before too long, I realized that most of these people were never my friends at all. In fact, there were times when I thought I had never made a friend in my life — until I had become homeless.
While people of privilege were blowing me off left and right with half-truths and transparent forms of Mainstream Doublespeak, homeless people were telling it like it is. Sure, there were scoundrels among us. Of course there were those it is best off to avoid, and yet the streets made it next-to-impossible to do so.
I was hit on the head with guns. I was pistol-whipped. I was raped. I watched all my possessions being burnt to bits before my eyes. Not one person in my former life who professed to believe that Jesus Christ died for my sins lifted a finger to help me. The only Christian who continued to believe in me, who treated me as a Christian, is a woman who knew me from the Internet, in a distant State, who never ceased to treat me as an equal, as a friend. And she is among my best friends to this day. But as far as people from the church I used to attend when I still was making money in this world?
They told me to go to counseling, to see a psychiatrist, to go into some kind of live-in program of some sort, or to merely “check in” to a shelter – as if they had any clue what bureaucracy would be involved, or what atrocities I would be subjected to in that so-called “shelter.” The shelters in my world were little more than glorified jailhouses, and I far preferred to sleep in seclusion, absolutely alone.
Did any of those Pontius Pilates actually help me? If you want to call an occasional lunch date at the price of a lecture “help,” I suppose they did. Believe me, I was grateful enough for the lunch to put up with the lecture, however irrelevant that lecture may have been.
The continual experience of condescension, dismissal, and disrespect that I received from so-called Christians was such a far cry from the acceptance, dignity, and love that I was receiving from my homeless friends, I would become infuriated at the thought that these “Christians” actually thought they were doing the will of God, when they continually treated a man who was suffering like a bag of dirt.
Even to this day, I have difficulty getting my own eyes to see the naked truth. Even in the last week, I appealed to former friends of mine, thinking surely they would express some happiness or joy over this reconciliation — when all they did was continue to raise their eyebrows and write me off as “crazy.”
But when the mother of my only daughter reappeared in my life, and I had learned that she had been through trials very similar to that which I and others endure on the streets, she didn’t write me off as crazy.
And the Lord Himself seeks such to worship Him.
Q. John? Chapter Four?
A. John. Chapter Four. The day will come when those who worship God will worship Him neither in Jerusalem nor on the mountain – but the true worshipers will worship Him in Spirit and in Truth.
The Questioner is silent.
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Anything Helps – God Bless!
Tuesday Tuneup Five
Q. Do you know who I am?
A. I have some pretty good ideas. But I can’t say as I’ve figured it out completely, as of yet.
Q. So why have you summoned me?
A. Because it’s Tuesday.
Q. Um — isn’t it — Thursday?
A. Darn. Must have lost a couple days there. I know – it’s unlike me. I’ve just been very distracted of late.
Q. Distracted? By what?
A. What do you think? I’ve got my daughter coming up with her mother on Saturday, I’ve offered her Mom a place to stay here, my daughter’s going to get her own apartment and apply to the University here, I haven’t even seen my daughter since I left Berkeley almost two years ago, haven’t seen my ex in over fifteen years – that right there is enough to distract a guy.
Q. How did this family reunion, so to speak, come about so quickly?
A. I don’t remember. I think it started when I began to want to help people to get out of the San Francisco Bay Area, especially if they were struggling or on the verge of homelessness, and basically nobody took me up on my offers until I made the right offer to the right person.
Q. Your ex?
A. Exactly.
Q. When was the last time you lived her with her?
A. If I counted right, I believe it was 29 years ago.
Q. Isn’t this a little bit unheard of?
A. It is indeed. That’s what I like about it. ;)
The Questioner is silent.
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Anything Helps – God Bless!
A Sacrifice of the Heart
If you are a person who knows what it’s like to be poor, have you ever noticed how quick people of privilege are to attribute aspects of poverty to something that has absolutely nothing to do with your financial situation? Such as, for example, your mental health?
I live in a city of approximately 26,000 people, 30% of whom are at poverty level. Most of the poor people in this city are reasonably happy and healthy. This is one reason why I enjoy the unique city in which I live. But it appalls me how readily some of my wealthier friends will assume that my current poverty must have been caused by a mental health problem, a drug or alcohol problem, or (quite simply) a moral failing.
Although I will be the first to admit that I have mental health issues requiring treatment, I find it disturbing how often these issues will be cited as the reasons for my impoverished condition. Many of the wealthier people who say such things would become much crazier than I am, if they, too, were to suddenly lost their shirts as quickly as I did in the year 2004.
The people who most often allude to this fallacy will usually make no attempt to actually understand my condition. They are clearly looking for a scapegoat — something beyond the scope of their experience that they can use to shift the blame away from the realities of poverty that they do not wish to look at.
“Hey Bob, I really hate to bother you for another loan. I know you’re busy, but my car just broke down terribly. I need it to get to work, and I just can’t afford the bill. Is there any way at all you can help me?”
“Well, Bill, I know you always pay me back, but I’m getting to be a little bit bothered by the fact that you’re not many progress. Don’t you think it’s high time you dealt with your mental health, so that you won’t be so chronically down on your luck?”
Once again, this is classism – pure and simple. It can be incredibly frustrating when one is doing their best to maintain a healthy relationship to society, and the frequent setbacks endemic to poverty are dismissed as signs of poor mental health. Of course one’s mental health suffers when encountering such setbacks. But poor mental health does not cause those setbacks. This is only an assumption on the part of those whose lives are such that they never have to experience such setbacks, and thus don’t know what those setbacks are like.
