Remember the three-legged stool I taught you? I learned those legs in 12-step recovery - not grad school. One of the three legs is: "If I am disturbed, the problem is in me." This letter is about this truism.
I imagine in a different era and if you were different ages Mary Jane and Brad would be Aunt MJ & Uncle Brad. They are really good friends to Pabs and me. One day Mary Jane and I were talking about the evolution of our therapists' guild and the devolution of our school.
The Seattle School taught me so much: The idea of the I/Thou relationship, Esther Meeks' covenant epistemology, a possible understanding (which has become my understanding) of how the mind works, all about shame, the difference between niceness and kindness, a new Biblical theology, a fleshed-out theology of freedom, the concept of "And" instead of "But," a theology of Holy Saturday, a fleshed-out theology of the Imago Dei, attachment theory, play therapy and the importance of play, and that I need to create space for intersections of thoughts and ideas to become more fully engaged (I learned as an undergrad that ideas of consequences).
As Mary Jane and I compared notes about our alma mater and the state of our guild (The ACA), she was not surprised/surprised to learn that our grad school was not welcoming to "non-progressive" thinkers; and that there was an underground of students that learned to simply keep our mouths shut in order not to be ostracized, labeled, called names and attacked by other students. One would think that Esther Meeks' ideas would stop some of the blatant condemnation that marks so much of the intercourse surrounding how one approaches life, and indeed I think it did mitigate some of the fallout. But, it certainly didn't stop the prejudice.
I want to be very careful because while I was there, the faculty and administration were rarely condemning of other voices and ideas. The condemnation was primarily limited to the student body. And, to this day, I do not know of a school that teaches counseling/psychology where it is possible to get the level of instruction I received and not have to face a progressive fundamentalist epistemology of black and white thinking that effectively destroys dialogue with other ideologies and perspectives. The idea of holding the "&" is an ideal that I was taught at The Seattle School. And, yet, while the Seattle School holds it as well as any counseling grad school you can name -- it still fails miserably. Institutions are rarely perfect.
But beyond that, Mary Jane stated that our therapists' guild is losing our way and we are becoming social workers. We are not helping people change, adapt, and become more resilient (a traditional role of a therapist), as much as we are pointing out and working to change the injurious system (the traditional role of a social worker). This is important because injustice will always surround us, no matter the ideological system we create. Woody Allen pointed this out admirably in his movie, "Sleeper."
The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous tells the story of a doctor who knew that the problem was always, "out there." He believed if only the world would be fixed, he'd be OK. He learned in AA that such a belief is errant. If "the problem" is "out there," individuals give away their power to find joy and peace. This is why AA teaches its members the serenity prayer, "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can't change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Only by understanding what we can and cannot change can we begin to find peace.
We can only change ourselves. We can't change others. We can't lay our hope in systems changing in order for justice to run down and people to find wholeness. Wholeness is not found in external sources. Wholeness is discovered when we can assimilate the exiled parts of ourselves, which we want to ignore, and "re-member" them differently, interact with them compassionately and become whole instead of remaining fragmented and broken. Shit guys, whole books could be written fleshing out this paragraph! I guess that is why I went to grad school; in order to begin to embody the truths I just articulated and help others do so. This is why I am a therapist and a rebel for love
I live my life as a rebel for love. I fight death. But not mere physical death. For physical death does not have to be the enemy of love. No, the death of which I speak -- who is my enemy, and who will one day be completely destroyed is called, “Shame.” Shame is death by another name. It is always accompanied by “self-serving,” and, can’t be fought through the politics of power and control. It can only be defeated by love and self-sacrifice. It can only be defeated by a gaze that communicates, “You are valuable. You are loved. That won't change.”
For many years I've labeled myself “pro-life” even though I don’t always vote a “pro-life agenda.” I am pretty outspoken in my condemnation of the "pro-choice" defenders. People wonder how I can be against abortion, call myself pro-life, and not push for abortions to be illegal; and, I answer that though I label myself pro-marriage and think adultery is evil; I don’t think adultery should be illegal. And, that though I am pro-sobriety, clear-headedness, and relational connectedness; I do not think that alcohol or illicit drugs of any kind should be illegal. So, it follows, given my invitational nature — I invite people to the good, rather than to try to force them to it — that I can hold abortion to be an abomination and not fight for it to be illegal. There are too many evils like this to name — things that destroy people and relationships that I have no desire to outlaw. I believe people need to have the freedom to choose good over evil, rather than be forced to it. I’ve written about this to you extensively and don’t think I need to repeat myself here once again.
Within the last year or so, Tony Kriz and I were talking about the “pro-life” debacle — people who stand against abortion politically; who try to make the choice to abort a child illegal and who are also war hawks, pro-gun, pro-death penalty folk. Tony told me that he’d adopted the label, “anti-death,” for himself. I took it as an invitation. Slowly, I began to refer to myself the same way. I now say, “I am anti-death.”
Tony’s and my conversation occurred in the context of Paula and I walking this horrific end of life road with her parents. As you know, Miggy — “007” — is a brilliant man and nuclear engineer who is now stuck inside his body and his mind. He cannot speak. He cannot toilet. He cannot feed nor dress himself. Neither can he walk. We need to thicken anything he drinks so that he does not asphyxiate. This is not a life he would want or chose. He has a DNR that is incredibly strict. Mike would prefer not to be alive at this point. If we were a tribal people, he wouldn’t be. And yet he is. We keep him alive against his will. The life we give him is actually death for him.
Dementia and Alzheimers were your Gramgee’s biggest fear. She wanted to be dead rather than to live with losing her mind; yet, that is how she left the planet. I am beyond grateful for a doctor who cared enough to not to prolong her life any longer than she cared to live because while I am convinced her last months and years were God's great gift to her, she was miserable in the end.
When we got toward the end of Dad’s life we had a choice on how to proceed with his cancer treatment. We chose to attack the tumor aggressively. Weekly I took him to his radiation appointments. And, while the radiation wasn’t fun, it allowed him to maintain his quality of life. He and I still played and took short trips together. We still went out and enjoyed Timbers games, etc. But, the radiation was not a cure. The doctors thought that taking the tumor out surgically was the best medical course, so we followed their counsel. I would not repeat it, nor do I want it for me. For while we may have prolonged Dad’s life a little, we destroyed his quality of life. His last 9 months were miserable. He practically lived at OHSU. His life was sucked out of him. I wish I could have a mulligan on Dad’s end of life. We’d play it completely differently than we did. The choices we made during those days are some of my biggest regrets.
