Month: January 2024

Whenever the nation faces turbulent moments like market crashes, burst housing bubbles, pandemics, civil unrest, etc., major news media trot out anxiety about uncertainty as though they believe we we had been living in a time of pleasantly stable equilibrium. With disruptive events, media promotes the thought that no one will know what to do with everything so uncertain.  In addition, social media sites are quick to assert reassuring comprehensive knowledge of what’s going on and precisely what will happen next with no more accuracy than reading tea leaves or goat entrails.

In all honesty, we live in an uncertain world.  The degree of uncertainty can vary wildly, but society has never been in a state of stable equilibrium and predictable future. For most individuals tomorrow is most likely to go as planned.  Daily routines can be anticipated.  Day follows day, season follows season, and things work like they should except when they don’t.  Minor inconveniences and unexpected events can mess things up, but it’s generally a degree of variation easily tolerated. On the other hand, things can go very wrong with unexpected frequency.

Nature often behaves in ways that appear erratic and destructive, turning the way things are supposed to be upside down. Global economic and political conditions create unwanted shockwaves of violence, refugees and massive population migrations. Human fragility, selfishness, greed and wickedness infect society with evil challenging everything that is good.  To top it off, there are around 8 billion of us on the globe creating random collisions and consequences.  Remember the story of the butterfly effect?  Butterflies have nothing on us for the effects we can and do produce. 

We live in an uncertain world. In fact we need some degree of uncertainty to flourish, thrive and prosper. The question is, what degree of uncertainty can be tolerated?  There is no acceptable answer. Different people have different capacities for living easily with uncertainty.  Several studies of American society suggest that a large portion of the population wants clear boundaries and strong leadership telling them what’s expected and how they will be rewarded. Being an old guy, I go back to O.J. Harvey and his conclusion that the majority of (white) American adults are “other directed” survivors just trying to get through life. They are content being directed by others who give them some feeling of predictable reliability. It flies in the face of the creed of American individualism, but the two live together quite well.  It’s almost a truism that people will accept direction from leaders they believe are close to them and others like themselves, but suspect and resent top echelons and impersonal bureaucracies telling them what to do.  Beyond an unavoidable uncertainty, they are likely to see the world in black or white, right or wrong, but they are also resilient when resilience is demanded, the nation’s response to WWII as perhaps the most obvious example.  It’s a mindset with distribution across economic and social classes, so I recall. 

Harvey said a lesser portion of the population is willing to deal with greater degrees of uncertainty, adapt more easily to rapid change, and more willing to take on responsibility for making decisions affecting the lives of many. Maybe they have stronger support systems, more resources at their disposal, or different intellectual capabilities, or maybe something else.  In any case, they are able to navigate the changes and chances of this world  in ways other directed survivors would find overwhelmingly threatening. They are not immune from toxic anxiety over uncertainty but are able to tolerate more of it than the majority. The data is old (1970s)  and the methodology limited, but my guess is that human nature hasn’t changed much.

The more one is able to navigate in an uncertain world, the less things can be black or white, right or wrong, true or untrue.  The world becomes a place of provisional truth that can be acted on with an acceptable degree of confidence.  

Consider the bold decisions of Martin Luther King, John Lewis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others of recent memory.  They stand in a long line of women and men recorded in history and scripture who risked all in uncertain times with sure and certain trust in God’s call to work for godly justice, reform of the church, and the way of love that darkness cannot overcome. It would be a mistake to read that as romantic sentimentality. The record is of courage in the face of fear, and certainty of what needed to be done without knowing what the outcome would be.  They took on their work not on their own behalf but on behalf of all those who were simply struggling to get through life, unable to deal with more uncertainty than what had to be faced each day, bracketing everything else as black or white, right or Wong. 

