Parakalein

A part of me gets the celebration.  I had friends and family touched by the loss of life in the war on terrorism.  I get that in one sense the world is a safer place but in another sense their is increased hostility and less of a sense of safety.  Many say including our president and the prime minister of Pakistan that this killing was an act of justice.  Really.  It seems like an act of understandable and justifiable vengeance but we are kidding ourselves when we call it justice.  Justice is never one sided it is mutually respectful and agreed upon as the healthy way to care for an injustice that is done in the world. The language of what we are saying and the meta messages that are being presented and perceived really concern me.  The prophet Micah intentional connects "justice, mercy and humility" and these are not connected here.

In a nation that is fighting for the removal of capital punishment, there are few voices acknowledging that this is an "eye for and eye" moment which his more about our blindness than about clear vision.  One way thinking is what is at the heart of unresolved differences in our homes and in our world.  No ideology, thought or reaction is in itself the problem, the problem is we live in a social system that does not allow for equity, respectfulness, or peace.  It is about getting the bad guy, killing the enemy only to find our sense of humanity diminished.  We cannot kill one human being without that act lessening our sense of humanness and lowering our standard for mutual respectfulness and world peace.

As religious leaders of and in our communities of faith we need to decide to stand for mutual respectfulness and responsible teaching.  When we teach our particular faith group that we are the better way, the only way, the best way we insult our fellow communicants and insinuate that we are right and they are wrong.  The system that supports a right and wrong world perpetuates un-heathy competitiveness.  Under the pretext of faith, love and peace we sow conflict competition and contradictions.  What is as leaders of respective religious communities of faith we took a bold step forward and embraces our belief system with denigrating or degrading or devaluing the system of others.  Would we then change the un-heathy system that fuels wars and wastelands and into a new respectful and responsible system that nurtures peace and a blossoming earth.

In the new system the key qualities would be mutual compassion, calmness, courage, and creativity that would find ways to be together to promote love and peace in our world because we do not believe anymore that it is us or them that are right.  Ghandi said years ago that an eye for an eye orientation to life results in a blind world.  I say today that an eye for an eye world results in people with only one eye that sees only their way and that is worse.  It is a cyclops that perpetuates war famine and destruction.  When we see with two eyes we see our way in a self-respectful way and we see the ways of others in an equally valuing and validating way, respectfully.  When Christians teach that Jesus, as any Christian or ecclesiastical group proscribes him, is the only way they do an injustice to all other communities of faith.  Part of justice and true spirituality is mutual respectfulness and responsible honesty.  The Jesus way is not an exclusive or excluding way but an inclusive and including way.  The Jesus way is not an ecclesiastical or creedal way it is a life and attitude way.  Jesus welcomes everyone and invites everyone to his table of love and peace. The way of Jesus is a way of self-sacrifice (it does not have to be my way), humility (I see you and your way as better than my way not because it is but because that is the way of humility -Phil 2:4) and openheartedness (God's heart of love and forgiveness is available to all regardless of the particular belief system they endorse or embrace.  Jesus is not the way the Way is Jesus.  Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, etc all teach the way that Jesus lived as the way we all should live.

Imagine a world where there is full mutual respectfulness of all communities of faith, unconditional love and agenda-less respect.  Peace on earth and intentional acts of good will toward all humanity form all humanity.  Sounds like a religious festival!  

To do this we do not need to change our core beliefs just our excluding and exclusive beliefs.  We can all have and maintain, with self respect and respect for others, our beliefs. All we need to do is add a closing belief statement to all our ecclesiastical statements of faith or creeds.  That statement would be that while we believe differently we all believe that what we believe should not separate us from one another in the community of faith or the community of the covenant of love and peace for each other and the world.

Peace, Shalom, Pax