People often think me morbid to say I want to exit the planet on the back of my bike, but I want to die as I lived. See, death doesn’t scare me in the slightest. I told Thomas last night on a FaceTime that I am ready to go whenever. though I have no death wish. There is a lot of life left to live, I am content to exit whenever it is time to go. I would be lying to say that the process of dying doesn’t scare me though. It petrifies me. I certainly don’t want to exit the way Gramgee did, nor the way Mike and Char are. Waking in glory is my hope, suffering along the way is my nightmare. If there is a redemptive feature to it, it eludes me.
All of that brings us to a discussion of this incredible time period we are all experiencing right now. I have not lived through anything like it. There have been times like it in history, but none that any living person has ever experienced. The pandemic of 1918 and the Black Death of the middle ages were similar in the annuals of human history. But this is completely unique and new. It is as if a giant “pause” button was being pushed. We are being forced to live a year of Jubilee (See the Old Testament commands around this) even though we’d never choose it for ourselves.
I along with millions of others, are taking actions right now to ensure that you, in particular, Maggie — and the countless others like you who have health challenges — are not put into positions where you have to fight for lives not yet fully lived. For though I may be ready to enter glory at any time; and though, I may see the reality that Gigi and Miggy would prefer to stop breathing and exit this planet; I am not ready for you and/or TL to do the same. You both have lives to live. You are my greatest gifts to this world. And much h of the hope of life I hold is to leave you to the world when I exit the stage. There is no greater gift I can imagine giving the world than the two of you. No amount of money or profit; nothing I build or create can compare to the gift that you are to this planet.
I’m joyfully choosing to give up my ability to move around and enjoy my life the way I want in order to make sure others have a chance to continue breathing. Some don’t want to give up these freedoms. They are saying, “I want to live the way I choose to live. Don’t tell me how to live. It is my body, and my choice.” It is ironic how the catchphrase of the pro-choice movement is now being used to spread even more death.And while one of my social media friends complained about that reality and attempted to deny any parallels to abortion saying this is a completely different thing; her arguments were inane, factually wrong, and harmful and hurtful.
For too long, the pro-choice movement has sounded the refrain, “My body, my choice.” Don’t tell me that I can’t live the way I chose even if it costs another human life. I shouldn’t have to have any consequences for my actions. Men, not wanting responsibility pushed abortion further. There was now another escape of responsibility; men became abortionists and began pushing a “pro-choice” agenda. There was an additional benefit to ridding the world of unwanted brown babies, now that machines and industry didn’t need their cheap or free labor — we truly could get to a place of survival of the fittest, the poor and the downtrodden could be controlled simply through population control, and a marketing genius made it all sound as if it was a woman’s choice.
Now the oligarchs have repurposed their slogan and are now arguing that “opening the economy” is more important that the health risks of 2% of the population (think of how many millions of lives that is!); that people need to be “free” to chose to live the lives they want rather than be held captive by a disease that threatens others’ lives. It is a similar refrain to the war hawks who are willing to kill thousands “over there” so Americans can have the kind of life we want to have “over here.” It is the kind of refrain that allows us to separate mothers from their children at the border, putting their kids in prison, so that we don’t have to worry about being overrun by brown-skinned people who may cost us a few dollars to feed and clothe. Why should we? They don’t even speak English.
The real issue, whether it is abortion, or war, or immigration policy is an insipid commitment to pursuing death rather than life. The death of which I speak is bigger than mere, “ending of breath.” Death is a commitment to self without regard for another. Death, as I am defining it here, is the denial of relationship. For there is no life without love. The mother who kills her unborn child by having an abortion must deny any relationship to that unborn child. The oligarch who pushes the politician to order a pilot to drop a bomb on the oligarch’s enemy; or a seaman to launch a missile to do the same, has to deny a relationship or connection to the families they kill when the bombs and missiles land, killing indiscriminately. The populist who says the parents of the kids at the border that we threw in prison, should never have brought their kids here in the first place, has to deny any kind of relationship to those brown-skinned children in order to throw them into those prisons. The Russian policeman who arrests the dissident to send them to the Gulag has to deny the horror to which they are sending them. We have to deny relationship to live the way we want. The tribesman who captures and enslaves one from a different tribe to sell him into slavery has to deny any kind of relationship to him. In order to perpetrate such evil, we have to first deny relationship and therefore humanity. In so doing, we create a culture of death. I will stand against that culture with all my being. It is why I stand as a rebel for Love.
When one feels the need to control another adult, to take power over another adult, to get them to behave the way you think they ought to behave, you are engaging in evil. The attempt to gain control and power is the first sin. It is how Adam and Eve were tempted in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3). It is how Jesus was tempted after his baptism (Matthew 4). It is something that God does not do with us. He seemingly always allows us to choose evil. He gives us the freedom to make evil choices. It is one of the biggest complaints people have with God. "Why does God allow evil?" The atheist argues. Surely a good God would not allow all the atrocities that occur in the world. Yet, God does. He doesn't choose to take power over people, but rather continually invites them to another way of life -- The way of love. Usurping, or attempting to usurp power that God doesn't take is surely the worst kind of Evil.
Recently, a good friend, who I respect and admire posted an admiration piece on AOC. I trolled him. Though I try not to, some friends simply beg to be trolled. Gotta figure out what that is all about. But, that is another post. On his post, referring to AOC, I wrote, "She is her own kind of evil." He asked me to articulate what about her makes me say that. Another friend, who I also respect, posted her record that isn't so different from many of the new wave of socialists flooding the House, as the electorate reacts to the evil in the White House.
My friend accused me of having "racially informed libertarian leanings." I cracked up at that, partly because my political leanings find their genesis in from my understanding of Scripture which he is partially responsible for -- specifically, the theological position that individuals, as well as people, are made in the image of God (the Imago Dei). If that is true than individuals are made to be free. I put that together with 18th-century French political theory developed by Frederick Bastiat, my time in 12-step rooms and studying The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and finally my work in the domestic Violence world where I learned to define abuse as, "any time I attempt to tear at the humanity of another." Combining those streams of thought and experience, I end up holding that DJT and AOC are both tools of evil -- if not evil itself. This does not mean that they are exempt for being used by God -- for God uses all things. He used the Pharisees and Herod and Pilot and the Centurians who crucified Jesus. God transforms evil. But that does not excuse it.
So with that prolegomena, let's talk about why I think both our current president, DJT; and Congresswoman, AOC are evil...
They are evil because they are trying to take control and power over others - not to hold evil back, but to promote their own agendas.
Let's look briefly at this story from the gospels. James and John came to Jesus and they said, "Will you grant us a request?" Jesus responded, "I don't know what it is, but, maybe?" They then said, "When you enter your Kingdom, we want to sit next to you - one on the right, and one on the left." Jesus responded, "That isn't mine to give, but watch yourselves. Don't look at authority the way the world does. That isn't the way of the Kingdom. Instead, learn to be servants, for the first will be last and the last will be first."
