In the Wake of Terror - Love?

    The terrorists who just struck in Brussels may or may not have known that their attacks were carried out during a most important week of the year.  It was the week when churches all over the planet celebrated the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

     Ironically, while Islamic terrorists proclaim the greatness of their god, Allah, true religious faith does not demand the killing of one's enemies.  True religious faith opens the door to the possibility of being a victim, not a killer. 

     That is one of the key insights to be gained by reflecting on the death of Christ who died, not flinging his enemies to destruction, but accepting the death they procured for him.

     The world he entered was much like ours.  It might not seem like it because today we have smart phones and great health care while the people of Jesus' time had no electronics and a life expectancy of about forty years.  But it was much like ours in a more fundamental respect:  it was home to powers that energized and shaped the people of the time, powers that were ready to deal death to the deserving.

     Jesus would have seen the centres of those powers.  He saw the military garrison in Jerusalem that was the basis for the glorified Roman terrorism that passed for government in his time.  He saw the influence of wealth and knew where the one percent lived.  He had gone to their dinners (and typically offended the host or other guests).

     The media of his time consisted of the imperial Roman banners, the Roman edicts posted here and there, and the allocation of sites where the Romans regularly crucified rebels and miscreants.

     He also on many occasions stood face to face with the Jewish religious authorities (he himself as well as most of the earliest Christians were Jews).  They were hostile towards him, believing that he was offering a vision of Judaism which amounted to a betrayal of the faith. 

     His thousands of Jewish followers disagreed, so much so that just prior to his death his enemies were looking for the first opportunity to draw his blood but had to bide their time.  They had to calculate with care because, as the writer Luke puts it, the people hung on Jesus' words (Luke, end of chapter 19). 

     Just prior to his death Jesus came back to Jerusalem knowing that he was entering the dragons' den.  The powers of the city would see to his death by torture.  By week's end, Jesus was hunted, arrested, interrogated, tried, convicted of blasphemy and sedition, sentenced and executed.

     This would have all been forgotten except for one thing.  Within days of his death, he began making appearances.  During the next month and half or so hundreds saw him.  We ourselves would be understanding Jesus as just one of many failed devout Jewish leaders living in brutal times except for the fact of his resurrection from death.

      So, back to the terrorist bombings.  The temptation is to respond with retaliation, hatred, and fear.  But according to Guardian columnist Bleri Lleshi we must not fight terror with more terror.  He mentions journalist Nicolas Henin.  Henin was once captured by ISIS.  But he also does not advocate retaliation.  He advocates unity.

     These two are not far from the truth.  Christ is the most well-known teacher of the rule to love even our enemies (Matthew 5).  He famously stated that it is no credit to love our friends.  Everyone does that.  But loving the enemy – that is the real challenge.  Yes, it is one that tragically has not always been met by his followers.  Nevertheless the command is there, condemning those who violate it, and inspiring those who seek a new way forward. 

     Jesus taught in the same breath that we should pray for our enemies. Perhaps he suggested this because – at least this is how I like to think of it – when someone attacks me it is hard for me act charitably toward her or him.  But I can usually, if grudgingly, pray for the person. 

     A small start perhaps.  But it may change my heart, my words, and my actions.  And as Jesus said elsewhere, from a tiny seed a great tree can grow.

     Muslims, including those who strap on bombs I think, accept Jesus as something less than I do, but still, as a prophet.  Perhaps it would not hurt for those tempted to commit acts of violence in the name of Allah to give thought to the accounts of Jesus' life and teachings which predate Mohamed by 600 years.
     He was more than a prophet.  And what he introduced he presented for all.  It is not merely a religion.  It is a way of life and the only true path to hope for a breaking world.  

Owners or Tenants of Our Fragile Home?

     It is not a problem to visit spectacular nature destinations.  Take for example the Himalayas.  A web search or two with a credit card handy, a few ticket purchases, several flights, some ground transportation, and viola! you are following the lead of your Tibetan hiking guide.

     It's even easier of course to get to the Rockies, the far North, or to some of the stunning destinations on Canada's East Coast.  And when we get home, we can enjoy the sense of renewed appreciation we have for this astounding blue planet on which we live.  We might even congratulate ourselves on having a stronger understanding of the need for environmental stewardship.

     Nowadays, however, it is harder to be in contact with nature without feeling guilt.  That very trip we take to see, let's say the shores of Georgian Bay in Ontario, is one of the reasons our planet is in trouble. 

     We love travel but lacking the technology that powers the USS Enterprise's transporter, we are stuck with the primitive carbon emitting internal combustion engine.  We all probably do care to keep the Great Lakes healthy, and we all probably would like it if the 46,000 glaciers in the Himalayas were to remain in place through this century.  However, it is our very energy-intensive travel habits that, among other things, are spelling doom for these and of course, many other, natural wonders. 

     Let's consider those thousands of glaciers of Tibet for a moment.  They are the source of Asia's six largest rivers that bring water to 1.3 billion people.  No glaciers, no rivers. 

     And here is the crux of the problem for those one billion and more people.  According to the Tibet Nature Environmental Conversation Network the glaciers are receding at a rate of 7% per year as a result of Climate Change.

