I disagree with this guy's conclusions concerning what should be done about this issue today, but this is the second place I've read about the misunderstanding of the role of states' rights in the Civil War. These two articles have confirmed my own new insight on the roots of the war based on my recent first reading of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. The southern states adamantly opposed northern states' rights to not support the institution of slavery, particularly the Fugitive Slave Act and the move to prevent new territories from starting with a bias toward slavery. The primary issue over which they seceded seems to have been to preserve and expand their economic model which was strongly based on slavery and the fear of what would happen to their way of life should slavery be abolished.
We - well, well-schooled lawyers, anyway - can argue all day about whether states had at that time or today have a right to secede from the United States of America. If so, that would probably make the Civil War technically about states' rights. But there is strong evidence supporting the slavery issue as far and away the motivating reason for southern states' secession. They wanted to preserve their own rights to their slave "property" - along with the economic model that came with it - and (particularly) force northern states to recognize slave owners' right to own and recover their slaves the same as any other property over which they might retain possession when it passed within another states' borders. They also wanted new territories to be allowed to govern themselves on the slavery model even before they reached the less-federally-controlled status which came with statehood, if the (white) residents of the territory so wished.
In our free nation, I will simultaneously defend your individual right to display the confederate flag as an expression of what it represents to you and try to help you understand why many view it as a symbol of racial oppression. I will also help you to understand that your free speech rights come with the same consequences to which all of our speech is always subject, and none of us is free from the court of public opinion. I am largely of the opinion that state and local governments have no more business flying it than they do the flag of the United Kingdom.
Showing posts with label Social issues. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social issues. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 01, 2015
Wednesday, May 07, 2014
Elusive hope
Sometimes . . . we can be torn between our compelling needs to grieve and to protect the feelings of the people we love.
Sometimes . . . the endearing, carefree mask a person wears hides a brokenness he can never escape.
Sometimes . . . recognizing the undeniable truth of his brokenness can feel as if we are making excuses for his dreadful choices, even though we intend no such thing.
Sometimes . . . someone we love and trust inexplicably hurts us or others we love, in ways that no one would dare deny us our right to wrap ourselves around in our determination to keep him from ever hurting us again.
Sometimes . . . the injury that a person inflicts on one we love utterly eclipses our respect and compassion for them.
Sometimes . . . the path of love and mercy is to forgive the unforgivable, not ever granting approval to those hurtful acts but choosing as often as we must to let go of the pain and to desire the best for him.
Sometimes . . . the equally undeniable truth that our clinging - our determined self- and other-protection - now serves only to keep us bound to our hurt can feel like just one more burden on our already sagging shoulders, the straw that will surely break our back.
Sometimes . . . our only hope is to ask God to do in us that to which we cannot aspire for ourselves, and thereby to set us free at last.
God, please grant grace - undeserved, unfathomable grace - to my late cousin's tormented soul, and peace to our own hearts.
Sometimes . . . the endearing, carefree mask a person wears hides a brokenness he can never escape.
Sometimes . . . recognizing the undeniable truth of his brokenness can feel as if we are making excuses for his dreadful choices, even though we intend no such thing.
Sometimes . . . someone we love and trust inexplicably hurts us or others we love, in ways that no one would dare deny us our right to wrap ourselves around in our determination to keep him from ever hurting us again.
Sometimes . . . the path of love and mercy is to forgive the unforgivable, not ever granting approval to those hurtful acts but choosing as often as we must to let go of the pain and to desire the best for him.
Sometimes . . . the equally undeniable truth that our clinging - our determined self- and other-protection - now serves only to keep us bound to our hurt can feel like just one more burden on our already sagging shoulders, the straw that will surely break our back.
Sometimes . . . our only hope is to ask God to do in us that to which we cannot aspire for ourselves, and thereby to set us free at last.
God, please grant grace - undeserved, unfathomable grace - to my late cousin's tormented soul, and peace to our own hearts.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Rocky Mountain High - no thanks
"But you know who really should smoke/eat weed? Cranky old guys whom life has turned bitter. It would do wonders for your outlook . . . " - A pot advocate replying to an otherwise left-of-center columnist who suggested (outside of his main thesis, which was that we really should revisit tighter restrictions on the business model of tobacco, the only known product known to kill such a high percentage of customers when they use it as intended) that maybe everybody shouldn't run out and get high as soon as it's legal.
Really? Light up and lighten up, man? That's the best you've got for advocating for your position? If "whom life has turned bitter" means "whom life has taught that getting stoned isn't such a great aspiration," I'm glad to count myself among the bitter. Surprise: a guy whose abuser used my youthful affinity for weed to elevate my suggestibility, so that he could push me beyond the boundaries of my vulnerability over and over again, has grown up (old) to become not such a fan of pot! Oh, and let's not forget to add in the experience of later burying my sister because of drugs and always wondering how much my own experimentation affected her. Even in the absence of these extreme repercussions, my life has never been all that it should have been, largely because of the years that I was more interested in getting high than in growing into the person I should be and living up to my potential. So, no, I'm never going to have a favorable opinion of your recreational drug of choice.