Jesus repeatedly turned the world as the disciples understood it on its head. True power was found in giving up power. True life is found by sacrificing one's own life. Love, modeled in the Trinitarian relationship, was the template for life in the Kingdom. This relational life does not grab after power and control -- that is the world's way. To be made in the Image of God is to be made free to chose either good or evil. God purposely chose never to try to force us to the good, though God continually did warn us against the evil. That evil, revealed in story after story in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, seems to happen most often when one person tries to take power over another. The quest and thirst for power are the taproots of the story of the Fall in Genesis 3 and the temptation of Jesus in Matthew 4. It is nearly always one of the ways people are tempted toward evil. This, in and of itself, by itself is more than enough to say that DJT and AOC are both evil, for both want to control others, wanting to and taking power over them.
As far as I know, Frederick Bastiat, who wrote a small, wonderful booklet entitled, The Law, was not a Christ-follower of any kind. He was a political theorist who argued that the collective does not have rights that individuals don't have. He gave the example of ten friends gathering together and nine of them voting to take the tenth friend's money and divide it equally between them. Such action would is immoral. I think he is right. While his argument has limitations - everyone believes the collective has some rights that individuals don't have. For instance, the collective can imprison people for wrongdoing and hurting others. The collective does what it can to protect its citizens. The real issue here becomes, where is it right for the collective to draw this line in repurposing wealth and property and still be moral? Many of these questions are far more easily answered on the community level rather than the national level.
If someone attacks a village, the village bands together to protect itself. However, if a rich person wants to take more land from someone else to become richer, she may well use her power to conscript poorer people to fight for her to take what is not hers. This is the beginning of nationalism and the genesis of America. Here it is easy to see the evil that arises from a quest for power. Part of Bastiat's answer to this question of where the line of individual versus collective rights is drawn was to argue that collectives existed to protect the individual. Governments exist to hold evil back. They do not exist to promote the good. This is where disagreements take place among thoughtful people. I hold that disease and death are non-human forms of evil and therefore the collective needs to form a collective to fight against them. To some degree, I believe that ignorance is also a form of evil and so the collective is wise to work together to combat it through education. In this realm, I struggle because historically, we fall into the trap of teaching people what to think rather than how to think. Education has limits. We have made it into a tool of the corporatists and the oligarchs. So, while I agree that education is an antidote to the evil of ignorance, centralizing control of it is its own form of evil.
Bastiat's economy can be seen in the realities of the microcosm of a household. It is far too easy to let others take the responsibility to love. I don't say this proudly, but when Paula is traveling I simply do all the things that need to be done around the house. When she is home, many times, I wait for her to see what she does to see what I need to do. This approach to life is not loving Paula, it is me giving up my responsibilities because it is easier. People often don't do things because they don't have to do those things. Someone else will do them. So, if I can get others to pay more, I can pay less. This is immoral. This is a form of evil. I want to make sure people are cared for at the lowest possible cost to myself. Therefore, I will spend other's resources to alleviate my need to care for the marginalized and the poor. Practically, socialism takes real pain and makes it someone else's problem. I don't have to worry about it anymore. The government will take care of it. That is surely not what is intended. But it is what results from the practice. We tend to not do what others are doing. Parents don't spend the time educating their kids because schools do it. I don't give to the homeless because we pay taxes to address it and then bitch and moan when City Hall can't come up with viable solutions to the problem. We don't worry about unwanted children because we kill them before they are born. We figure out a way to pay as little as we can, knowing that someone else will pick up the slack.
Recovery also shaped why I see both AOC and DJT as evil. I don't think I've ever explained how The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous works. We are now into the Fourth Edition. In every Edition the first 164 pages are identical. So, for instance when people talk about, "the promises," everyone knows to turn to page 83 to find them. Those first 164 pages never change. The majority of the book, however, is the stories of recovery which make up the last 2/3 of the book. One of those stories, found in both the Third Edition around page 473 and in the Fourth Edition, around page 416, is entitled, "Acceptance is the key." It is a doctor's story of recovery from alcoholism. My therapist at Keystone asked me to read three pages from that story every day for three weeks of my five-week stay in rehab. The doctor points out that he was an expert in finding the problems in everyone and everything else in the world, but it took realizing that his problem lay inside of himself, for him to stop drinking. His story was my story. I had to stop pointing my finger at "the evil out there," and discover that the problem wasn't out there. It was in my inner sanctum and inner being. Once I realized this. Once I accepted my own shame, I opened the door to healing and Love.
I saw this same issue as I worked with domestic violence perpetrators. The men with whom I worked saw themselves as victims. They gave their power away. They felt emasculated and so they grasped for power that was not theirs to grasp, They tried to control their girlfriends and wives, abusing them along the way. My refrain to them was heard almost every week, "abuse occurs whenever you attempt to tear at the humanity of another." We typically abuse people in one of the following ways: physically, verbally, sexually, emotionally/mentally, financially, through control or damage of properties, harm to pets, and spiritual abuse.
DJT is doing this by stealing property to build a wall. AOC is doing this by attempting to steal wealth to pay to accomplish what she sees as moral, saying that those who have billions could not have come by those dollars honestly. She may be right about that, but we don't right wrongs by repeating them. In many ways, AOC's approach is not so different from Jerry Falwell's attempt to control morality from the conservative position. When we attempt to control morality, rather than to invite people to it, we attempt to do something God never did, because it would violate His very nature. And things that violate the nature of God are evil
Both DJT and AOC believe that the problems in the world are, "out there," problems. Both want to take control of other peoples' lives, to fix the problems. And let me remind you that if we can only be OK if others change, we are in deep shit. That belief creates a sense of powerlessness which in turn swings to abuse. People don't like feeling powerless so they grasp power. That is a mistake. Grasping power is at the root of Evil.
Both the unfettered nationalistic capitalism of DJT, and the democratic socialistic vision of AOC are born in the furnace of an attempt to take control and power over others. Both have succumbed to the same temptation that Jesus overcame, Both see the problem as being, "out there." They are both wrong. They have both bought into the economy of the Evil One rather than the Kingdom of God. This shadow kingdom must be labeled correctly or we shall wrongly endeavor to live as its citizens rather than claiming our birthright in the Kingdom of Light and Love.
Yesterday, as I was driving to pick up TL for racketball, "Hero" by Steve Taylor came up on my playlist:
I began thinking of my work, my story, my desire for a Ph.D. and my need to hone down my topic. I don't remember when I first heard Taylor's song, it was a long, long time ago. It immediately struck a chord with me. Growing up, I always wanted to be a hero. As an adult, I always wanted to be your hero. I wanted to be a hero to everyone close to me. I knew that if I could be a hero, I'd be loved; I'd not merely be me.
