As David (Ukraine) and Goliath (Russia) battle it out in the world stage I’m struck by the learning curve of both old and young.
Pure Lives Matter
The young of America, sadly, are awakening to a 20th century lesson rooted in the tangible reality of freedom’s value and the truth that malevolent forces can, in a moment, do far more than make us feel
unsafe. Evil can run right over you like a massive tank crushing a small Volkswagen bug. Nation-states can in fact be monsters of oppression or defenders of little children who simply want to grow up a people, free. These are the lessons from an enlightened modernity where one young person can face down a Goliath precisely because at the heart of reality is the courage to do the right thing by everyone.
Yet in the awakening of the young I do not fear. They are the daughters and sons of the emerging Einsteinium world where both time and matter bend to make room for love. Theirs is a world connected, where if one community is left out, pushed down while another prospers they ask;“How can this be?” Like one who walked the earth some two thousand years before, these post-moderns wish to bless the poor, those who mourn, the ones who do not demand their way. Like the Marines of war, they want no one left behind. Indeed, if heaven is two thirds empty, they reason, it must be hell.
So the lesson for these post-modern young is this: Individual and communal character matters as systems of inclusion cannot be sustained apart from communities of individuals who love neighbor, sometimes more than self. It is the kind of sacrificial love being evidenced at extreme cost by both young and old in the Ukraine. What’s new is that it is not the sons and daughters of the privileged tweeting out pithy woke truisms about power. It is instead the poor, those mourning for their cities, culture and children. It is those who make Molotov cocktail bombs in the dark praying for peace at days dawn. These are the new blessed whose hearts are being poured out in the midst of persecution; if not for Christ, for the love of their neighbor and freedom.
Marginalized Lives Matter
It is the awakening of the old of AmerIca for whom I mourn. The sons and daughters of the greatest generation who were called upon in another European war, reluctantly they went, pushed out from behind the safety of the two great oceans, east and west. Two enemies in Europe, one in the Far East who made the oceans, a lake seem.
These were the largely middle class children of an American faith in Divine law and order—God, Country and King (Constitutional order). These two hundred year descendants of a rational universe, was first reavealed in the first modern President in which reason reigned king, in Teddy Roosevelt. A brilliant man he also awakened a sleeping and emerging power to do both good and not so good things. One would have to quote the Queen of Hawaii for some of the bad. Yet the conviction remained, If only we tame by Spirit and in our soul the wrestless lust of sins domain, it is peace and prosperity we gain—for we are the children of God’s privileged, the universe we could master, if only the need.
In the civil religion of the American dream Christ has saved us and what is more; We have prospered under God’s care, we assume for the gospel of individual salvation to spread under freedoms wing. This evangelical call was captured in the anthem that forged us a people. ”As Christ died to make men holy let us die to make men free.“
As long as these sentiments were in response to the scourge of slavery or the Nazi tyrannies the underlying Christian faith with a Christ who freely laid down before power’s evil sanctified or made holy even the horrible theology that is civil faith of a people free. And what precisely is the issue? Christ is removed as the suffering servant who is victor because in his wounds the nations are healed. That is the Achilles heel of the modernity-enlightened American Evangelical Church. In its place is something more akin to ‘Christ has suffered and is now raised victorious and we with him shall rise.‘
The actual center of the gospel is the message that heaven is breaking into the earth. The prayer of our Lord, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as in heaven” is its anthem. We who are Christian and American are called to see our world through Jesus eyes wherein the blessed are not the rich, but poor, not the laughter of Disney-world but the grieving neighbor, not the celebrity who is without a moral center but the old and young who actually seek Justice, peace and keep faith with both God and humans. Whatever our perspective of the lack of good governance at our southern border the Jesus follower, without being naive, should see in the faces of undocumented migrants the desperation of need and respond, not a terrorist.
So again I ask: Will the older of the American Evangelical Church—of which I identify—learn the lessons of war, well?
We will not if we continue to preach a narrow, individualized gospel of personal salvation, transactional in nature, whose reward is life in another place and that de-coupled from the early Christian understanding that Jesus changed everything for everyone and looked forward to the renewal of all things with Christ’s present/future reign of love—where justice and Shalom fill the earth.
The practical result is we look to Jesus for soul salvation and to Washington DC for the worlds salvation, holding ever tighter to our A-bombs to keep us safe from the Putins and Zhee’s of the earth. Our civil religion trumps the Jesus way. The only lesson we learn from Ukraine is that we need to keep ourselves and everyone else safe till we are outa here.
Our gospel, which thank God, still transforms many a life, nevertheless comes from a place very different than at the beginning. We are the privileged of the earth looking forward to an eternity in Disneyland just because we‘ve believed the right stuff. We are ruled by our Modernity-Enlightened world view and believe it to be the Christian one. We may be among the shocked to instead hear from Jesus, “‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me’” (Matthew 25:41-43 NIV).
Prayer Matters
“May God surround the Ukrainian peoples in their suffering we pray. Help us as a people to listen well, repent of our own arrogance and do what we can to alleviate suffering and to enable the brave souls to fight well. Please help the Russia people to stand against their government and pleas save President Putin from himself I pray. Amen”
Terry, Blessings!
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