Pondering
Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry announced Saturday it had put to death 81 people convicted of various crimes in an effort to “deter anyone who threatens security or disrupts public life.” The Kingdom did not disclose how the executions were carried out, but it is believed to be the largest mass execution in Saudi Arabia’s history.
Despite record-high border crossings last year, the number of undocumented immigrants arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) fell dramatically in fiscal year 2021—from 159,000 in 2018 to 143,000 in 2019 to 104,000 in 2020 to 74,000 in 2021—according to the agency’s annual report. The report outlines ICE’s “operational changes” under President Biden, including its focus on “the most pressing threats to national security, public safety, and border security” while allowing enforcement officials to “make discretionary decisions about which noncitizens to arrest, detain, and remove.”
Righteousness
Righteousness is not fundamentally about right behavior but right belonging to one another. It is about right relationships. This is why slander and deceitful speech and bearing false witness against others are so devastatingly serious. A person can manage their behavior and still not right their relationships. That is where self-righteousness comes from. Self-righteousness is just the outworking of hard-heartedness. People resist making their relationships right because they can’t come to grips with their own brokenness.
J D Walt
Say what?
Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.”
Eugene Peterson says, ‘The gospel of Jesus Christ is more political than anyone imagines, but in a way that no one guesses’.”
The Cross
The Cross should not be seen as an event of divine payment, an arrangement that clears the way for us go to heaven. Nor should the Cross be reduced to a mere willingness to suffer patiently. The Cross is the way of life and is constantly set forth to us throughout the New Testament. It is the singular mark of a Christian: “Those who would be my disciples must take up their cross and follow me.”
Fr Stephen Freeman
the besieged city of Mariupol.
“Food is running out, and the Russians have stopped humanitarian attempts to bring it in. Electricity is mostly gone and water is sparse, with residents melting snow to drink. Some parents have even left their newborns at the hospital, perhaps hoping to give them a chance at life in the one place with decent electricity and water. People burn scraps of furniture in makeshift grills to warm their hands in the freezing cold and cook what little food there still is. The grills themselves are built with the one thing in plentiful supply: bricks and shards of metal scattered in the streets from destroyed buildings. Death is everywhere. Local officials have tallied more than 2,500 deaths in the siege, but many bodies can’t be counted because of the endless shelling. They have told families to leave their dead outside in the streets because it’s too dangerous to hold funerals.”
Kenosis
“descending” to a place of “lower status” presupposes that the person is “high status” and on the top. Thus, to be a Christian in these locations is to let go of and to empty oneself of status. To humble and lower yourself.
But how does that work if you are already a low status person, especially an abused and oppressed person? How much lower are you supposed to go?
Victims are already Christian. Victims need no conversion.
Only oppressors and abusers require conversion.
Regarding kenosis, humility and taking up the cross victims have already been poured out, humiliated and crucified. Thus, victims have already been converted. In their victimhood victims already stand with and in Christ. Or, rather, Christ has already moved to stand with the victims–sanctifying them, divinizing them. Victims incarnate the Crucified Christ and, thus, they are already Christians.
Hanging already on the cross, victims need do nothing more to become “Christ-like” or to become like Jesus. As I said, victims require no conversion.
This, then, is the root of the problem with preaching kenosis, humility and taking up the cross to victims. You’re suggesting that the one already hanging on the cross do something more, to in essence crucify themselves again. And it’s that demand for re-crucifixion–the attempt to convert and preach at the one hanging on the cross–that brings in the potential for abuse.
This is why I think notions like kenosis, humility and taking up the cross often become dysfunctional, hurtful and sadomasochistic when preached at those being abused or oppressed. You’re trying to convert the converted, to make people in these locations do something more, to go lower, when they, as victims, need do nothing more.
Richard Beck
Despair
The circumstance was not unusual; a men’s class on a Wednesday evening. There was the routine ritual of prayer requests followed by the expected expression of needs for various illness and/or difficulties. The usual was interrupted when one man, a regular attender, stumbled and choked as he tried to express his grief and brokenness. With tears flowing he painfully told us, just a few hours before, his oldest and best friend had been killed in a tragic automobile accident. Many of us had heard about the accident but no one knew the victim was his friend. There was an immediate response of consolation and sympathy. We all shared the pain of the loss of a friend.
As he continued to pour out the pain in his soul, it became clear his agony was not just grief for his friend but there was a deeper and a more inconsolable pain of guilt. His voice broke as he told us, “I never talked to him about Jesus”. My thoughts were immediately focused on the reports of the accident and the news that the victim was a colorful and well known proprietor of several strip bars. The presumption by all present was that the victim had died without knowing Christ and the hope of eternal life with him.
I was struck by the reality of what he shared. There was nothing that could be done or said that would change the truth. He had not talked with his friend. What happened next and after the class was revealing. The truth was ignored and one after another, with real concern, offered some form of rationalization or explanation to mitigate his guilt. “You can never under estimate what kind of influence your friendship had on him”. “I’m sure he was good guy”. “You can never know what kind of good things can come out of this”. “It will be OK”. et al
I believe such occasions require unvarnished truth. Not to be a cruel reminder, but as a light that illuminates our weakness and failure so clearly that we have no where to turn except to God. There are circumstances where we cannot be consoled or sympathized out of our guilt. We need to know that we are loved despite the truth about us. Only with God’s love is this possible.
There was nothing that could be said that would change the truth. Only the real and abiding presence of God can ultimately sustain and heal us in our moments of despair.
For the Joy of the Journey 2006
STILL ON THE JOURNEY