But feel free to go crawl back into your bowl, keep evaluating the world through the haze, and scoffing at people who have good reasons for staying away from that crap.
(Sorry, that last part is clearly a little bitter, but you don't seem open to any other suggestion, so there you go.)
Really? Light up and lighten up, man? That's the best you've got for advocating for your position? If "whom life has turned bitter" means "whom life has taught that getting stoned isn't such a great aspiration," I'm glad to count myself among the bitter. Surprise: a guy whose abuser used my youthful affinity for weed to elevate my suggestibility, so that he could push me beyond the boundaries of my vulnerability over and over again, has grown up (old) to become not such a fan of pot! Oh, and let's not forget to add in the experience of later burying my sister because of drugs and always wondering how much my own experimentation affected her. Even in the absence of these extreme repercussions, my life has never been all that it should have been, largely because of the years that I was more interested in getting high than in growing into the person I should be and living up to my potential. So, no, I'm never going to have a favorable opinion of your recreational drug of choice.
But feel free to go crawl back into your bowl, keep evaluating the world through the haze, and scoffing at people who have good reasons for staying away from that crap.
(Sorry, that last part is clearly a little bitter, but you don't seem open to any other suggestion, so there you go.)
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Thoughts on economic mercy
I've been enjoying the discourse on a young friend's FB post. Here are some thoughts they've inspired which are not intended to rebut anything anyone has said there, but are merely where I am as a result of their wonderful sharing. I have struggled of late with my inner longing to make radically different decisions than those which it seems my bride and I often choose.
God blesses us with many gifts in a variety of forms, and we take each one out of perspective and make it into something other than God intends. This certainly includes the gifts of personal responsibility and financial success.
Jesus never said, "Blessed are the rich, so strive to be like them." I don't care what 5 or 50 things rich people do that I don't, even rich Christians who are trying to help me be as successful as them. The rich have no corner on either generosity or (by any means) divine wisdom.
Now, the Holy Spirit? There is the One for me to heed, with regard to both my own decisions and my encouragement of others.
God blesses us with many gifts in a variety of forms, and we take each one out of perspective and make it into something other than God intends. This certainly includes the gifts of personal responsibility and financial success.
- One way we misuse these is as an excuse to judge others' perceived shortcomings, to provide them with answers that "worked for us" that also just happen to be less demanding of us than living according to the grace and generosity of the Gospel. We tend to think that others are like ourselves, and that is largely true and very misleading, because there are many reasons why others may be unable to apply the answers that worked for us.
- Another misuse of these gifts of God is to apply them to a different end than God intends, to a different goal than living our own lives in the grace and generosity of the Gospel. It is shortsighted, we say, to not build up our 401K to our target goal for our retirement, to not make our home down payment fund a high priority, to fail to invest in our future. We might even couch these decisions in terms of stewarding God's gifts - a valid approach when we're being accurate about that - when we're really making some of these goals into golden calves. Sometimes our approach to stewardship is too closely rooted in attempting to provide for our own security, as we gather more than our day's supply of manna. Of course, for Shabbat it's two days' supply, but we have lots of things which we rationalize are more important reasons than Shabbat for hoarding more than our daily bread.
- One other abuse of God's gifts is to try to force them on others, especially those who have not accepted that they are God's beloved ones. Dare I try to legally force everyone to be generous to the poor in the name of economic justice? I must be generous, and must call others to be generous, but when I compel their generosity by force of law I rob them both financially and spiritually. This tendency has the same roots as every other overreach of power throughout history: even when primarily rooted in good-hearted desire for our brother, there is another root drawing malnourishment from our lack of humility and insistence that we will impose on others what we are convinced is best. So:
- To what degree do we who believe in the scriptural mandate to care for the poor have a responsibility to compel our fellow citizens to do so through our legal institutions?
- Is it right to ensconce in law those loving actions which God in his grace blesses us with the freedom to choose for ourselves in his Spirit or to reject?
- When I make the government into the provider of people's needs, do I undermine the Gospel?
Jesus never said, "Blessed are the rich, so strive to be like them." I don't care what 5 or 50 things rich people do that I don't, even rich Christians who are trying to help me be as successful as them. The rich have no corner on either generosity or (by any means) divine wisdom.
Now, the Holy Spirit? There is the One for me to heed, with regard to both my own decisions and my encouragement of others.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
The piece that the right is ignoring:
"If you start insuring a bunch of previously uninsured people, without any choice but to take them no matter what health conditions they bring to the table, then the average costs per customer have to go up." - this is the gist of the "simple math" argument against the ACA.
And actually, that's pretty undeniably true.
In the short term.
But the financing of the (heretofore) uninsured will shift from hospitals (and other providers) to insurance companies (along with the premium subsidies from the federal government). Hospitals have been trained over recent decades to inflate what they charge to cover the significant percentage of uninsured patients whose treatment they often eventually have to write off. Of course, this is why they've been able to offer insurers far lower pricing for the same procedure for which they charge private citizens a far higher rate. For many of these, they never receive any payment at all; the ones that do pay usually require service from an inflated staff/paid external billing service to deal with all of the follow-up payment issues. So in the short term, yes, the cost of insurance is going to increase. But in the longer term, if health care providers should be able to reduce their charges because there will be a higher percentage of treatment for which they are paid. If they don't, new providers should be able to step in and improve the competitiveness of the marketplace, which will reduce what insurers have to pay.