In short, they don’t know what it’s like to be poor.
Now here’s another thing I’ve noticed. It is often assumed that someone who experiences a life crisis that hurls them into abject poverty — or even homelessness — has gotten there as the result of a moral failing.
“Obviously, Bill screwed up. Nobody gets from where he was to the streets that fast without having done something wrong. That being the case, I have no sympathy for Bob whatsoever.”
“Amen, Brother Bob.”
But the reality is that many people of privilege are extremely slow to let go of what they’ve got. In many cases, their natural stinginess is the reason why they’ve managed to accrue so much in the first place. But many poor people, knowing what it’s like to be poor, will give another poor person the shirt off their back. I myself have been known to give my last twenty dollars to another poor person if I felt they needed it more than I do. When I do so, I am confident they would do the same for me, if the tables were turned.
A lot of people become poor as the result of something good that they have done — something that a rich person, under the same circumstances, might not do. For example, if one’s mother or father is in poor health, perhaps dying, a person who is lower middle class might have their parent come live with them, despite having to take on added medical expenses. A rich person, under the same circumstances, will often send their parent to a retirement home.
Granted, the richer person can afford to send Mom or Dad to the retirement home, and the poor person cannot. But if you were aging, ailing, and dying, where would you rather be? In a retirement home among total strangers? Or with your kids whom you love, knowing that they love you too? Where would you rather die? With your children by your side? Or not?
It is not a moral failing to take care of an ailing parent. It is actually an act of self-sacrificial love. Love, in its purest form, involves sacrifice. When one sends one’s dying mother to an “old folk’s home,” what sacrifice is involved? Only money. But when one invites their dying parent to come live with them, that is a Sacrifice of the Heart.
I find it ironic that people of poverty often are more giving and more loving than people of wealth, and yet in our society it is often assumed that poverty is an effect of moral failing. While moral laxity can certainly lead to poverty, it is definitely not the case that poverty necessarily results from it.
When Jesus appeared on the earth, who did he generally hang around? Rich people or poor people? Anyone with a cursory background in Scripture will know that he hung around the dregs of society, the outcasts, the lepers, the pariahs, those who were so dirt poor they were ostracized and vilified by the Pharisees and Saducees of their day.
If the first arrival of Jesus Christ were to have occurred today rather than two thousand years ago, you know who He would hang around?
The homeless people. For my homeless brothers and sisters are the lepers of today’s society. Let them in! Let all of us in — before it is too late.
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Anything Helps – God Bless!
Resignation and Debut
On Monday I resigned my position as pianist and organist of a local Presbyterian church. They haven’t found someone to replace me permanently yet, but they have two people who can cover the stretch of time between now and the end of summer. I also told them I desired to remain a member of the church, but not an employee. They then agreed that this is their desire, as well.
The main reason for my resignation was that the stress of the job reached the point of interfering completely with my day-to-day spirituality. Being a church job, this is rather ironic. But that’s why I decided to continue on with the church. I found the church itself to be a great contributor to my spirituality – just not the job itself.
Here is the text of my letter of resignation, submitted by email to the entire congregation:
My physical health is good, and I am generally in good spirits, but there are some issues with my mental health that are hard to grasp and have me occasionally feeling very disoriented. These are aggravated by stress. I cannot explain why this is, but somehow the simple piano-organ position that I had expected to be very easy for me and full of joy has become associated with an unbearable level of anxiety that, when it reaches a peak, causes me to make irrational decisions that have enduring consequences. If you can fashion a prayer around these words, please deliver your words to the One who has power to heal.
Also, while I regret that I was too ill to fulfill the Holy Week services, Norman has advised me that they went very well with the substitute. I will not be in church this Sunday, but I hope that thereafter you will all accept me as a member in good standing of First Presbyterian Church but not a part of the music ministry. While I occasionally enjoy playing the piano and recognize it as a gift from God, I have decided that things like reading music, following conductors, turning pages, piano-conducting, etc. are basically in the category of health risks at this time. I will eventually find some kind of piano lounge where I can play at random while daydreaming, make a little more money, and live a bit more comfortably here. So I hope you all will take this in the spirit in which it is intended. First Presbyterian Church of Moscow is the greatest church that I have ever happened upon in all of my lifelong church-hopping, and I will hop no further, so help me, God.
Thank you all for showing me true Christian love. I need that more than I need a job, at this time.
Grace and Peace,
Andy
As a start to a new day-to-day foundation for spirituality, I picked up a hard copy of a book today called The Celebration of Discipline, by a theologian named Richard J. Foster. I think that to become a little more routinized and regularized (but not “regulated,” mind you) might help with my musical work as well. I agreed with Pastor Norman that I would still play the Wednesday evening Taize services on a volunteer basis. Otherwise, I am mainly focused on putting my show together for my debut as a singer-songwriter in this area:
Andy Pope and Friends, Saturday May 6, 7pm, One World Cafe, 533 S. Main Street Moscow Idaho. Be There.
Even the demo is on the back burner for now (although I have rounded up most of the singers). Today I found all the band members for the show two weeks from tomorrow, so I’m diving wholeheartedly into creating a set list and writing out parts. I’ve got an Ibenez custom hollow body, a Yamaha electronic keyboard, and a good percussionist on the Cajon who also plays fiddle and mandolin. My bassist is from Lionel Hampton, and I’ll be using the house sound system for my singing. If you’re for any reason in the neighborhood, feel free to cruise by. I mean – don’t bust your back or break any laws, but you know where I’ll be.
Eden in Babylon 