Go Into the World in Peace

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I stammer and stumble, searching for words. Some days, I am like the stranger I recently saw standing on wobbly legs, hollering and pointing at someone across the street who isn’t there. I wobble and shake my finger at those on the other side of the street. On other days, or later the very same day, I see other strangers rush into the street where the man on the corner has fallen or laid down in the middle of the street. It’s morning rush-hour. Two men stop traffic to protect the man; the other four rescuers struggle to get the man to his feet, one on each arm, and pull him to the curb, the way soldiers often do in times of combat.

The rescuers didn’t see themselves as rescuers. They just did the right thing, the compassionate thing, the kindly thing. None of us, so far as I recall, introduced ourselves before or after pulling the man from the street. A month later, it dawns on me that the courage and goodness of that day had acted out the spirit of the words that dismiss worshipers to live in the Way of Jesus:

Go out into the world in peace;
have courage;
hold on to what is good;
return no one evil for evil;
support the weak;
help the suffering;
honor all people;
love and serve the Lord;
rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Book of Common worship, Presbyterian church (USA)

As a pastor, I’d like to think worshipers take these words as a description of the Way of Jesus, and as a call to put our feet where our mouths have been.

Talk of revenge – “I am your revenge” – hurts my soul. The applause hurts more, like watching the sword pierce Christ’s side again. “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.” In Jesus’s name, we say Yes to the seduction of power to which Jesus says No. “Then the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them,” and tells him it can all be his, if he will bow down and worship him. Jesus tells Satan to take a hike: “Begone, Satan!”

Stamping out evil with evil is not the Way of Jesus, and is out of sync with the Sermon on the Mount. “You have heard that it was said . . . but I say to you . . .”. “You have heard that it was said ‘An eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, ‘Do not resist one who is evil.’” “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of my Father in heaven, for he makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.’” Pushing aside one’s enemies, calling them communists, socialists, traitors, pedophiles, kidnappers, or Democrats, is out of accord with the Way of Jesus. Kindness, not meanness, is the Way of Jesus.

Good and evil are rarely easy to define or separate. We live in an ambiguous world where the temptation of hubris overwhelms us. Some days I find myself lying in the middle of the street only to be pulled to the curb by strangers and friends who, whether they know it or not, manifest the Way of Jesus.

Gordon C. Stewart, Presbyterian Minister, public theologian, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017, Wipf and Stock), Brooklyn Park, MN. November 11, 2023

Jim Jordan for Speaker?

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It’s been six months since publishing “Liar, Liar, Pants of Fire!”. Today the same Jim Jordan who couldn’t keep his story straight is a candidate to succeed ousted Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House. If elected he will become third in the line of succession to become the President of the United States.

Body language: pants on fire

Mr. Jordan’s conflicting answers to the repeated question whether and when he talked with the president on Jan. 6, 2021 are featured in this video. Watch the body language that accompanies his rapid-fire responses to the question of whether and when he had spoken to the President on January 6.

CNN post showing Rep. Jim Jordan’s differing answers about the January 6, 2021 insurrection

The Jim Jordan we see in this video stammered, and his stammering was accompanied by something I found more telling — his body language. He was hitching his pants up.

Promoting a radical political agenda

New York City “has lost its way when it comes to fighting crime and upholding the law. Here in Manhattan, the scales of Justice are weighted down by politics. For the district attorney justice isn’t blind — it’s about advancing opportunities to promote a political agenda — a radical political agenda.”

Rep. Jim Jordan, Chair of US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee

Getting it right while getting it wrong

The radical political agenda was not Br. Bragg’s. It was his own. Jim Jordan is campaigning to succeed the only Speaker in American history to be ousted from office. If elected, Speaker Jordan will be the first yet-to-be-indicted Jan. 6 co-conspirator who couldn’t remember whether he spoke with the President the morning of January 6. Until he suddenly remembered.