The real trick is going to be to get insurers to return this money to the pockets of customers in the form of reduced premiums, rather than lining those of stockholders. But if they don't it won't take long until new insurers step in to address this inflated market, too.
So I still don't know how I feel about the whole program, but I'm not going to jump to a conclusion based on the short term increase in premiums, even should it prove to be significant.
And actually, that's pretty undeniably true.
In the short term.
But the financing of the (heretofore) uninsured will shift from hospitals (and other providers) to insurance companies (along with the premium subsidies from the federal government). Hospitals have been trained over recent decades to inflate what they charge to cover the significant percentage of uninsured patients whose treatment they often eventually have to write off. Of course, this is why they've been able to offer insurers far lower pricing for the same procedure for which they charge private citizens a far higher rate. For many of these, they never receive any payment at all; the ones that do pay usually require service from an inflated staff/paid external billing service to deal with all of the follow-up payment issues. So in the short term, yes, the cost of insurance is going to increase. But in the longer term, if health care providers should be able to reduce their charges because there will be a higher percentage of treatment for which they are paid. If they don't, new providers should be able to step in and improve the competitiveness of the marketplace, which will reduce what insurers have to pay.
The real trick is going to be to get insurers to return this money to the pockets of customers in the form of reduced premiums, rather than lining those of stockholders. But if they don't it won't take long until new insurers step in to address this inflated market, too.
So I still don't know how I feel about the whole program, but I'm not going to jump to a conclusion based on the short term increase in premiums, even should it prove to be significant.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
My Substitute
A basic part of Christian theology is the idea of sacrificial substitution: Christ bore the burden of our sins so that we could be set free from it. Some of us come to a personal understanding of this concept that fills us with an abiding gratitude to God for his gift of atoning salvation, which drives our life in a very different direction. As a result we begin to participate with the movement of the Holy Spirit in our lives, who directs us into very different pathways than we'd otherwise follow and transforms us into very different people than we would be on our own.
I'm getting a different glimpse into this than I've ever had before, one with which I must be very careful because of its potential to lead me back to an emotionally unhealthy place. Yet I think it is not only worthwhile to give it appropriate consideration, it may be a gift from God in this season of Lent.
Seventeen years ago, I received mercy I didn't deserve. At the time, I didn't really recognize how true that was. At first, at least, it felt unfair that my own actions to address the wrong I'd done led me at all into the legal consequences of my wrongdoing. I came to understand that entire cause-and-effect much better. Now, however, I find myself appalled by the sentence handed down against a dear old friend, especially in comparison with my own, when my own actions were so much more damaging than his were. When I was discussing this with my bride the other evening, she expressed how she is likewise taken aback, and couldn't help but point out the undeniable truth that what I did was so much worse than our friend's crime. She wasn't putting me down with that; it's just that the severity of our friend's punishment is more along the lines of what I deserved than what he did. Now as we exchange correspondence and I read his wife's posts of his e-mails detailing his experiences in prison - which is coincidentally located on what was part of an Air Force Base on which he once served at least a TDY - I can't help but get a clearer picture of what I deserved.
I know he isn't there in my place - I completely know this. As much as he loves me (and I him), I know that my friend would not have chosen to bear my penalty for me had he been offered the opportunity to do so. I'm confident that he doesn't blame me for the position he's in; when he expresses his anger about his current situation, it is anger at himself for the choices he has made, not over the social climate that played a role in his punishment being so much more extreme than he really deserved - a climate which one could argue all offenders have played a role in creating.
Yet still it feels as if, as a result of his incarceration, I am getting a deeper insight into and understanding of what it really means that Jesus accepted the penalty for my sin. The pain and humiliation of a crown of thorns is foreign to me, but my friend's separation from his family is real, and something I have experienced to a lesser degree. The flogging that Jesus experienced for my sake is a pain unlike any I have ever known, but my friend's fear of what his experience in prison might become is frightfully familiar. And the burden of bearing the world's guilt in the gruesome crucifixion on that cross is utterly alien to me, and so the idea that Jesus bore it for me has always been a little distant, but this feeling that my friend's place should have been mine helps me to feel more grateful than ever to Jesus for taking my place.
I'm getting a different glimpse into this than I've ever had before, one with which I must be very careful because of its potential to lead me back to an emotionally unhealthy place. Yet I think it is not only worthwhile to give it appropriate consideration, it may be a gift from God in this season of Lent.