So, I've gotten lost in stories of heroes. As I got older, my heroes became more nuanced. And, my understanding of the "hero's journey" has also become more sophisticated. Joseph Campbell identified the Hero's Journey back in 1949. Writers have used his template to create hero stories ever since. While countless people have written on this topic, I am using the template from the people at the Reedsy Blog (https://blog.reedsy.com/heros-journey/) to make writing this easy.
As I drove to pick up TL, I began to think of the Hero's Journey in light of the Jesus story and many other Biblical Stories I grew up idolizing. My phraseology in the last sentence is incredibly important. I idolized the stories. I unconsciously defined salvation as, "becoming a hero." I had to be a hero! My graphic novel bibles took me to places of fantasy around the biblical stories. Now I wonder, if these incredible stories end up being twisted in our souls and are given death by Evil to create more shame than light.
The hero's journey starts in the ordinary; what Reedsy calls, "the mundane." It is the phrase, "I was born a poor child..." Jesus was born in a manger and laid in a cow trough. King David was rejected and was a shepherd doing the most humble of tasks. Moses was born to a Jewish slave family and hidden in the weeds. Gideon was cowering from fear. Ruth was a Moabite of no repute. Rahab was a hooker. Mary was a simple girl betrothed to a carpenter or stonecutter.
After humble beginnings, there is, " a call." In the Jesus story, this occurs at his baptism, "This is my Son, with whom I am well-pleased." Following the call, there is traditionally a rejection of that call. Think of Gideon and his requirement of a "fleece." The Jesus story doesn't have this traditional "rejection." However, think about how the different writers set up His story. Everyone knows he is the Messiah from his virgin birth, royal lineage. Questions arise though when Herod sends troops to kill all the male children under two. Remember Moses' story and Pharoah doing the same thing? Mary, Joseph, and Jesus become refugees, escaping to Egypt. So, there is that interruption and threat to the call. But then, after the call, Jesus doesn't start teaching and calling his own disciples immediately, He goes into the wilderness where he fasts for 40 days. At the end of His time in the wilderness, Satan comes and tempts him three times. These are temptations that we use to reject our own calling. Only Jesus doesn't reject the call because he is the "first among heroes." As I am thinking about this, I am thinking this is one of the first places that boys trying to be a hero in the vein of Jesus begin to face their own shame, and then begin living out of their shame.
The next step in the Hero journey is to meet the mentor who will help the hero overcome and then there is an event where the curtain is pulled back and they enter into the arena, seen as the hero that they were born to be. In the Jesus story, the mentor is the Holy Spirit who descended on Jesus like a dove. She becomes the connection point for Jesus through the rest of the gospels.1 John makes note of Jesus' stage entrance. This is the famous event where Jesus turns water into wine at the wedding. The miracle serves as an announcement to the reader, Jesus has accepted his role as a hero
Stage six is typically the bulk of the hero story. It is where they find allies, discover their enemies and the obstacles they must overcome and develop the close friendships that will help them cross the lexicon. In the Jesus story, this section involves the calling of the disciples and the Pharisees and Sadducees' introduction as the villains of the story. It involves Jesus casting out demons and healing the sick, the lame and the blind. It includes his teachings and personal interactions. John's gospel is different here because his longest section comes next.
The next section is where the hero approaches his biggest fight, drawing close to their own personal crisis. For Jesus, this is the last week of his life, where he knows he is about to die and he doesn't like it one bit. In the Church, we remember this time in Jesus' life as Holy Week -- the week leading up to Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday. You have to feel this movement. It is where you come face to face with your humanity and brokenness. It is the part of our story where we have to choose to walk through our fear. It is the place that courage is most seen and felt. In many ways, it is the place where we see ourselves becoming or failing in the hero journey. the question here is, "Will he push through? Will he make it?" It is not the moment of crisis, but the foreboding before the crisis.
In the Jesus story, the crisis comes in his arrest, trial, betrayal, and crucifixion. This moment is the reason for his existence. In it, there is no glory -- only defeat and hopelessness. This complete defeat is perhaps the reason the Jesus story stands above all other stories. He dies defeated. And, with his death comes complete despair, emptiness, and darkness.
But, in a hero's story, there is a moment of triumph. In the Jesus story, it is resurrection - an empty tomb. The restoration of hope and life, not just for him, but for the world he came to save. He wins!
Or, does he? In hero stories, there are roads left to travel. There is often an awakened enemy or incompleted business. In the Jesus story, the gospel writers - indeed the writers of the rest of the New Testament believe that much of this road is to be walked by those who follow the crucified, risen Messiah. We are told that we are his reconstituted body that is to finish the work he set out to do. We are to be his hands and feet for a broken world. So, in the Jesus story, we are in this part of the story. The story is still being written. Complete resurrection won't occur until we experience it personally. Once we have, Jesus is promised to return to create a new world void of pain, suffering, and death.
Why does this matter at all? In my thinking right now it matters because as we tell the story boys, in particular, are left yearning to be a hero they cannot be. We all want to be just like Jesus. Those of us who feel this calling most, often become pastors. The struggle is that we know ourselves to be frauds; and/or we work to create our own deaths in order to imitate Jesus' hero journey. We have to fail and be resurrected to be like him. So we unconsciously destroy ourselves to become the hero we know we are to be. This twisted idea of wanting to be a hero in the mold of Jesus comes from a place of shame rather than a place of holiness or a desire to be in relationship. We call out for resurrection, hoping to be found worthy of being the hero we long to be. Listen to the echoes of this in the words of Todd Agnew:
1. Please note that the Spirit is nearly always referred to by the biblical writers with female words in both Hebrew and Greek. Sometimes it is hard because in English we don't have feminine and masculine words like in Spanish or Hebrew or Greek. If a man is my friend and I speak Spanish, I refer to them as "mi amigo." If a woman is my friend in Spanish I refer to her as, "mi amiga." In the same way, the language used around the Spirit is nearly always feminine. The language around the Father is nearly always masculine. So when I refer to the Father, I use masculine terms; when I refer to the Spirit, I use feminine terms, and when I refer to the Trinity I use the newly resurrected and minted, "they."
Because I am trying to adopt Pabi's "political atheism," I don't publish my political ideas. However, if these posts are what they are supposed to be, it is only fair that you understand what I think about some of these things. As you will see there is enough here to piss everyone off. That is why I don't publish them. I do not hold to any of them very tightly but rather hold them in an upturned, open hand, more than willing to be wrong and recognizing that what I believe doesn't matter much in the large scope of things. Ultimately Pabi's campaign slogan from her last presidential bid is as good as any, "No bad beer." Let that be our motto. With that being said, here ya go. This may not be everything, but it is a start. Let's see how many people get up in arms
My Political Beliefs
Assumptions
Political systems are never good. The best we can hope for is to structure them and limit them to be less bad.