Folks less able to cope with major surges of uncertainty are not the less for desiring more certainty than life can provide. They’re the warp and woof of society. In their prosperity lies the prosperity of the whole nation.  In other words, leaders cannot flourish if those whom they lead do not flourish. In fact, I can’t flourish if you do not flourish, and you may be someone I don’t know, may not like, and who may appear as a threat to me. 

A unity of persons and peoples is implied yet seems unlikely. For Christians, the place where the possibility of its realization that includes all peoples without exception may be found in the Lord’s Prayer.  It begins with our Father, not just my father and of others who believe like me.  God is ether ‘father’ of all or of none.  It asks God for what we (humanity) need today, not just what I need.  It’s a prayer that puts us in reconciling relationship with all others.  It acknowledges our limitations and weaknesses in the face of temptation, asking for the guidance we need.  At its heart it’s a Jewish prayer proclaiming God’s redeeming love for every creature and all of creation.  By praying it we proclaim our kinship with all, excluding none, regardless of belief or lack of it. 

It does nothing to resolve the problem of uncertainty that besets us.  What it does is give us a place to stand, a solid rock and certain test in God’s abounding and steadfast love.  There’s enough room on that rock for everyone.  No one is forced to stand on it, but everyone is invited.  It is the one certain and immovable place to stand.  It is the sure certainty we want.

How is one’s religious identity expressed by who they and how they understand themselves to be? It’s not an easy question to answer as it requires effort at honest self examination, and there’s a limit to what one can know about themself. Others see in us what we cannot see, and some things we keep well hidden.  An understanding of how our religious identity is reflected in our lives requires honestly looking at how we see ourselves in relation to family, friends, social classes, the circles we associate with, and society as a whole.  Paul in his letters and the author of the Letter to the Hebrews believed one’s religious identity as a Christian needed to mature and left readers uncertain about  what that meant. 

It’s one thing to declare our religious identity as Christian and another to demonstrate maturity in Christ as seen through the eyes of others. It raises questions about what maturity in Christ is.  I think some characteristics of maturity are common to everyone seeking to be emotionally healthy.   In a lecture I heard many years ago Dr. Karl Menninger stated that emotional maturity had several characteristics: the ability to recognize and deal with reality; the ability to accept change with a degree of ease; freedom from symptoms of toxic apprehension; an ability to be generous in giving and receiving; ability to relate to others in mutually satisfactory ways; ability to sublimate passions and emotions to moral judgment; curiosity with a capacity to learn.  No one is perfect in every measure.  In that sense, maturity is a process requiring whatever capacity one has and a degree of unwavering intentionality.

No doubt it’s an incomplete list and each characteristic is subject to more examination, but you get the idea.  If they are indicators of emotional maturity, I think they have to be included in any conversation about what it means to be mature in Christ, yet maturity in Christ is also something else. 

Somehow it  is to be more fully human by acknowledging absolute dependence on God, as we know God in Jesus Christ, thus freeing us from all dependence on society’s standards to tell us who we are and labeling us in the eyes of others. Confessing one’s dependency on God alone is the opposite of submitting to other humans or the demands of society in order to fit in. It is the opposite committing to an ideology or cause at the risk of losing one’s self. It is the opposite of claiming an independent autonomy that doesn’t exist.  Admitting to dependency on God is to live into the source of life itself, into the realm of perfect love, and to become a more fully and free human.  It is the key to becoming mature in Christ, and I think it has little to do with intellect or any other measure of status.

A curious example is a woman in her mid 40s who sits a few rows behind us in church.  She has Downs Syndrome, and in childlike exuberance for God, Jesus and worship, she exhibits many of Dr. Menninger’s characteristics of emotional maturity to the extent she is able. I don’t want to romanticize it. She has limitations, but seems to show that intellect has little to do with being mature in Christ. Never to be a theologian, her recognition of dependency on Christ, and her unshakeable confidence in love for and from others frees her from all the demands of class, status, power, and self doubt that haunts the rest of us.  I don’t have the freedom she has, and you probably don’t either.  My education, intellect and life experiences make the world a far more complicated and dangerous place than the world she lives in, but perhaps we can learn from her. The biggest obstacle to overcome is the illusion that we can be independent, autonomous persons who value individualism over duty to the communities in which we live. American individualism and love of autonomy makes it hard to admit we are dependent creatures.  