Seventeen years ago, I received mercy I didn't deserve. At the time, I didn't really recognize how true that was. At first, at least, it felt unfair that my own actions to address the wrong I'd done led me at all into the legal consequences of my wrongdoing. I came to understand that entire cause-and-effect much better. Now, however, I find myself appalled by the sentence handed down against a dear old friend, especially in comparison with my own, when my own actions were so much more damaging than his were. When I was discussing this with my bride the other evening, she expressed how she is likewise taken aback, and couldn't help but point out the undeniable truth that what I did was so much worse than our friend's crime. She wasn't putting me down with that; it's just that the severity of our friend's punishment is more along the lines of what I deserved than what he did. Now as we exchange correspondence and I read his wife's posts of his e-mails detailing his experiences in prison - which is coincidentally located on what was part of an Air Force Base on which he once served at least a TDY - I can't help but get a clearer picture of what I deserved.
I know he isn't there in my place - I completely know this. As much as he loves me (and I him), I know that my friend would not have chosen to bear my penalty for me had he been offered the opportunity to do so. I'm confident that he doesn't blame me for the position he's in; when he expresses his anger about his current situation, it is anger at himself for the choices he has made, not over the social climate that played a role in his punishment being so much more extreme than he really deserved - a climate which one could argue all offenders have played a role in creating.
Yet still it feels as if, as a result of his incarceration, I am getting a deeper insight into and understanding of what it really means that Jesus accepted the penalty for my sin. The pain and humiliation of a crown of thorns is foreign to me, but my friend's separation from his family is real, and something I have experienced to a lesser degree. The flogging that Jesus experienced for my sake is a pain unlike any I have ever known, but my friend's fear of what his experience in prison might become is frightfully familiar. And the burden of bearing the world's guilt in the gruesome crucifixion on that cross is utterly alien to me, and so the idea that Jesus bore it for me has always been a little distant, but this feeling that my friend's place should have been mine helps me to feel more grateful than ever to Jesus for taking my place.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Striking the root of the matter
I just can't pick a phrase or two from today's second reading from the Office of Readings that particularly struck me. Usually I prefer the selections that are chosen from the early church fathers, which often resonate with their timeless truth. Yet today's reading from the documents of the Second Vatican Council kept drawing me into its own veritas as I continued to read. A couple of things in particular struck me, and I hope I'm able to capture them before my own thoughts obscure them.
Without God, the higher kind of life to which we aspire is obscured, taking the form of our mere dreams and wishes. Sometimes there is a sincere element of selflessness in this striving, insofar as we are able to understand and apply it. But what we understand to be the freedom to live this higher calling becomes instead an enslavement to the ideas, the dogma, that becomes an empty shadow of the true freedom we find only in living in God's love.
Without God, we do not understand our weakness and our sinfulness properly. Rather, we often mistake these characteristics as noble causes which we should embrace, or toward which we should strive. And the power of our own wants can become all the more consuming if we have no source we trust that might serve to steer us away from them. The unhappiness we experience in response to our failure to understand that our loving God is providing for our true needs ends up driving us toward more unhappiness, for ourselves and for those whom we are trying to love as well as we can.
These questions with which we grapple should serve to bring us to a relationship with God. Yet when we begin the struggle with an inner conviction that God cannot be the answer because there is no god, that indeed no rational person should believe in any form of god, they can indeed drive us to despair. By no means is this inevitable; there are undoubtedly atheists who accept their fatalistic position with an inner peace, but in my experience they are often driven off of their precarious peaceful perch when they encounter various sorts of upheaval in their lives or opposition to their point of view.
Yet faith in God does free us from our own inner struggle between sinfulness and righteousness, nor from our tendency to close off when we are hurt rather than reconcile. The battle wages within us even when we believe in God, even when we have a relationship with him that transforms us, and the efficacy of that transformation wanes when we fail to give ourselves regularly and with increasing consistency to this most perfect of loves. I cannot fully imagine the effect that not believing must have on that battle, and pray that I never will experience it.
Only the conclusion of this selection, its last three brief paragraphs, provide the proper context for the resolution of this conflict, and therein can be found the only way to approach it that brings life rather than death, selfless love instead of narcissism, grace and forgiveness in place of vengeance and judgment.
Yet none of these positive approaches is possible of our own effort. Only the Holy Spirit can manifest grace, and at our best we merely participate in and give ourselves over to this work of God.
Without God, the higher kind of life to which we aspire is obscured, taking the form of our mere dreams and wishes. Sometimes there is a sincere element of selflessness in this striving, insofar as we are able to understand and apply it. But what we understand to be the freedom to live this higher calling becomes instead an enslavement to the ideas, the dogma, that becomes an empty shadow of the true freedom we find only in living in God's love.
Without God, we do not understand our weakness and our sinfulness properly. Rather, we often mistake these characteristics as noble causes which we should embrace, or toward which we should strive. And the power of our own wants can become all the more consuming if we have no source we trust that might serve to steer us away from them. The unhappiness we experience in response to our failure to understand that our loving God is providing for our true needs ends up driving us toward more unhappiness, for ourselves and for those whom we are trying to love as well as we can.
These questions with which we grapple should serve to bring us to a relationship with God. Yet when we begin the struggle with an inner conviction that God cannot be the answer because there is no god, that indeed no rational person should believe in any form of god, they can indeed drive us to despair. By no means is this inevitable; there are undoubtedly atheists who accept their fatalistic position with an inner peace, but in my experience they are often driven off of their precarious peaceful perch when they encounter various sorts of upheaval in their lives or opposition to their point of view.