Gordon C. Stewart, Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf and Stock), 49 brief (2-4 pages) commentaries on faith and life; Brooklyn Park, MN, April 28, 2023.

Open Letter to Friend and Foe

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I remember

As far back as I can remember, I’ve said that if, God forbid, what happened in Germany would ever happen in America, I would stand up and speak out. It’s always been part of who I am. I made that commitment early on as a fledgling Christian who saw the flag and cross as the warp and woof of the same cloth. To be a disciple of Jesus was to be an American patriot, to take up my cross on behalf of democracy and freedom. As I saw it then, there was little, if any, distinction between standing for the Hallelujah Chorus on Easter and standing for the national anthem on the Fourth of July. Every school day began standing with hands over our hearts to face the flag and say the Pledge of Allegiance. When we finished the pledge, we took our seats for the Bible reading and a prayer. Once a week we ducked under our desks in fear the Russians would hit Marple Elementary School with a nuclear strike.

American Civil Religion

That was a long time ago, but not so long ago to have forgotten. Flawed though it was, there an unspoken code which Robert Bellah later called the “American civil religion,” a societal consensus that knit us together in one commonwealth, an aspirational commitment to goodness, however strong the forces that threatened to shred it.

Humility was a virtue; arrogance was not. Pride goeth before the fall — don’t get too big for your britches — the foolish man built his house upon the sand, and the rains came down and the floods came up…. When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down in the place of honor . . . For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. Honesty was a virtue; lying was not. Revenge was not a virtue. Blessed are the merciful . . . . You have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, but I say to you . . . . Glamour, greed, and wealth were not virtues. Blessed are the meek . . . . Your rich men are full of violence; your inhabitants speak lies, and their tongue is deceitful. Blessed are the poor. The rich man went away sorrowfully. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the poor…. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust consume, and thieves break in and steal… For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also; you cannot serve both God and wealth.

The Golden Mean between Extremes

Robert Fulgrum’s Everything I Learned in Kindergarten gives insight into a social ethic akin to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, by which, in the pursuit of happiness (eudaimonia), one navigates the “golden mean” between the opposites. The virtue of courage, for example, is the middle way between cowardice and recklessness. Generosity is the golden mean between the extremes of stinginess and profligacy. Confidence avoids the opposing extremes of arrogance and self-loathing.

Robert Fulgrum’s Everything I Learned in Kindergarten offers practical insight into a social ethic like Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, by which, in the pursuit of happiness (eudaimonia), one navigates the “golden mean” between the opposites. The virtue of courage, for example, is the middle way between cowardice and recklessness. Generosity is the golden mean between the extremes of stinginess and profligacy. Confidence avoids the opposing extremes of self-loathing and arrogance.

A Social Consensus

This moral consensus is rooted in classical Greek and Roman philosophy and culture every bit as much as it is in the Judeo-Christian tradition and scripture. A Thesaurus lists the following adjectives to describe the most egregious extremes of unacceptable behavior and character to be avoided:

  • big-headed
  • boastful
  • braggin
  • cocky
  • conceited
  • condescending
  • egomaniacal
  • haughty
  • high and mighty
  • hoity-toity
  • nose in the air
  • ostentatious
  • patronizing
  • pretentious
  • self-admiring
  • self-centered
  • snippy
  • snooty
  • snotty
  • stuck-up
  • superior
  • uppity
  • vain.

The social code at Marple Elementary

At Marple Elementary we feared bullies, but we did not respect them. Though we were often rude, crude, cruel, and mean, we knew better. We were taught that all of us are responsible to each other. We were accountable for our behavior. We were taught to be good sports. We didn’t like sore losers. Getting revenge was not a virtue.