Humans are absolutely dependent on their elders for the first few years of life, and often on younger people at the end. Humans only slowly gain knowledge and skills needed to be “on our own” in ways that are never quite on our own. Wherever we go and whatever we do, we are always and everywhere dependent on others in ways that limit our freedom to act without restraint, accountability and consequences.  There is no such thing as a “self made man.”   

To be mature in Christ is to confess our dependence on Jesus  as the one to whom we owe our highest loyalty.  It doesn’t release us from the ordinary dependencies of human life, but it frees us to be more fully human as God intends us to be.  So what are the marks of being mature in Christ?  I think they have to include the characteristics described by Dr. Menninger, but there’s more. Because we are beloved by God we are free from being easily intimidated by usual expressions of power and authority. It means to respect the dignity of every human being, even those we don’t like or fear.  It means to admit weakness and failure but not let it dictate who we are. It means that at all times and in every place it is possible to be an agent of the light of Christ, flickering though it might be. It means to take seriously the depth of meaning in the Ten Commandments, God’s intentions for social and economic justice, and to follow in the way of Love Jesus has commanded.  

Following Paul’s admonition to the Romans, it is to live in harmony with others insofar as we are able.  It is to live in full recognition that Jesus will be made known to others, for good or ill, by what we say and do.  It is to be intentional as agents of healing, reconciliation and peace.  It is to recognize that we are owners of nothing, only temporary stewards who must one day give an accounting of our stewardship.  That’s a lot. No one is expected to be perfect in it. Nevertheless, they are marks of what it means to be mature in Christ, a maturity toward which we are to grow in the short time we have in this life. 

© Steven E. Woolley

I am increasingly disappointed with CNN and MSNBC, who in the past have been reasonably reliable sources of news.  When once they provided an overview of what was going on in our nation and the world, they now repeat themselves ad nauseam with a limited menu of political speculations spiced with whatever can be made salacious. We are presented with repetitive political stories by panelists spending minimal time reporting facts and maximum time speculating about what might soon happen and what it might mean if it does happen. Add magic wall and smart whiteboards as technological symbols of verification and you have the props for a good sitcom.

To be sure, what’s happening on campaign trails or in legislative sessions is important.  The public deserves to be kept well informed by the news media.  But there is a point when so much inconsequential bloviating turns into intellectual mush for some and alienating tripe for others.  In the meantime, important and interesting events are happening all over the country and throughout the world rating scant mention at best.  

Pew Research recently published a study on voting age members of the public who have dropped out of the political world, depriving democracy of votes from informed citizens. I would not be surprised to learn that cable news channels are a significant cause of the dropouts’ disaffection. Respondents leaned Republican and Democratic and were consistent in being driven away from politics by:

• The never ending flood of news and fund raising emails
• Constant attacks on opponents
• Constant fear mongering
• Loud angry voices from the right and the left
• Lack of clear, simple articulation about issues
• Campaign costs and funding
• Lack of bi-partisan legislative progress

I wasn’t among those surveyed but found myself in substantial agreement. Could it be different?  I think it might be if the major cable news outfits didn’t wallow in these very points with talking heads each going on and on about “Isn’t it awful, oh so awful.”  As I write the channels are filled with commentators focused on New Hampshire and Trump trials as if they were the only things anyone wants or needs to know about.  Are they reporting on what is happening?  No.  They are reporting on what might happen aided by panels of talking heads adding their own speculations.  

I suspect two things.  First, non-stop speculations flooding the airwaves may influence the process to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Second, flooding the airways with panels of talking heads adding even more speculation may drive too many people away from fulfilling the important role of informed citizen. 