Some things we band together to do more effectively as a community.
Nearly always, less is more.
Political systems exist to hold evil in check. This requires force. So not everyone can be a Christ-following pacifist. Only those called to non-violence need be completely nonviolent. We are always to be a prophetic voice using Love as our weapon to reign in power.
Love cannot be systematized nor politicized. And, since it exists as the greatest unseen force in the universe, it must inform how we think about politics.
Individuals are made in the Image of God and thus are created to
Live in and appreciate beauty,
Be interdependent (designed for perfect relationship),
Be creative (designed to design),
Have dignity (a value that is independent of what they do, create, and think), and
Live into freedom.
Modern political theory on both sides of the conservative/progressive divide takes away some of how a loving God created us.
These things being true. I:
Am completely pro-life:
No abortion,
No capital punishment,
No wars to export democracy or protect economic interests.
No capital punishment
Only self-defense of life and property (not material)
Believe in a single-payer health care system. This is purely pragmatic as it runs counter to most of the rest of my political theory of limited, or no government interference.
There are too many stakeholders in the current system: hospitals, doctors and nurses, big Pharma, and insurance companies. Everyone has their hand out to grab whatever they can.
Medicare works and has proven to be sustainable when not raided to pay for other services. It allows for people to purchase supplemental insurance so it does not completely bankrupt insurance companies and put their thousands of employees to of work. It has negotiated reasonable drug prices for members and can keep those costs in check.
If it can be combined with the current Health Savings Account Model that slides for peoples’ needs, it will actually make doctors and hospitals compete for patients in a free-market manner, while encouraging individuals to save and allow those savings to roll into an IRA (assuming it functions as the current system does).
You don’t hear Canadians, Brits, and Aussies complaining about their system. For sure there is the odd horror story but these are the outliers,and they do not compare to the thousands of families that are bankrupted by their medical expenses and are either swamped by insurance premiums that are out of this world, or simply uninsured because they cannot afford the premiums to begin with.
Think all drugs (not just marijuana) should be legal, and that we should tax the hell out of their sale to fund education and recovery programs (as well as other things). Prohibition does not work and only fuels crime and the “Penitentiary syndicate.”
Think that someone who is trained and demonstrates proficiency should be allowed to privately own an aircraft carrier or F-16, or any other kind of weapon they so desire. I do not believe in gun registries. I think they are dangerous. However
Given the prevalence of guns in America, gun safety needs to be taught in schools by people who know, understand, and respect guns.
Before anyone can own a weapon they need to show proficiency in using that weapon. I suggest levels of licensure: basic (single action weapons), Hunting proficiencies, semi-automatic training, fully automatic, explosives, heavy gunnery, etc… People can only own that which they are trained to own, but they don’t have to own, nor are any records kept of what they own.
What I love about my stance on guns is that it tends to piss everyone off. So, I must have something right in my thinking.
Believe government should have no say in marriages period. The “rights” (taxation, etc…) that marriages now give need to be transferred to a registry of partnerships that will do the same thing. But the government should not be in the marriage business.
Think that permitting private property improvement is inane. Though public buildings for businesses need to be inspected for safety
Believe property should not be taxed
Am a flat tax guy:
A Straight across the board 10% tax on EVERY financial transaction divided between the state and the federal government. In my world: 7% to the state 3% to the Feds.
Vehicle license fees should be calculated based upon vehicle weight and the miles driven each year.
Utilities need to be regulated to ensure equitable distribution. The internet is a utility
Believe traffic police need to be required to drive marked and highly visible cars. The question here is: Does traffic enforcement exist to make the streets safer or increase revenue. If it is to make the streets safer, heavily marked police cars slow traffic, unmarked vehicles merely catch speeders.
Think that most but not all police need to be foot patrols and unarmed. (See the UK)
The militarization of the police has led to severe mistrust and increased violence
Body cameras need to be required.
Believe that individual neighborhoods need to be given more power to build the types of the community they want without government overuse
Think that the US military needs to be recalled to bases on American soil. No troops on foreign soil. We need to stop being the world’s police. That money needs to be poured into US infrastructure and economic partnerships that build US interests economically rather than politically and militarily. We need to cap our military spending at no more than two times what the next strongest nation is spending.
Think that education needs to be free all the way through 16th grade. School choice and vouchers are good.
Hold that corporations ARE NOT to be treated as individuals. Free speech rules should not apply to them.
Think that elections need to be publicly funded to keep big money out.
Think that we need term limits across the board. (No more than 12 years in Washington DC for any politician).
Lists of which politician a corporation gives to and how much needs to be public record and easily accessible. I really like the idea of sponsor patches on politician’s suits.
Senators and Representatives need to live under the same financial rules that collegiate athletes follow regarding accepting gifts and trips, etc…)
Believe that churches need to start paying tax on income that is not spent on community enrichment and social services. This would take a lot of thinking and work, but, I can dream, can’t I? The funding that comes in for multi-use building that is open to the community as a rec center or emergency homeless shelter wouldn’t be taxed where the money that comes in for a worship center that is only used for worship services would be, etc… See the Sally Army for what I mean here. They do this well.
Think the government should never be allowed to compel speech.
Giving money is not free speech
If I am an artist I should not ever be compelled to create art that runs counter to my religious beliefs.
Think the government should not be allowed to limit pipelines etc… but neither should private property owners be forced to allow them. Fines for any kind of environmental hazer need to be so severe that companies work into their financial plans contingencies and safety that mitigates the chance of disaster. In other words, disaster fines need to be so outrageous that companies will go above and beyond to avoid any spills.
Believe that pollution needs to result in “outrageous” fines so that we do not have to micro-manage how they do it, merely punish them so severely they will avoid pollution at any cost.
Think there need to be caps on personal liability but none on corporate liability.
Believe that federal minimum wage be set at $15 / per hour for adults and $7.50 for those under 16 years of age
Hold that Shop, art and music need to become staples of both primary and secondary education. Recess needs to regain stature in primary education. Primary schools should start earlier than secondary schools do.
Believe that Veteran’s, first responders, and educator’s (with ten years of service or more) healthcare should not be limited (to the VA) and should always have a very low deductible, lots of freedom of choice, and low out of pocket expenses without having a lot of paperwork for the providers, so that the best providers will want to care for veterans and teachers.
Think every high school grad and drop out should be required to do a minimum of two years service either in the Military, Peace Corps, or something like the Ameri-Corp (building and serving local communities and infrastructure) before going onto college or trade school.