“I am your revenge”

What is happening to us? “I am your revenge.” When did vengeance become a virtue, while truth-telling, honesty, and personal accountability went out of style? How did it become acceptable to insult another person with belittling nicknames? How did attacks on courts, judges, prosecutors, and grand juries (ordinary people exercising their civic duty without favor or prejudice) become accepted practice in American daily life? How did it happen that the party of Abraham Lincoln has become the party of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Goetz, and a Freedom Caucus cowering in fear of the bully? How did criminal indictment become a Medal of Honor?

Legitimacy and a Mist that Vanishes

“I’m a legitimate person. I’ve done nothing wrong. It’s all a hoax.” Legitimacy is the question now. Can it honestly be said that a former president and the Grand Old Party are still legitimate players in a constitutional republic? I’m old now, but not too old to forget the promise I made as a child.

“What is your life?” asked the writer of the Epistle of James. “You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes…. As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin.” (from the Letter of James 3:13-17 NRSV.)

Marple Elementary School vanished. The wrecking ball of time demolished it, but some of its old students are still here to fulfill the promise we made to our young selves. If ever there was a time to stand up and speak out, that moment is now.

Gordon C. Stewart, Presbyterian Minister (HR), author of Be Still! Departure from  Collective Madness (49 two-four page meditations of faith and public events), host of Views from the Edge: To See More Clearly (gordoncstewart.com); Brooklyn Park, MN, September 13, 2023.

Spoken Words and Scheming Silence

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“Nothing strengthens authority as much as silence.” Leonardo da Vinci

Breaking the Silence

“I think he absolutely needs to tell all Americans to stand down and allow the judicial system to take its course,” said Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), member of the House Freedom Caucus that continues to keep silent about the Big Lie. “We trust judges, we trust juries, we trust appellate courts. This isn’t over until it’s over…. I think that sending a very clear message, and also having a surrogate send a very clear message, that violence will not be tolerated, is appropriate.”

Rep. KEN BUCK (R -CO), SPEAKING WITH ANDREA MITCHELL

The Poetry of Politics

Poets often shine a different light into the darkness. Adrienne Rich is one of them. In her poem “Rape” she takes us inside the minds of a victim and a rapist.

You hardly know him but now he thinks he knows you: …
he knows, or thinks he knows, what you secretly wanted.

ADRIENNE RICH, “RAPE,” DIVING INTO THE WRECK: POEMS 1971–1972

The Politics of Rape

In America today a rapist who knows, or thinks he knows, what Americans secretly want, has been indicted on criminal charges four times. No one wants to be raped. Ever! Yet, there is something about American culture that leaves us vulnerable to charmers and thieves who pose as Robin Hood.

The indictments of Donald Trump allege that rape has been committed repeatedly. Members of Congress who fail to “stand down” prove themselves unfaithful to their oaths of office. In spoken words and scheming silence they become accomplices who know, or think they know, what the country secretly want. Some might call it the politics of silence. The politics of silence is the politics of sedition. The politics of sedition is the politics of rape. 

Gordon C. Stewart, Public Theologian, social commentator, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf and Stock), Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, August 30, 2023.

Ego and Dominance

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Like weaker gorillas dominated by the latest chest-thumper, we keep doing it. Chest-pounding is part of gorilla culture. It’s just the way gorillas are. It’s a way they communicate to maintain order in a family. It’s in their DNA.

Looking at us in 2023, I wonder whether human beings are much different.

Chest-thiumping

According to the online Free Dictionary, we humans thump our chests for the following reasons and purposes:

To make an ostentatious display of one’s dominance, superiority, and pride. Typically said of men.

The manager likes to thump his chest and make a big show of his authority during our production meetings, but you’d be hard-pressed to see him doing any actual work around the office.

The politician always makes a point of thumping his chest during press briefings, never missing a chance to brag about his successes in office.

The Free dictionary

What’s “this”?

Hearing a U.S. Senator declare “We can’t allow this to stand!” following Special Counsel Jack Smith’s announcement of the DOJ indictment of the former U.S. president, one might think that the thing which “we can’t allow to stand” referred to the alleged criminal behavior for which Mr.Trump’s has been charged.