Political ads, talk radio and fringe internet news channels provide all the disinformation, hostility and confusion the nation can stand.  We need the major news sources to provide articulate fact based reporting about what is happening, not what might happen.  If they must editorialize, it should be kept short in separate program segments. But if they only do that, how are they to fill all their time?  Report on what is going on in fifty states, all of our territories, Canada, Mexico, and the rest of the world. 

There are, of course, other broadcast media to which the public can turn, but none have the reach of CNN and MSNBC.  As for me, I find NPR, BBC, The Guardian and Reuters to be trustworthy sources of news about world wide events.

© Steven E. Woolley

Rowan Williams says that the church exists to respond to God’s invitation.  By church he meant the entire body of Christ, not congregations, denominations or buildings.  I’ve been reflecting on what that might mean for me and those who attend my classes.

What is the nature of God’s invitation?  In ordinary terms, an invitation is to be asked to join with others in an event exclusive to those who are invited.  God’s invitation, as extended through Jesus, is to everyone in any time and every place.  No one is excluded.  In ordinary terms, responding to an invitation is to enter the event and leave when it is over.  Responding to God’s invitation is to enter God’s presence and be sent out to do something.  What sort of something would that be?  Even more odd, God’s invitation is a never ending cycle of entering only to be sent out again. It never ends.

I think for us ordinary people leading ordinary lives, the invitation is to begin learning now how to live in to some portion of God’s kingdom.  It means learning to live with the godly love of benevolent presence and godly love with others.  To be a Christian is to be a life long learner progressing in awkward steps as a disciple of Jesus Christ.  In the words of St. James, it is to be doers and not just hearers of the Word.  Part of being a doer of the Word is learning to be an agent of the invitation.  What can that mean?  It is that we each learn in different ways, at different rates, with different skills and interests.

When Jesus told his disciples not to worry about what they were to say, that the Spirit would give them the right words, he meant not to worry about a one size fits all right way, not to compare one’s self against what others do or don’t do, just relax, do what you can as you are able in your own way.  But do it always with Jesus at the center, never at the periphery.  It’s not that easy.  No doubt that’s why Williams calls Christianity a life of learning.  

 I suspect most Christians attend worship to be nourished by Word and Sacrament, and leave without giving much thought to having been sent out as agents of God’s invitation. And why not?  The pressures of daily life easily drown out God’s call to be doers and not just hearers of the Word.  Paul, in his many letters, urged new Cristians to be wary of surrendering to social pressures about status, wealth, and power as signs of success for acceptability. Yet they were not to exclude themselves from society. Instead, in the face of doubts and weakness but with confidence, enter that world as servants of God’s love with steadfastness. No one can do that in one giant leap of faith.  That’s why being a Christian is a learning process and the church is, at least in part, a place of learning.  There is no graduation, at least not in this life. There are no degrees.  Everyone willing to learn is good enough, and good enough is an acceptable standard in Jesus’ eyes.  

Does that mean one doesn’t have to try very hard?  No.  To accept God’s invitation is to surrender to the indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit leading ever farther and deeper according to one’s gifts and abilities into the ways of servanthood.  Christians are not called to be saviors of others.  They are called to be servants of others as agents of the only savior, Jesus Christ.  The Christian life is not one of perfection but one of incremental faithfulness even in the face of doubt.  It is a life of servanthood.

Servanthood may be the hardest obstacle to overcome.  We tend to be fixers of problems we see in the lives of others.  We complicate it by wanting to be pleasers anticipating needs that may not exist. Failing that, some of us turn to assertion of authority over others backed up by intimidation, anger, and postures of superiority – anything to avoid becoming mere humble door mats.  Servanthood in the way of Jesus Christ is to be confident in one’s self as a child of God and able to engage others as they are, regardless of condition.  It’s a difficult lesson to learn.  God’s servants such as Harriet Bedell and Mother Teresa succeeded by entering into the life in cultures of those they came to serve.  Others like Marcus Whitman failed by disrespecting the dignity of others unlike themselves, assaulting them with the superiority of their own way of life as the only acceptable Christian way.