Banks and financial institutions need to be very heavily regulated.
The bigger the corporation the more regulation it needs. If it is an international it needs to have the most regulation
No ID no vote
We need to loosen and allow more immigration in, once that is done, we need to make it difficult for illegal aliens to be comfortable, We do need to create pathways to citizenship for illegals who have been here for years and have started families here.
In one of the last DV classes I taught, I took a minute to talk to think. (Whenever I talk to think, I get words out of my brain so that I can see them more clearly and ponder them from different angles to discover if the words are true or not.)
With many of the men I work(ed) with, I have to teach them about emotions. To do so, I created a worksheet to hand out that reads something like this:
When we say we feel bad we might be saying…
I feel hurt — Something that makes me who I am has been attacked, broken, or damaged
I feel sad — I’ve lost something
I feel lonely — I am disconnected from others
I feel guilty — I did something bad
I feel despair — I am without hope things are (I am) never gonna change
I feel scared — things are going to go badly
I feel disgusted — I experienced something that I found to be inhuman or gross and had a visceral or somatic reaction to it.
Shame is its own category because it is a combination of fear and shame; but, it is fear and shame about myself.
It is fear that either, I am too much, or I am not enough
It is despair that I will never be enough or always be too much
It is fear that if you see me for who I am you will not understand, accept or delight in me
It is despair that this won’t ever change
My favorite definition, though not clinical, is simply, the inability to meet the gaze of another. You can’t look them in the eye. You can’t let them see your soul.
Surprise is its own category as well because when we say that we are “Surprised,” we may be expressing a negative or a positive feeling.
Surprise happens when someone or something has caught us off guard and we weren’t prepared to experience it.
Like Surprise, “Anger” is not always a “bad” emotion. Sometimes it feels good to feel Anger.
Anger is one of those bad feelings combined with a sense of injustice or blame — "Someone or something else is responsible for my bad feeling and I am powerless to do anything about it."
We feel anger toward others, ourselves, institutions, cultures, people groups, and objects
Many times, the anger we feel at others is really anger we feel toward ourselves that we “transfer” to them or “project’ onto them to avoid blaming ourselves. Other times, we “transfer” or “introject” anger that we feel toward others onto or into ourselves to unconsciously gain more of a sense of control. Typically, this happens when fear is the “bad” emotion we are “unjustly” feeling.
Sometimes, anger is justified, righteous and empowering. When this is the case, we rightly condemn the wrong action or the evil without judging the person who chose it. This is a very difficult discipline.
As I thought about this, I thought about my Mum and the fact that she helped a ton of people and was someone that my brother says, “is the most evil person he has ever met.” Since she sexually abused me, it is hard to deny her this title, but something in me needs to if I am to stay sane.
Dwight Friesen was my advisor at The Seattle School. His office was filled with “&’s.” Over my three years inhabiting that holy space, I learned the power of holding the “and.” Mum was both completely evil and a saint. I had to learn to hold both truths about her. The question was could I hate her evil — her actions that broke me and my brother (including but not limited to her sexual abuse of me) — with the fury of all that is holy; and still hold her as my mother who was herself broken and worthy of love?
So, "holy anger," is anger that is directed at the evil that is done, and not at the persons who do it. It separates the evil act from the person who acts. This is so hard to do! It is far easier to hate the person who does the act than to focus our hatred on the action and the evil that leads the person to take the action.
Anger directed at evil changes the world. It led William Wilberforce to dismantle slavery throughout the English Empire in the 19th Century 40 years before the American Civil War. It led amazing women to lead the Women’s suffrage movement in this country. It led Martin Luther King Jr to lead the Civil Rights movement, and Gandhi to begin dismantling the caste system in India. The hatred of evil is an amazing motivator for change in our world.
This is true in part because Holy wrath is always organically connected to love. We “hate” that which destroys personhood and mars the image of God in people. But can you see how close that is to hating people for doing evil? It is a fine line and it takes a lot of hard emotional work to hold it. But, it is worth it because malingering anger at others eats away at the foundation of our souls and though it is rooted in the past, haunts us in our present lives and relationships.
So How Do We Get There???
There are 3 prerequisites for holy, world-altering anger:
Grief
Forgiveness
Proper Boundaries
Grief is mourning what is lost. Someone rightly said it is the removal of the opportunity for us to love. We grieve when we have lost something or someone that/who gave us hope for a better tomorrow, for connection, for understanding, delight, or beauty.
Grief
Many people have addressed the stages of grief: denial and isolation, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. Others have outlined how we don’t simply step through each step in an orderly fashion, we bounce from stage to stage, and then back again.
What hasn’t been addressed is the fact that for many of us, get stuck in the anger in an attempt to make an end-run around the grief and not fully experience it. We don’t want to feel the loss and the hurt, the loneliness, and the sorrow, the fear or the anguish that accompany grief. Instead, we stay angry so we don’t have to feel the sorrow. Anger becomes our defense against the grieving process. When it functions this way, we don’t cycle away from it. We get stuck in it.
Forgiveness
Forgiveness is making a choice to give up judging the person and/or the need for revenge against them. It is not giving up the right to judge their action, nor is it necessary to enter into or hold a relationship with someone you have forgiven. Forgiveness does not mandate relationship. It only mandates judging or holding resentment against another. A lack of forgiveness is a sign that we view a person to be little more than their actions, choices, or emotions. And, none of us are merely our actions, choices, or emotions. We are much more than merely the things we do, feel, or choose.
Boundaries
For the past two-plus years a national debate has raged over the nature of our nation’s southern border. The debate has been over the nature of the boundary that we have with Mexico. On one extreme, some argue that there should be no border and no boundaries. And, on the other, we need to build a wall, and perhaps a moat to stop anyone we don’t let anyone in that we don’t want in. Most of the country falls somewhere between these two extremes.
That picture provides a handy metaphor about personal boundaries. Personal boundaries exist to protect us from others and others from us while allowing for relationship and connection with others.
Like in the national debate, people with poor boundaries fall into two extremes: People who don’t really have a sense of who they are except through the eyes of others - who can only feel good about themselves if those around them feel good about them (these are similar to the people who want no border); and, people who hold a position of not caring or needing anyone else and being complete loners, refusing to let anyone know what is happening inside of them and not really caring what is going on inside of others (these are the people that build a wall and dig a moat around themselves to protect themselves from getting hurt.