But that’s not the “this” (the thing we cannot allow to stand). It was, as Mr. Hawley saw it, the continuing investigations and indictments, the prosecutions that are persecuting the leader of his party.

Questions

The questions are farther reaching than how and why a U.S. Senator and Officer of the Court, sworn by oath to uphold the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution, would disparage the judicial system which is exercising its duty to the Constitution. The more vexing question is how and why so many American citizens concur with Mr. Hawley.

No Time to Waste

Psychologists, sociologists, and historians will offer a variety of insights for decades yet to come, but some of us can’t wait that long. I turn to historians, analytical philosophers, and theologians who have sought to understand the dynamics of illusion, anxiety, fear, and collective madness. Among them are Gabriel Marcel and Willem Zuurdeeg. Each sought for understanding during a chest-pounding momenet.

Gabriel (-Honoré) Marcel and Willam Zuurdeeg

Gabriel (-Honoré) Marcel (1889–1973), the French existentialist philosopher, playwright, and author of Homo Viator, Being and Having, and The Mystery of Being, proposes a dist between the self as ego and the self as person. The self as ego is a poseur, an actor, performing on stage, playing to the audience among whom the poseur himself is the central figure.

Gabriel (-Honoré) Marcel (1889–1973)
Willem Frederik Zuurdeeg (1906-1963)

“I attract the attention of others so that they may praise me, maybe, or blame me, but at all events that they may notice me. In every case, I produce myself.”

Gabriel Marcel

Whereas, for the ego, other people exist as a mirror of one’s greatness, a person sees others of value in and of themselves. The ego sees others as objects to be manipulated; the person sees others as she has come to understand herself as responsible and accountable in a community.

Beyond the reach

Philosopher of Religion Willem Zuurdeeg reminds us of Marcel’s warning against identifying ego with evil and personhood with goodness. So long as the ego remains shut up in itself as the prisoner of its own feelings, desires, fears and anxiety, it is beyond the reach of evil as wall as good. It is not yet awake to reality. “There is no doubt that direct judgment cannot be applied to such beings,” says Zuurdeeg.

Like Sleepwalkers

Marcel goes on to say what none of us wants to hear. “Each of us, in a considerable part of his [one’s] life, is still unawakened, that is to say that he (sic) moves on the margin of reality like a sleepwalker.”

Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian and social commentator, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf and Stock), Brooklyn Park, MN, August 16, 2023.

Beside the Wetland Pond

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Getting up at the break of day is not unusual. I get dressed and take the steps down from the loft to make the coffee. But this daybreak was different. Through the window of the A-frame cabin loft, I catch sight of the tops of two long white necks. I rush to the window to see a Trumpeter Swan pen and cob…and six cygnets parading across the yard. The next day they were nowhere to be found.

Below the Window

morning with the swans, GCS, May 24, 2023

slender snow-white necks
pass below the window of
the a-frame next to the 
wetland pond where the
trumpeter swans build their
borning home each year
while the red-wing blackbirds 
feast on cotton-candy puffs
the cat’n-nine-tails serve
for breakfast each spring
and the loons dive and
rise to feed their young by 
the land we think we own.

no “no trespassing” signs
mark the land where the two-
leggeds come when the 
Illusion of meta-verses 
where wetlands never shrink 
or die leave us yearning for 
this wondrous place where a 
trumpeter swan pen and cob
proudly march their young 
across the dmz between reality
and madness craning their 
necks to guard their cygnets 
from the two-leggeds looking
through the lofty windows.