Yet faith in God does free us from our own inner struggle between sinfulness and righteousness, nor from our tendency to close off when we are hurt rather than reconcile. The battle wages within us even when we believe in God, even when we have a relationship with him that transforms us, and the efficacy of that transformation wanes when we fail to give ourselves regularly and with increasing consistency to this most perfect of loves. I cannot fully imagine the effect that not believing must have on that battle, and pray that I never will experience it.
Only the conclusion of this selection, its last three brief paragraphs, provide the proper context for the resolution of this conflict, and therein can be found the only way to approach it that brings life rather than death, selfless love instead of narcissism, grace and forgiveness in place of vengeance and judgment.
Yet none of these positive approaches is possible of our own effort. Only the Holy Spirit can manifest grace, and at our best we merely participate in and give ourselves over to this work of God.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Thought from retreat
Near the beginning of the day, our regional liaison for the charismatic renewal was sharing some thoughts from Pope Benedict's document on the current Year of Faith, and some other thoughts from the Holy Father's Ash Wednesday homily. I'm not sure which of these was the source for the thought that caught my attention and resonated for me: the idea that the Eucharist is the summit of worship. I know plenty of people who believe that social outreach ministry is a higher calling.
I'm sure I must have written before against a popular approach to our faith that has begun to dominate over the past century: that its chief value is in how it moves us to be a force for social change in the world. In Catholic circles, the theology behind this thought is sometimes summed up very briefly in a very reasonable sounding idea, "The Eucharist is created for us, not vice versa." I had a former pastor, whom I love dearly, who was fond of quoting this as he opposed any excesses, as he understood them, in Eucharistic adoration. But there are a couple of truths which get mixed up in this misunderstanding, and of these, the first is probably the one that most gets at the root cause of the error.
It is the failure to fully understand that the Holy Eucharist is Jesus Christ.
Of course, it is ridiculous to suggest that any of us fully understands this. Only when we participate fully in the heavenly banquet for all eternity will we begin to approach this level of knowledge of God. Yet even understanding to the smallest extent that, in ways we do not fully understand, the Eucharist is Jesus Christ, leads us to understand that we were indeed created for the Eucharist - though not to meet His needs, for He has none. And this is where those who use that phrase have it right, for indeed the Eucharist was instituted to meet our need for spiritual food. Done right, worshiping the Lord in the Eucharist is a key element of eating his Body and drinking his Blood. (More on which aspect of Christ's body was created/instituted for which in a bit.)
First, though, is the thing that this modern theology usually gets right when its adherents lament the practice of regular Eucharistic adoration (an objection which they have wrong, in most cases). They point out that the traditionalists' emphasis on reverence for the consecrated elements in the context of the Mass often comes at the expense of a recognition that Christ is just as really present in the assembled Body as in the Eucharistic elements of the Body and the Blood. They are often right about this, yet the one ought not come at the expense of the other. In this sense, it is true that we and the Eucharist have indeed been created and instituted for each other. According to God's plan for us, we do not become his Body - and individually parts of it - to the degree God intends unless we are fed by the spiritual food, in which Christ gives us himself as the nourishment we most need.
So my chief objection to the phrase as it seems (to me) to be misused is in its implication that the purpose of the Eucharist is to equip us for the social outreach that many mistakenly consider the "real purpose" of Christianity. Indeed, this viewpoint holds that the chief purpose of our worship is to make us the best version of ourselves - itself a concept on which Matthew Kelly has written extensively that is worth investing our energy and effort into - so that we might go forth and do what we're really supposed to be about. The truth of the matter is that we frequently put too little effort into the things that God might have us do, but the purpose of our relationship with God is not for us to do those things. Rather, a relationship with God is the greatest good our lives will ever know, and inevitably when it is all that it should be it leads to our transformation - which is of course a good thing - and our social outreach - which is also a good thing.
And yet to say that our personal growth or our social ministry is the purpose of our relationship with God gets the two greatest commandments out of order. Jesus said that the greatest commandment was to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength, and that the second is like it: to love our neighbor as ourselves. Now, these two are inextricably linked for us, but their linking does not make the second commandment equal to the first.
Of course, God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and it is impossible to love God without loving our neighbor. And if we love our neighbor rightly, we will enter more deeply into our relationship with God in the process. So maybe this whole megapost is just an arguing of unimportant semantics.
And yet it seems to me that I see way more people lose their perspective on the truth by focusing on service of others and trying to let their spirituality flow from that than by focusing on worshiping God (though perhaps I've just been blessed by being around true believers). Putting service ahead of worship puts us at risk of despairing over the injustice we perceive in our neighbors' suffering. Worshiping first reminds us that God is God, and we, though his Body, are not God. We are his presence in the world, yet in God's infinite eternity he remains greater than any finite collection of our finite minds can fathom. It is certainly possible to go through the rituals of worship without entering into a true relationship with God in the process, but then the lack of fruit - the absence of transformation and service - eventually becomes evident.