Having good personal boundaries means that we are both differentiated - knowing who we are and what makes us us; as well as being attached - knowing who we are through our relationships with others, creation, and the Creator. When I talk to clients who don’t believe in God, instead of using the term, “Creator,” I refer to “the transcendent realities of our world” - things that go beyond reason and rationality such as love, wonder, and awe. I guess what I mean by that, is that when I go to Ecola State Park and look over the knoll where I poured out Mum and Dad’s ashes to the Pacific Ocean with seems to go on for an eternity and pounds into the rocks below, I learn about myself in relationship to my world. When I crested Piegan Pass in Glacier National Park, I literally fell down to worship, not because I was tired (though I was) but because I was full of awe and wonder at the creation that opened up before me. At that moment, I not only saw the majesty of the Northern Montana Rockies, the peace of the hollers below, and the beauty of the glacial lakes hidden in them, but I got to see myselfin light of all those things. It gave me perspective about myself and my limits. Perhaps the best illustration of this is found in a little part of the 1991 movie, The Grand Canyon. When Simon (Danny Glover) sits on the curb talking to Mac (Kevin Kline).
Simon is really talking about boundaries without knowing it. It is difficult to see where we start and stop. We need to see this reality if we are going to deal with our own unhealthy anger. If we are going to hold to boundaries that promote life and health.
It sounds a lot easier than it is because in close relationships our boundaries overlap. the choices you make affect me, and the choices I make affect you. We lust for freedom that infringes on the boundaries of another far too deeply. If I own property and dam a creek to create a reservoir for myself and for irrigation, it means that the people who live downstream are robbed of water that they need. If I build a four-story house, it might block the sunlight from yours. Actions have consequences and so the freedom we long for can often limit the freedom of another.
We feel anger when we see freedom impinged upon by another. This balancing act is at the heart of nearly all the social debates and dialogue in this nation. As I work with clients who complain about dysregulated emotions (their emotions are too big for them to handle and it causes problems), to work effectively I need to work along two fronts: 1) giving them tools to help them regulate their emotions in healthy rather than unhealthy ways, and 2) helping get at the issues that cause the dysregulation in the first place. As you can see above, it is because they have faulty boundaries. So the work becomes exploring the unconscious reasons and motivations they hold to those boundaries.
For you guys to thrive this will be your work as well. For anger not to rule you. For you to be able to hold to the righteous anger at the evil people do while not feeling anger toward the people who do them is perhaps the single-most Christ-like behavior we can practice. Living this way is why I say I am a Christ-follower. It is perhaps the single hardest thing we Christ-followers are called to do. It is also how we get to experience eternal life in this life. It is a life full of joy and sorrow. And it always promises adventure for us as we follow in his steps, leaving drops of grace in every step we take.
I remember sitting in my class, Interpersonal Foundations, with Dr. Roy Barsness. It was my first week of class at The Seattle School, and I hadn't figured out that I was no longer swimming in an Evangelical stream of thought. Roy postulated that there were three questions with which we needed to wrestle as we began our journey toward being counselors, pastors, and non-profit leaders. We needed to think about:
"Who is God and what is she/he/it like?"
"Who are people and what is our nature?"
And, finally, "What is the nature and function of sin?'
Roy was about to begin deconstructing the theology of his young students. Some of us who were older sat back, crossed our arms, and silently said to ourselves, "Bring it;" while younger, less seasoned students began to seriously question things they'd been taught but never had a chance to live.
I gotta take a minute and explain something. The Seattle School is not for the faint of heart or conservatives or evangelicals who don't want to be challenged, and Roy... Well, let's just say, Roy is Roy and no one I know loves as he does. So much so, that when I graduated I went on the record to say that my goal was to love people the way he does. I never did, "buy in" to all his thinking, but because of my relationship and discussions with him, my thinking shifted. It shifted as I asked and answered the questions he posed. My answers are different than his. That is OK, we began a conversation. That conversation led to my theological shift. I say, "shift," because it didn't really change it much. I merely shifted my emphasis and focus. If I wanted to follow in the steps of Love Incarnate, I figured I had to.
As a preacher and an evangelist, I focused a lot on sin and powerlessness. It was the first point of five-point Calvinism - total depravity. Now, as a therapist and counselor, I focus on the image of God that is in everyone (see Gen 9:6). My shift didn't come about because of a job change. It came about because of my relationship with the Scriptures and my relationship with others who challenged my doctrinal emphasis. And while I still accept the doctrine of total depravity, I think about it differently than I once did.
St. Paul outlined total depravity in Ephesians 2.St Augustine fleshed the idea out and popularized it; and, then John Calvin developed the idea more fully. (Be careful with Calvin because his thinking in his early career evolved.)
The way most people think about total depravity is different from the way Calvin grew to understand it in his later years. Current teaching resembles more of what he believed early on. At least three things happened. First, people knew how shitty they felt deep down at their cores and so it was not hard to jump to the conclusion that everyone was equally as shitty and was as bad as they felt themselves to be. Secondly, powerful people began using the idea of total depravity as a way to control people and consolidate their own power. And, finally, those who disagreed with it latched onto the weakest and easiest to attack versions of it, in order to defeat it.
Most people when teaching the doctrine teach that people are as sinful as they can possibly be. They rip the line from Ephesians 2, "dead in your sins." This Idea, that we are as bad at our core so seems to me to be unsubstantiated by the rest of Scripture and, indeed, antithetical to Scripture's teaching about people being made in the image of God (or, Imago Dei).
Calvin taught in his early work that the image of God was entirely corrupted in people when we fell into sin in the garden. Later, he shifted and began to argue that we were mostly corrupted (If you want to know more about this shift, see Randall Zachman, Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin, University of Chicago Press: Chicago, IL. pps. 64-68).
Much of the protestant church in Great Britain, America, and their colonies adopted Calvin's more strict, unbiblical, and unhealthy formulation of "total corruption" of the Imago Dei.**
It is no secret that people have taken theology and used it to control and manipulate others throughout history. We need to own and acknowledge this. But let is also be noted people have also used their Christian belief's and doctrines to change the world for good. It is really easy to look for evil and miss the good. If we miss the latter, we miss the gospel. If we miss the gospel, there is no reason to believe. Some of my good friends have chosen this route.
But historically without the Church, women would still be seen as less than human and children would not be educated and would be put to work in factories. Without the Church, slavery would still be part of everyday life. Without the Church, there would have been no civil rights movement in America. Without the church, abortion and women's circumcision would be much more prevalent. Without the Church, there would be much more war. Without the Church, "might" would still make "right" and human sacrifice would still exist as common practice. Hate and fear would be the dominant emotions of all the world, not merely rule their slice of it, and shame would have free rein.
Sorry, I took a tangent.
We need to think about total depravity differently, more biblically and more gracefully. My formulation of the doctrine states that we are sinful in every way in which we can be sinful -- that sin touches every aspect of our life. I still believe this. I can't get away from it. Nor, do I want to.