Puff

the day after, GCS, March 25, 2023

there was no parade today
below the windows — no cob
or pen, no line of six cygnet
trumpeter swans — on our
side of the dmz, not a feather
left behind. An early morning
mournful loon cry warbles
across the pond a psalmic 
lament for the soul-mates who
return each year to build a nest 
to hatch and train the next 
newborn from primordial depths.

far from the wrecks of time where
drones with artificial intelligence
bulls-eyes drive the world insane —
perhaps somewhere in moscow 
or miami a strong-man thirsts for 
a place like this where cygnets,
cobs and pens play by the wetland 
no one owns where instead of 
drones with eyes that cannot not see -- 
no bully or bomb breaks the hush
when the red-wing blackbirds 
swoop and sing an ode to joy.

Gordon C. Stewart, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017, Wipf and Stock), 49 brief meditations on faith, life, and the news; July 24, 2023.

A Proverb, Truth Social, and the Science Guy

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Truth Social and it’s tutor

“Truth Social,” Donald Trump’s social media platform, and Donald Trump’s use of it have two things in common. As a platform, Truth Social is neither truthful nor social. It’s a propaganda machine — untruthful and anti-social. Donald Trump’s self-serving posts are the same, untruthful and antisocial. They reflect the defense strategy Roy Cohn taught him years ago. “Never defend! Always attack! Attack, attack, attack!” Roy Cohn fried whatever and whomever stood in his way.

Two featured news headlines — “Trump reverts to scorched-earth political strategy as he runs for ’24” (NYT), and “In U.S., Phoenix tops them all; climate change threatens health” (Associated Press)— strike me this morning as two sides of the same coin. The US Constitution and Earth are being scorched by an indicted former president and his party. Denial may have worked before now, but it’s harder to ignore when Phoenix and Death Valley hit record-breaking temperatures while the forests are ablaze in the Pacific Northwest and in Canada; the Northeast U.S. is awash with flooding and the scenes are most everywhere around the globe.

It’s time to listen to Bill Nye, the Science Guy

Bill Nye the Science Guy photo

“Do you believe climate change is real? Is human impact making the earth less inhabitable?” should be the FIRST questions a voter asks a candidate. “Yes or No?” If the answer is No, or the candidate does a tap dance, it’s time to turn our backs, and find a candidate who answers “Yes.”

Seven detestable things

This direct question to candidates goes hand in hand with the seven detestable things named in the Book of Proverbs:

• haughty eyes;
• a lying tongue;
• hands that shed innocent blood;
• a heart that devises wicked schemes;
• feet that are quick to rush into evil;
• a false witness who pours out lies; and
• a person who stirs up conflict in the community.

The Faith and Freedom Coalition

At the Gala dinner at the Washington Hilton that ended this year’s Faith and Freedom Coalition Annual Conference (23–24 June 2023), the featured speaker brought his haughty eyes, lying tongue, heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that quickly rush into evil, and mouth that pours out lies to arouse the adrenaline of a crowd that claims to know their Bibles.

“Every time the radical left Democrats, Marxists, communists and fascists indict me,” he declares, “I consider it a great badge of courage. I am being indicted for you….” The faithful lift their Bibles and flags in rapturous worship and praise.

Deception, denial, scorched-earth, and scorched Earth

When a candidate blames his criminal indictments and climate change as hoaxes cooked up by “Democrats, Marxists, communists, and fascists,“ Roy Cohn would be proud. But a scorched-earth defense by offense is not only morally offensive; it is a pattern of deception that is scorching the Earth itself.

Gordon C. Stewart, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf & Stock),49 brief meditations on faith and life, Brooklyn Park, MN, July 19, 2023.

The Legitimate Person and the Cookie Jar

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It’s stranger than strange, yet, perhaps, not strange at all, for a human being to describe himself as legitimate. “I don’t do things wrong. I do things right. I’m a legitimate person,” said former president DJT on June 27 in self-defense when his integrity had been called into question following release of a self-incriminating audio tape.

What is a legitimate person? What makes a person illegitimate? What might it mean to call oneself a legitimate person? The synonyms for “legitimate” are interesting, but they are less helpful than some of the antonyms: counterfeit, deceptive, dishonest, false, illegal, invalid, unfitting, unreal, unreliable, unsuitable, untrustworthy, unlawful.