I'm sure I must have written before against a popular approach to our faith that has begun to dominate over the past century: that its chief value is in how it moves us to be a force for social change in the world. In Catholic circles, the theology behind this thought is sometimes summed up very briefly in a very reasonable sounding idea, "The Eucharist is created for us, not vice versa." I had a former pastor, whom I love dearly, who was fond of quoting this as he opposed any excesses, as he understood them, in Eucharistic adoration. But there are a couple of truths which get mixed up in this misunderstanding, and of these, the first is probably the one that most gets at the root cause of the error.
It is the failure to fully understand that the Holy Eucharist is Jesus Christ.
Of course, it is ridiculous to suggest that any of us fully understands this. Only when we participate fully in the heavenly banquet for all eternity will we begin to approach this level of knowledge of God. Yet even understanding to the smallest extent that, in ways we do not fully understand, the Eucharist is Jesus Christ, leads us to understand that we were indeed created for the Eucharist - though not to meet His needs, for He has none. And this is where those who use that phrase have it right, for indeed the Eucharist was instituted to meet our need for spiritual food. Done right, worshiping the Lord in the Eucharist is a key element of eating his Body and drinking his Blood. (More on which aspect of Christ's body was created/instituted for which in a bit.)
First, though, is the thing that this modern theology usually gets right when its adherents lament the practice of regular Eucharistic adoration (an objection which they have wrong, in most cases). They point out that the traditionalists' emphasis on reverence for the consecrated elements in the context of the Mass often comes at the expense of a recognition that Christ is just as really present in the assembled Body as in the Eucharistic elements of the Body and the Blood. They are often right about this, yet the one ought not come at the expense of the other. In this sense, it is true that we and the Eucharist have indeed been created and instituted for each other. According to God's plan for us, we do not become his Body - and individually parts of it - to the degree God intends unless we are fed by the spiritual food, in which Christ gives us himself as the nourishment we most need.
So my chief objection to the phrase as it seems (to me) to be misused is in its implication that the purpose of the Eucharist is to equip us for the social outreach that many mistakenly consider the "real purpose" of Christianity. Indeed, this viewpoint holds that the chief purpose of our worship is to make us the best version of ourselves - itself a concept on which Matthew Kelly has written extensively that is worth investing our energy and effort into - so that we might go forth and do what we're really supposed to be about. The truth of the matter is that we frequently put too little effort into the things that God might have us do, but the purpose of our relationship with God is not for us to do those things. Rather, a relationship with God is the greatest good our lives will ever know, and inevitably when it is all that it should be it leads to our transformation - which is of course a good thing - and our social outreach - which is also a good thing.
And yet to say that our personal growth or our social ministry is the purpose of our relationship with God gets the two greatest commandments out of order. Jesus said that the greatest commandment was to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength, and that the second is like it: to love our neighbor as ourselves. Now, these two are inextricably linked for us, but their linking does not make the second commandment equal to the first.
Of course, God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and it is impossible to love God without loving our neighbor. And if we love our neighbor rightly, we will enter more deeply into our relationship with God in the process. So maybe this whole megapost is just an arguing of unimportant semantics.
And yet it seems to me that I see way more people lose their perspective on the truth by focusing on service of others and trying to let their spirituality flow from that than by focusing on worshiping God (though perhaps I've just been blessed by being around true believers). Putting service ahead of worship puts us at risk of despairing over the injustice we perceive in our neighbors' suffering. Worshiping first reminds us that God is God, and we, though his Body, are not God. We are his presence in the world, yet in God's infinite eternity he remains greater than any finite collection of our finite minds can fathom. It is certainly possible to go through the rituals of worship without entering into a true relationship with God in the process, but then the lack of fruit - the absence of transformation and service - eventually becomes evident.
Monday, January 21, 2013
Wounds that heal - a thought from Thursday night
Our theme was Healing in the Precious Blood of Jesus. Fr. Angelo mentioned reference after reference describing the understanding of blood in ancient cultures and its significance in ancient ritual. Then he talked about Jesus' healing ministry, those who were made whole through his compassion and care. He talked about how much of Jesus' healing was rooted in correcting one form of blindness or another (which I found a particularly fascinating tie-in with Fr. Bramlage's healing ministry, which is so deeply rooted in the damaging effects of unforgiveness in our lives). I wish I'd had a notebook to capture more of what he shared. He moved on to discuss the redemptive and healing nature of Jesus' sacrifice, and introduced two words together that just struck me: Healing Wounds. I immediately knew I'd want to reflect and expand on his comments about this idea.
The natural effect of wounds we receive is to tear apart, to destroy, so most wounds are therefore destructive by nature. While our bodies are equipped to heal in remarkable ways, the wounds themselves are a cause of damage. This is true of emotional wounds that we receive, as well. Interestingly, the more compromised we are physically or emotionally, the less able we are to heal.
And yet the way we respond to harm we receive - indeed, our willingness to embrace them rather than resist them, in some cases - can cause the resulting wounds to be healing instead of destructive. As we assume an attitude of grace and forgiveness instead of clinging to the hurt we receive, our wounds' harmful effects in us are diminished, and their redemptive, healing effects are magnified in our own lives as well as the lives of those around us.