Responding to God’s invitation is to enter the process of becoming more fully human, filled with holy humility which, paradoxically, is to be filled with confidence and courage to engage others in Christian love.

No one can identify who they are except in terms of their relationships with others. There’s no such thing as a pure individual existing solely by themselves, for themselves.  It’s true for even the most extreme cases: hermits, misanthropes, etc. I am unaware of any time in human history that people didn’t gravitate toward living in community.  It’s more than gathering for mutual self protection against danger.  There is something about community that fulfills what it means to be a healthy, fully formed person.  

I suspect it’s the reason why societies across the globe place a high value on the health and integrity of community as a prerequisite for the health and integrity of the individual.  Maybe it’s the inherent importance of community that lead to the development of tribes and tribalism. The very names conjuring images of hostile division and inter-tribal warfare.   America has stood apart as an exception to the rule. There’s a popular story that America was founded as a nation in which individuals were members of no tribe, each free to pursue their own destiny uniting with others only as members of a tribe-less nation.  The story of rugged American individualism and a myth with some merit. It rejected the European model that forced people to adhere to the standards of the class into which they were born. The idea of American individualism eventually morphed into  the cowboy myth of the West celebrated in story from “The Last of the Mohicans” to the recent t.v. hit “Yellowstone” and everything in between.  As popularly romantic as the story is, there’s a dark side that has corroded American democracy.

As scholar and historian Heather Cox Richardson has pointed out, the myth of American individualism has been politicized with great effectiveness by turning public opinion against the importance of strong, healthy communities essential for American democracy to be the engine of prosperity for all. Communities are described by how they are organized and sustained, in other words, how they are governed.  The politicized version of individualism claims to cherish community but not government. That the two cannot be separated seems to have escaped recognition.  

The corrupted version of American individualism values personal relationships but labels government as the enemy of individual freedom. In its abhorrence of tribalism, it has constructed an imaginary super tribe.  With two choices: join the tribe in obedient submission, or be labeled a troublesome outcast.  

It’s surprising how easy it is for exaggerated individualism to be turned into a tightly proscribed tribe of ubermenschen.  It’s not what the libertarians wanted so many decades ago when they named government the problem, not the solution.  Not really anti government, they wanted government as a private tool to enhance profit making opportunities with little regulatory oversight. 

It brings me back to tribes and tribalism.  Tribalism has gotten a bad rap of late, including from me.  It’s been seen as dividing the country into groups isolated from and hostile to each other. But there is another side.  Forming tribes is what humans do and America’s tribal history has some positive lessons.  In the broadest possible sense, I think American tribes were two basic types: American Indian and European settlers.

American Indian tribes appear to have established a remarkable equilibrium in which inter-tribal hostilities were resolved more with ritual than warfare, and inter-tribal commerce was optimized given the limitations of time and space. It wasn’t perfect nor romantic, but it demonstrated tribal communities could coexist in reasonable harmony, a lesson European settlers failed to recognize or learn from.  

Once the Indian wars were resolved (in the worst possible way), settlers also populated the land in their own versions of tribal units.  At first, by religious denomination: Puritans, Pilgrims, Anglicans, Catholics, Baptists, Quakers, etc. Midwest towns still bear the marks of having been German, English, Swedish, Norwegian, French or Polish.  California and the Southwest were Spanish from one end to the other. Americans had a hard time learning that tribes, Indian or European, could live in reasonable harmony as individuals in community acting for the good of the community and coexisting for the welfare of one nation.  Sorely tested over the years the nation and its ideals have endured, at least until now. 

I find it strange that so many Americans think not long ago there was a time when we were all one tribe epitomized by suburban Cleavers or rural Smallville folk.  To be American was to be one or the other and we should be that way again.  It never was.  We never were.