Who will rescue me from myself?

There are neither legitimate nor illegitimate persons, according to my faith tradition. Even the best of us lives in the throes of tragic estrangement. No one is exempt. The Apostle Paul — Saul of Tarsus who’d been knocked off his horse and blinded on his way to Damascus to commit domestic terrorism — expressed in his Epistle to the Romans the horrifying truth he had come to see in himself.

Though the will to do what is good is in me, the power to do it is not: the good thing I want to do, I never do; the evil thing which I do not want — that is what I do…. In my inmost self I dearly love God’s law, but I see that acting on my body there is a different law which battles against the law in my mind. So I am brought to be a prisoner of that law of sin which lives inside my body.What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

Epistle to the Romans 7:19-24 New Jerusalem Bible

Breaking the paradigm of reward and punishment

While studying Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, Martin Luther saw that the genitive in Justitia Dei (“the justice of God”) was not passive but active, his heart and mind set aside the mistaken view of God as the Judge waiting to reward or punish us according to our own righteousness and embraced the Judge who is gracious toward the defendant who throws himself on the mercy of the court, and, as in the parable of the prodigal son, is met by the grieving parent who has waited patiently for the beloved child’s return and reunion.

“The trouble with our times is not the multiplication of sinners, it is the disappearance of sin.”

“Philosophy always buries its undertakers.”

Étienne Gilson (1884 – 1978).

photo of cover of The Unity of Philosophical Experience by Etienne Gilson

“I’m a legitimate person” is not a declaration of innocence. It’s a cry for rescue from the horror within one’s own self — the terrifying sense of illegitimacy — the threat that leaves one weeping in a solitary confinement of his own making.

Photo of Eric Fromm

“Life moves against itself through aggression, hate, and despair.”

– Erich Fromm (1900 –1980)

Law and Grace

In my less frequent pastoral moments I hear in the former president’s declaration of legitimacy the stammering cry of a wounded child who put his hand in the cookie jar but was never called to account. When the protest — “I didn’t put my hand in the cookie jar!”— is declared, and the lie is believed, or the truth swept aside with a shrug, the child is split between the instinct of self-preservation and the instinct of self-destruction. There remains a life-long denial, oozing from the cracks between truth and falsehood, a protest of legitimacy —“I don’t do things wrong. I do things right. I’m a legitimate person.” The adult child has yet to learn that none of us is legitimate or illegitimate and that there is a floor of mercy and acceptance waiting to save us from ourselves.

A return to Paul Tillich

In this moment I return to the wisdom of Paul Tillich that broke through the darkness of a despondent college student who had all but concluded that the faith tradition in which I had been raised was a hoax. I

I pray now for a similar wave of light for other sinners like me.

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. 

Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: “You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know.”

— Paul Tillich, “You Are Accepted,” The Shaking of the Foundations” (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948).

No one can claim to be legitimate. None of us can claim we don’t do things that are wrong. No one does only right. The division of life into right and wrong is an early stage of childhood development in which the judge either rewards good behavior or punishes when you’ve put your hand in the cookie jar.

Blessed are they who live long enough to get knocked off their horses, and trust that there is more mercy in God than there is sin in us.

Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness, Brooklyn Park, MN, July 15, 2023

The American Future

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On his way to the Theatre of Pompey, where he would be assassinated, a haughty Julius Caesar passes the seer who had warned him that harm would come to him on the Ides of March. “Well, the Ides of March are come,” says Caesar, mocking the seer. “Aye, they are come,” says the seer, “but they are not gone.”

By the end of the Ides of March in 44 BCE, Caesar’s power over the Roman Republic had come to a cruel end at the hands of the Roman Senate. Although the GOP would have us believe otherwise, Tuesday’s federal indictment of former president Donald Trump was not an assassination. It was a day of accountability under the rule of law. Caesar’s voice fell silent. Donald Trump’s has not.