For instance, when I focus on how unfair a situation in my relationship with my wife may be, our marriage is undermined and wounded. But if I instead view that exact same situation as an opportunity to love my wife, it becomes a cause of growth for us. This is true for each situation in which we decide to respond with an attitude of grace rather than focusing on ourselves.
Jesus' wounds remain visible in his resurrected body because they have lost the power to hurt him while taking on the power to heal us. His wounds were healing for Thomas, who had declared that he could not believe Jesus was risen without their evidence, and they are healing for us. This becomes true for the wounds we receive, as well, when we offer forgiveness and mercy rather than retribution in response to them. Our woundedness can be a source of healing, and inspiration for others who need to experience healing as we have.
The natural effect of wounds we receive is to tear apart, to destroy, so most wounds are therefore destructive by nature. While our bodies are equipped to heal in remarkable ways, the wounds themselves are a cause of damage. This is true of emotional wounds that we receive, as well. Interestingly, the more compromised we are physically or emotionally, the less able we are to heal.
And yet the way we respond to harm we receive - indeed, our willingness to embrace them rather than resist them, in some cases - can cause the resulting wounds to be healing instead of destructive. As we assume an attitude of grace and forgiveness instead of clinging to the hurt we receive, our wounds' harmful effects in us are diminished, and their redemptive, healing effects are magnified in our own lives as well as the lives of those around us.
For instance, when I focus on how unfair a situation in my relationship with my wife may be, our marriage is undermined and wounded. But if I instead view that exact same situation as an opportunity to love my wife, it becomes a cause of growth for us. This is true for each situation in which we decide to respond with an attitude of grace rather than focusing on ourselves.
Jesus' wounds remain visible in his resurrected body because they have lost the power to hurt him while taking on the power to heal us. His wounds were healing for Thomas, who had declared that he could not believe Jesus was risen without their evidence, and they are healing for us. This becomes true for the wounds we receive, as well, when we offer forgiveness and mercy rather than retribution in response to them. Our woundedness can be a source of healing, and inspiration for others who need to experience healing as we have.
Friday, December 21, 2012
Newtown and the 2nd Amendment
It has always been true, and it always will be: we can be safe, or we can be free.
I think this debate needs to be held, and we need to understand as much as we can what is at stake in both options. As we discuss it with each other, we will undoubtedly invoke all the passion that we feel on both sides of the issue. I have strong feelings on both sides warring within me, in fact.
We need to understand the 2nd Amendment's intention - which has never been to protect our right to hunt. And we always need to be very careful about what rights we are willing to yield to our "benevolent government," particularly in these days in which the governability of the people - our own citizens and those who enter our nation from abroad using the transportation means which are available today - may be at an all-time low.
The freedom which we may yield because of our fear will be sorely missed should the tyranny of our government ever rise to the level from which we seized our freedom by force. And we should never trust our government to be immune from such tyranny.
With all that said, I do not know what the wise path is in the face of today's challenges. I know I must trust God for my security, but do not know the degree to which he would call me to defend this freedom which our founders found so essential as to give it second place in our Bill of Rights. But why should we expect it to be sacrosanct when those listed first are themselves under assault?
Has the American experiment already failed, overcome by some combination of the threats of technology, population boom, mental health issues and lack of good sense, and we have simply not recognized it yet?
Which loss will our posterity mourn more acutely: their fallen peers, or the right to take up their own arms when necessary?
I fear the wisdom of Solomon is insufficient for this dilemma.
God, help us to know the way that is truly wise, and to trust you in it.
I think this debate needs to be held, and we need to understand as much as we can what is at stake in both options. As we discuss it with each other, we will undoubtedly invoke all the passion that we feel on both sides of the issue. I have strong feelings on both sides warring within me, in fact.
We need to understand the 2nd Amendment's intention - which has never been to protect our right to hunt. And we always need to be very careful about what rights we are willing to yield to our "benevolent government," particularly in these days in which the governability of the people - our own citizens and those who enter our nation from abroad using the transportation means which are available today - may be at an all-time low.
The freedom which we may yield because of our fear will be sorely missed should the tyranny of our government ever rise to the level from which we seized our freedom by force. And we should never trust our government to be immune from such tyranny.
With all that said, I do not know what the wise path is in the face of today's challenges. I know I must trust God for my security, but do not know the degree to which he would call me to defend this freedom which our founders found so essential as to give it second place in our Bill of Rights. But why should we expect it to be sacrosanct when those listed first are themselves under assault?
Has the American experiment already failed, overcome by some combination of the threats of technology, population boom, mental health issues and lack of good sense, and we have simply not recognized it yet?
Which loss will our posterity mourn more acutely: their fallen peers, or the right to take up their own arms when necessary?
I fear the wisdom of Solomon is insufficient for this dilemma.
God, help us to know the way that is truly wise, and to trust you in it.
Friday, August 17, 2012
Getting assertive
I may avoid conflict like the purple plague, but when I engage I seem to have a knack for taking the right approach to get things resolved.