I could be wrong but I think today’s tribes are quite different. Skin color, economic class, educational status, career paths, and things like that are what divide us into tribes.  Tribal territories are marked by neighborhood and life styles. Political ideology has become a marker of tribal membership giving the impression of integration existing only in the political moment.  Even those most committed to a fully integrated society will treasure it in public places but accept the reality of self chosen segregation (not necessarily by skin color) in neighborhoods. I think it’s a tendency so ingrained in human nature that it’s unlikely to be eliminated anytime soon.

Would that today’s tribes might learn from the heritage of American Indians.  There’s nothing to prevent today’s tribes from living in reasonably harmonious and mutually profitable relationships with each other.  There’s nothing to prevent them from recognizing that their own well being depends on the well being of every tribe.  There’s nothing to prevent them from recognizing that individual rights and freedoms have obligations to the tribe and nation, with consequences for failing to meet them. It should be obvious that a strong federal government, as envisioned in The Federalist Papers, is needed to provide the rules,  structure and resources for all tribes to prosper as one. 

You might reasonably ask if I have a tribal preference.  Yes, I do.  I favor an economically and racially diverse tribe unified by intellectual curiosity.  Do I live in one?  No, not yet.

Public opinion polling, at least as reported in the media, seems to focus on single issues, voter attitudes towards them, and the likely effect they will have on general elections.  The recent midterms were defined by the media as a referendum on abortion and little else. The outcome of the 2024 presidential campaign has been said to depend on the mood of pro-choice and anti abortion activists.  Climate change and the southern border are two more single issues presumed to be the realms of rock solid single issue voters who will favor only candidates who agree to their non-negotiable terms and conditions. At least for the moment, news media is hyping public angst over the border and immigration, which only adds to single issue divisiveness.

I don’t believe the American voting public is so narrow minded.  At the same time, I have dozens of acquaintances who are so dedicated to one iron clad position on one controversial issue that it will determine their vote no matter what else is at stake.   How many among all voters are like that? I have no idea but imagine two things.  First, candidates can be lured into pursuing their favored single issue voters to the exclusion of the majority of voters and the general interests of constituencies. Second, there could be enough single issue voters whose self-righteous intransigence is sufficient to assure the election of candidates who will do no good for democracy or the greater needs of the nation.

I recognize, if not fully understand, the passion some voters have for a single issue. Each is of real importance to the country as a whole and worthy of advocates who will devote time and energy in pursuing a resolution leading to a better society for all.  But passion is taken too far when the world is divided into allies, enemies, and ignorant fools who don’t know what’s right. It goes too far when righteous indignation turns to violence rather than enduring the cost of radical civil disobedience.  It goes too far when dissenting  voices are silenced by prohibitions of free speech, which, parenthetically, is never a freedom without restriction. 

Why is it so easy to believe there are only two alternatives: fight like hell or lay down like a door mat and let others stomp on you? It seems to be the mindset of single issue voters and it can never lead to the common good.   But, one might object, what about the single mindedness of a Martin Luther King, Jr? He and other civil rights leaders were indeed singleminded but not about single issues.  For the common good of the nation, they were adamant about the particular rights of blacks, other people of color and the poor in general.  They were single minded in non-violence and paid the price for it.  They were single minded about entering honest conversation with anyone and everyone. Single issue voters, to the contrary, sit on their self righteous stools, refuse to move for anyone, and don’t give a damn about what else is happening as long as their issue is resolved according to their non-negotiable demands. 

Divisive single issue politics do not stand on their own.  They are supported by a complex network of racial and ethnic prejudices, corporate self-interests, and political movements such as Christian nationalism, isolationism, what Heather Cox Richardson calls movement conservatives, and others whose immovable adherents come from the extremes of the political spectrum and a sizable body of the gullible. What is difficult to keep in mind is that crackpot positions on issues do not mean the issues are crackpot.  Some may be but the majority have validity that must be taken seriously by those who would lead progress on their resolution through our democratic processes.