Of characters without character

It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all…to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.

Joseph Heller, Catch-22

Conversing with Milo

“Will you commit tonight to accepting the results of the 2024 election?” asked the CNN town hall moderator, Kaitlan Collins. “Yes, if I think it’s an honest election, absolutely, I would.” Moderator follow-up: “Will you commit to accepting the results of the election regardless of the outcome?” Answer: “Do you want me to answer it again? If I think it’s an honest election, I would be honored to. And, right now, we are so far ahead of both Democrat and Republican. And you know what? If I don’t win, this country is going to be in big trouble. It’s so sad to see what’s happening.”

“If I think…“

“If I think…” is not new. One expects to hear such “ifs” in the lock-down hospitals for the criminally insane, or in the fiction section of the library. Decades of serving churches and a public defense law office brought me face-to-face with the likes of Milo Minderbender. None of them had access to nuclear codes. These patients created their own worlds, but they lived within confined quarters in the real world. Aside from the nuclear codes, former daily national security briefings, command of the global spotlight, wealth, lawyers, multiple playmates, Donald Trump seems undistinguished from similar souls suffering from the worlds in their heads. He is its center. His wants, wishes, and desires —and his alone — define reality. He is, in fact, the weak man, the needy man, the sick man who puffs himself up to as a “man’s man,” the Strong Man with authority to separate truth and falsehood, good and evil. He is the star who can do whatever he wants — in a lingerie section of an upscale department store, on an airplane, or in a Moscow hotel suite— whose charm persuades masses of people that January 6 insurrectionists are patriots deserving of pardon.

“Hell rages round us” — Paul Tillich then and now

“Hell rages round us. It’s unimaginable!” wrote a young German Army chaplain in a letter to his father from the trenches of Verdun during World War I. “It’s unimaginable.” The young chaplain was Paul Tillich. During the Nazi party rise to power, Tillich served as Professor of Philosophy at University of Frankfort.

On April 13, 1933 — 10 weeks after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor —Tillich was among the first professors ousted from their teaching positions as “enemies of the Reich.”From that time forward, Tillich made his mark on American cultural history with teaching positions at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, Harvard, and the University of Chicago. His descriptions of sin as hubris and as estrangement led Time magazine to feature him on its cover in 1959. Paul Tillich left the world more than a memory or a legacy. His legacy has fresh legs. It walks the streets of the estranged nation America has become.

The cuckoo’s nest: 2023 and 1933

Hell again rages around us in ways once considered unimaginable. No two historical circumstances are identical, but some moments in time bear an uncanny resemblance. The social, cultural, political, economic, spiritual estrangement is as much the challenge now as it was when a deranged Strongman turned Germany into a cuckoo’s nest where morning becomes night, the yearning for the good is twisted into evil, where the fear of death turns life into stone, reality into delusion, faith into demagoguery, courage into cowardice, capacity into carnage.

Shakespeare and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“When Shakespeare was writing,” said Ken Kesey of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, “he wasn’t writing for stuff to lie on the page; it was supposed to get up and move around.” The Ides of March are come and gone. It’s June now. The Ides of June are come…but they are not gone.

Gordon C. Stewart, Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf and Stock), 49 brief commentaries on faith and the news; Brooklyn Park, MN; June 15, 2023, the Ides of June.

An Old Parable too Fresh for Comfort

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Confused and confusing

My head is swirling. I can’t keep up. My relationship with the news is like my 17 year-old son’s description of an older married couple he’d just met: “She’s confused, and he’s confusing.” The world is confusing, I’m confused, and it’s about to get worse. Macular degeneration has not yet affected my reading, but, according to my ophthalmologist, it likely won’t be long before I’ll need new glasses.