     It's no wonder that few of us like to think about Global Warming because the reality is frightening.  Along with this the thought of doing very much to stop the earth's atmosphere from heating up is also daunting.  We hope that by some miracle – by some combination of the rapid cessation of the use fossil fuels and the rapid increase in the development of clean energy – we will wake up a few decades from now to discover that fresh water still flows in Tibet and the Great Lakes are still home to fish and plant life. 

     We human beings are called, I believe, to environmental stewardship.  We are asked to consider that the world is created by a caring God, and that human beings are called into relationship with our environment.  The environment does not exist mainly for the profit of multi-national corporations.  It is not ours to do with as we want.  Our role is to care for, and, if necessary, to restore our environments.  We are tenants, not owners.

     The opening pages of the Bible reveal a God who gives order to the creation, allowing it to be our home.  Those pages offer a narrative that, even though it may be partly or completely symbolic, nevertheless delivers a literal and hopeful truth - that we live in a creation that offers us what we need and more. 

     Our own record of caring for our home may be poor.  Aboriginal groups tend to slash and burn.  Modern industry pillages and toxifies. 

     But still we are called upon to renew our care for the world.  Development must be done cautiously and with prayer.  We ought to manage our environments not with the goal of providing ourselves with endless enjoyments.  Instead our aim must be to leave behind a planet that our children will find a welcome home. 

For more on faith and environmental stewardship one good resource is  A Rocha  Canada at https://www.arocha.ca/.

Satan the Miracle Worker

     If you are part of a church you probably know that Easter is not far away, just few weeks.  On Easter Sunday Christians around the planet will be remembering Christ's return from death.  

     This is the greatest of the miracles claimed by the church:  the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Some don't believe it happened, that it is something that certain people (about two billion and counting) believe in, but nevertheless a certain something that is ultimately false.  

     Others see it as something that is blindly accepted.  Now, there are those who accept the stories of Christ's resurrection blindly, but the Christian traditions generally do not.  There is plenty of evidence - so much that it takes more (blind) faith to believe that he did not rise from death than that he did.  More perhaps on that some other time. 

     Neither is Jesus' rising from the dead some sort of one-off event meant to impress people into believing in him.  It is impressive, but it is not an isolated event that God produced to begin a new religion.  Rather, it is four things (at least four).  

     First, it is God's vindication of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah.  Second, it is God's vindication of Jesus's interpretation of the Jewish faith.  Third, it is a fulfillment of the pre-Jesus Jewish faith in the resurrection of the community of the faithful .  God would bring this about in due course to reveal himself to all the world as the living God of justice, grace, forgiveness and healing.  

     Fourth, it is a breaking into the world of a new thing that is yet to come, but has already begun with the resurrection of Jesus, namely the total healing of the creation, the resurrection of all persons, and the end of the reign of death over human beings (and maybe all sentient beings, but that too is another story).  

     The resurrection of Christ is the greatest of the miracles presented in the Bible.  But it is not the only one.  There are miracle stories throughout the pre-Jesus and post-Jesus parts of the Bible.  And, as might be expected, the stories of Jesus are awash in miracles.  

     These miracles are not magic tricks in the sense of making the performer look impressive.  Instead, like the greatest of the miracles, they are manifestations of the renewal that God is bringing to the human world and to the whole creation.  Hints, prequels so to speak, of what is in store for the world. 

     But here's my thing for today.  The definition of miracles that most of us work with is that a miracle is a violation of the natural order of things.  It is God interrupting the usual way the world works, his disrupting the laws of nature.   (This definition was presented by the British philosopher, David Hume, and several others.  He and people like him tend to be skeptical about a lot of things and their grumpiness towards God and faith continues to find fans today.) 

     But I don't think this is the best way to look at miracles.  Jesus did not interrupt nature when he healed those who could not walk, those with illnesses, and others who were blind or mute.  He restored nature.  

     In this way of looking at it, Jesus' rising from the dead wasn't a violation of the laws of nature which dictate death for the human body.  It was, among other things, a restoration of the natural order as it relates to the human body.  

     This means that the miracles Jesus performed are not a glimpse into the fundamentally unusual and abnormal.  Instead they reveal that what we usually take as the normal is itself fundamentally unusual and alien.  

     It is physical disease and mental illness that are a disruption of the created  world.  It is sexual abuse and addiction that are a disruption of God's natural world.  It is war and the cycles of violence everywhere that are a disruption of the proper life-affirming order of the world God has made. 

     The real miracle workers are not the Mother Theresas and the wonder-working saints of the Catholic Church.  The real miracle workers are the Adolph Hitlers, the crystal meth makers in Toronto and London, sexual predators and adventurers who could care less about the pregnancies they leave their partners to handle, terrorists (however religious they may be), and commanders of child soldiers.  Satan, not Jesus, is the real miracle worker in that he inspires and abets the continuing violation of the natural order which God has for his creation.  

     However, it is God's unstoppable intention to restore his world to what it should be.  And the resurrection of his son, Jesus Christ, is the sign-post without equal that his intentions are not in question.  One day they will overrun the creation, evicting all dark miracle workers, leaving the rest to breathe a great sigh of relief and get on with living life as God has always intended.