At my wife's follow-up appointment on Tuesday for this stubborn bout of pancreatitis, the doctor upped the ante on her medications for nausea and pain, and restricted her to clear liquids for another two days. Well, the mornings mostly seemed to go a little better, but there was no way she was ingesting as much fluid as she needed to, as she was still experiencing nausea and vomiting, not to mention the pain.
So: when our doctor called back last night, he told Teri to call the office promptly at 8 a.m., and when she started to object that she wouldn't be able to get hold of him, insisted that he would be there in the office, that she should have the staff give him a message and he would call right back.
This morning Teri woke up about 6 with dry heaves, then came back to bed. I got up forty-five minutes later, sent my coworkers an e-mail and briefly messaged this great friend of mine, then got ready for the day. At 8, Teri started calling the doctor's office, but they don't take their phones off of night mode until 8:10. By the time she waited on hold, they told her he'd just gone in with a patient for a physical, and dumped her into his medical assistant's voicemail (for the third consecutive day).
I was fit to be tied. I waited about 20 minutes on the outside chance her message actually got through to him, stewing the whole time. Then I told her I was getting in the car and going to his office. I really didn't know for certain what I was going to do when I got there, just that I was going to make them deal with us face-to-face, where they couldn't get rid of us just by pushing a button.
I went to the desk, gave them my name and very calmly (outwardly, at least) asked what I needed to do to speak to the office manager. When they informed me that she was out of the office today, I asked what I needed to do to make sure that "Jim Derksen" got my wife's message. I wanted them to know this was our personal doctor; after all, we've been seeing him for twenty years. One of his staff looked up Teri's account and didn't see any indication that she'd managed to get through to him this morning. She went to his office, and after a couple minutes came back and told me there was a note on his keyboard. I am absolutely certain, based on the way she worded herself and how long she was gone, that there wasn't one until she wrote it and put it there.
Before I got back home, Teri called to tell me that she'd heard from the doctor, she was admitted, and they'd be calling back to tell us where in the hospital to report.
I'm fairly confident that, had I not gone to the office, we'd have been waiting until at least noon before we heard from them.
At my wife's follow-up appointment on Tuesday for this stubborn bout of pancreatitis, the doctor upped the ante on her medications for nausea and pain, and restricted her to clear liquids for another two days. Well, the mornings mostly seemed to go a little better, but there was no way she was ingesting as much fluid as she needed to, as she was still experiencing nausea and vomiting, not to mention the pain.
So: when our doctor called back last night, he told Teri to call the office promptly at 8 a.m., and when she started to object that she wouldn't be able to get hold of him, insisted that he would be there in the office, that she should have the staff give him a message and he would call right back.
This morning Teri woke up about 6 with dry heaves, then came back to bed. I got up forty-five minutes later, sent my coworkers an e-mail and briefly messaged this great friend of mine, then got ready for the day. At 8, Teri started calling the doctor's office, but they don't take their phones off of night mode until 8:10. By the time she waited on hold, they told her he'd just gone in with a patient for a physical, and dumped her into his medical assistant's voicemail (for the third consecutive day).
I was fit to be tied. I waited about 20 minutes on the outside chance her message actually got through to him, stewing the whole time. Then I told her I was getting in the car and going to his office. I really didn't know for certain what I was going to do when I got there, just that I was going to make them deal with us face-to-face, where they couldn't get rid of us just by pushing a button.
I went to the desk, gave them my name and very calmly (outwardly, at least) asked what I needed to do to speak to the office manager. When they informed me that she was out of the office today, I asked what I needed to do to make sure that "Jim Derksen" got my wife's message. I wanted them to know this was our personal doctor; after all, we've been seeing him for twenty years. One of his staff looked up Teri's account and didn't see any indication that she'd managed to get through to him this morning. She went to his office, and after a couple minutes came back and told me there was a note on his keyboard. I am absolutely certain, based on the way she worded herself and how long she was gone, that there wasn't one until she wrote it and put it there.
Before I got back home, Teri called to tell me that she'd heard from the doctor, she was admitted, and they'd be calling back to tell us where in the hospital to report.
I'm fairly confident that, had I not gone to the office, we'd have been waiting until at least noon before we heard from them.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Now they are all Borg
The reason we have to have a debate about universal health care is the same reason we can't talk to our family doctor (of 20 years) or our GI specialist (of 25) anymore.
Medicine has become strictly business, and there is no way to keep strictly businesses from eating people up.
Our family doctor bravely resisted the trend for as long as he could, then got picked up in a two-physician office by a medical group. A couple years later they closed his office and moved him into a larger one with more physicians and less service.
I think our GI doc tried to fight the process, too, and we can't manage to talk with him anymore, either.
They've been assimilated.
Medicine has become strictly business, and there is no way to keep strictly businesses from eating people up.
Our family doctor bravely resisted the trend for as long as he could, then got picked up in a two-physician office by a medical group. A couple years later they closed his office and moved him into a larger one with more physicians and less service.
I think our GI doc tried to fight the process, too, and we can't manage to talk with him anymore, either.
They've been assimilated.
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