To see more clearly

For just as eyes, when dimmed with age or weakness or by some other defect, unless aided by spectacles, discern nothing distinctly; so, such is our feebleness, unless Scripture guides us in seeking God, we are immediately confused. — 16th Century CE French reformer Jean Calvin.

The parable of the sheep, the shepherd, thieves and bandits provides a way of looking at what is happening now, as well as then. Jesus’ parables exceed the boundaries of time and place. 

Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit (John 10:1).

Very truly, I tell you…

The introduction to the parable, “Very truly, I tell you,” commands my attention. Truth has fallen out of favor. Falsehood is in vogue. To tell the truth is suspect. If  honesty prevailed in 2023, many leaders would begin, “Very falsely, I tell you,” before they set off to undermine truth with self-serving partisan speeches, rallies, alternative facts, and agendas.

The Shepherd, thieves, and insurrectionists

The circumstances in which these words are addressed are much like our own. Parables are like that. They exceed the boundaries of time and place. The sheep (people) are threatened by religious leaders (thieves) who have twisted their faith traditions, on the one hand, and bandits (armed nationalist insurrectionists), on the other. Both thieves and bandits are climbing over the stone wall into the sheepfold. The words κλεπτης (thief) and ληστης (robber, brigand, bandit) call for deeper understanding. English translations — “thief” and “robbers” — appear to be a needless repetition, but they are not the same. The κλεπτης  is a thief; the ληστης is an insurrectionist.

The Thief

The thief is a burglar, a bad shepherd. Fourth Ezra, a non-canonical work of the second century CE, catches the sense of it. “Do not desert us [the sheep] as a shepherd does [who leaves] his flock in the power of harmful wolves.” The thief in Jesus parable robs the people’s sacred tradition in collusion with the occupying power, the wolf, the Roman empire. When Jesus  drives the moneychangers from the Temple, his fury is with the deeper theft— the robbery of the people’s sacred tradition. “Get them out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a house of trade!” (John 2:16)

The bandit

The bandit is different from the thief. The ληστης is not a κλεπτης ! The thief (κλεπτης) is malleable. He adapts, as circumstances require. That bandit (ληστης)  does not. The last thing a kleptomaniac wants is a ruckus! That bandit (ληστης) makes a ruckus. The ληστης is armed and dangerous, ready to do whatever it may take to get his country back.

The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.

Reckless assumptions

A shepherd’s voice is calm. Its assuring tone and cadence allay anxiety, fear, and panic. The sheep expect a thief or bandit to climb over the wall at night or in broad daylight. They will see it with their eyes and hear it with their own ears. 

They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.

But what if the stranger impersonates the shepherd’s voice? What if the sheep do not hear the difference between the shepherd’s voice and the imitative voice? What if the shepherd has been away? What if anxiety dulls the flock’s hearing and clouds its vision, such that the desire for security weakens its defenses against impostors? What if they mistake the thief (κλεπτης) for the good shepherd who enters, and leads them out, through the gate?

The thief comes only to steal, slaughter, and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. (Jn. 10:10, NRSVA)

Penultimate thoughts

Although, with age, my eyesight is dimming, my knowledge antiquated, and my soul heavy with weakness and defect, an old pair of spectacles helps me see more clearly beneath and beyond the dazzling displays of wealth and power. I’m stunned that we can be so foolish, but I’m not shocked. The parable of the Good Shepherd zooms in on reality. It leaves me asking who I will follow before all goes dark.

Most disturbing to this old preacher are clergy colleagues who, laying aside their spectacles, on Palm Sundays, lead anxious, fearful flocks in the parade, waving palm branches for Barabbas (Bar [Son] of Abba [Father]), the alternative savior thief and insurrectionist who swears he’s been robbed.

No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be loyal to the one and have contempt for the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. (Matthew 6:24, CEB)
Gordon C. Stewart, Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017, Wipf and Stock), 49 short essays on faith and the news; Brooklyn Park, MN, May 2, 2023.