More importantly though, when I think about the image of God, I want to think about what it is, rather than what it isn't. And, I approach it differently than Calvin. Calvin argued that being made in the image of God meant that we had, "soundness in all our parts." By that, he formulated that because humans are made in the image of God, they possess wisdom, justice, and goodness. He was not incorrect. But it has to be more than that. (If you want to read more about Calvin's thinking on this, or if you need a sleep aid, read: Calvin,The Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeil, trans. Library of Christian Classics, vols. 20 & 21. pg. 176). When I think of the core or foundation of the Imago Dei, I first see it as being the perfect relationship (or love). Secondly, I see it as an expression of holy freedom thirdly I see it possessing creativity (seen in its voice). And, finally as possessing all-power (or agency or differentiation -- also connected to holiness).
As we live in love; experience freedom from shame; create beauty and speak life; using power to serve the rest of creation; we begin to live life as it was designed to be lived. And so, I believe, that in order to experience the fullness of life, we need to experience the fullness of these things
My next letters will try to flesh these out a bit, in terms of their practicalities. I had to start here though because this is foundational to my belief system. I'm starting with Roy's questions. And though I took a tangent, here are my answers.
Who is God? God is perfect relationship -- a divine picture of true love. God is free from all constraints to love. I believe that God in her love creates beauty and wonder. I believe that he is all-powerful because of his love.
Who are people? People are made in the image of God and are designed to love, need to be free to love and use their power and creativity to create, protect and enjoy beauty and wonder.
What is sin? Sin is anything that violates relationship, for in so doing it violates the very nature of God.
Out of those three answers to the questions, Roy postulated comes all my the thinking that will follow.
**Note: Powerful people have used Catholic theology to do inhumane things in the same way. They suggest that if you are not baptized you are evil and we are allowed to treat you as sub-human.
In my second year of grad school, our Therapy professor introduced my cohort to the work of Margaret Crastnopol who studied and wrote about psychic micro-trauma. She spent two hours with us presenting a paper and then took questions about her theoretical construct and how we could better work with those with our clients who were cracked or broken because of micro-trauma in their life.
I fear that many of us are suffering micro-traumas as a result of this completely inane election cycle. And I believe that social media is only compounding the problem. It has become a hotbed of micro-aggression. People's feeds resemble their personal culture and ideologies. Anything outside of their worldview is unwelcome. Using this standard, when people post hateful things, those posts reach the level of being micro-aggressions.
It is people on the political right who distrust academia who seem to struggle with the construct of micro-aggression and micro-trauma the most. Surprisingly, though, micro-aggressions are not limited to the conservative right. We see them within many of the reactive movements that stand against the abusive, systemic powers that conservatives support.
This mutated election cycle, with all of its craziness, has led to not only micro-aggressions but full on assaults on whole demographics by people from both sides. We are truly a fractured nation. What caught me off guard is the scope of the assaults that both sides seem more than willing to perpetrate against the other.
If you look to the right, Mr. Trump and his talking heads apparently enjoy attacking those who oppose them. Let's face it; their strategic offense is offensive. The only way to avoid their ire is to agree with them or avoid them. On the stump, Mr. Trump has lumped hard-working illegal immigrants with rapists and murderers. There is no room in his worldview to obey biblical commands to welcome the alien and the stranger. Likewise, his misogyny is on display nearly every day at every rally he attends. One doesn't have to read too far into the text to see he would have thrown the first stone at the woman caught in adultery, and that he would never have spoken to the woman at the well (except to command her to serve him). He is intentionally and strategically offensive. He is unapologetic and generates tribalism among his followers that is at best, frightening -- and at worst. lethal.
What surprised me recently, however, is that the other side (though not as course and blatant) is just as deadly and intentional in their attacks on their enemies. When Secretary Clinton referred to half of Mr. Trump's supporters as "deplorables," she not only created a circle of hate; she created an apologetic for it. For, it is not wrong to hate deplorable things. Her allowance of hatred of the deplorables opens the door for all sorts of propaganda that twists and distorts the truth, further inflaming Mr. Trump's supporters. She continues to create an atmosphere that is unwelcoming and damning of anyone who dares to challenge her. This one misspoken phrase reveals much of the character and strategy of the Democratic party.
My Facebook feed is full of articles attempting to argue that it is impossible to oppose Secretary Clinton without being a misogynistic, racist, gay-hater. No longer is it merely Mr.Trump's supporters who are all those things. And now, it is anyone who opposes the former Secretary of State. In me at least, it has backfired, making Mr. Trump more palatable; and that realization disgusts me. I don't want shit ever to taste like anything I'd want to eat.
It has been common in this country to dehumanize your political opponents. There is nothing new in that. I may not like it, but I've grown accustomed to it. What feels different in this election is the attempt to dehumanize the followers of your political opponent. While conservatives blast the intelligence of the progressives (which is irony at its best); the progressives (I will no longer call them liberals -- for the word denies them entrance into its fraternity) blast right back. They do so more subtly and with longer words containing more syllables, but they do it nonetheless. Each side is attempting to dehumanize the other.
The thing that most breaks my heart, however, is when my classmates and friends from my seminary who sat in lectures with me about micro-aggression and micro-trauma; who worship the same Jesus who we read about in the Holy Scriptures, violate their call to heal. They do so by tearing down those who disagree with them; dehumanizing them and making them, "less than." I want to believe that their micro-aggression is unintentional and that if they realized that they were creating micro-traumas in people, they would stop.
As people who claim to follow Jesus -- who urged anyone who would listen to him to repent and live in the Kingdom of Heaven; we are called to be Kingdom people. I don't care if you vote for Mr. Trump, Sec. Clinton, Gov. Johnson, Ms. Stein, Sasquatch, or my wife (her campaign slogan is: "No bad beer," BTW). For nearly all of us who live in Oregon and Washington, our votes don't matter. Our States' electors are already set. There is no urgency in this part of the country. We are still going to have conversations with others -- in particular with those whose hope rests in the temporary government of the USA. The way we have the conversation reveals how much we love our enemies; how willing we are to trust Jesus when he urges us to turn the other cheek. It reveals to which Kingdom we belong.
We are to be "salt and light." We are to care for the orphans, the widows, the aliens, and strangers (see refugees). We are to beat guns into plowshares and turn weapons into art which gives life rather than taking it. We are to feed the hungry, turn the other cheek, care for the grocery clerk or the gas station attendant who serves us. We are to bring life, joy, hope, peace, faith, and self-control to our world. It kinda needs it right now, don't you think?
As long as we are focused on tearing down the intelligence of our political opponents, our focus is not where it needs to be. We can and need to demonstrate to the world how to disagree with each other and still love and respect one another. We can (and are called to live in the Kingdom of Heaven while we navigate this world's, wars, hurricanes, tornados, mudslides, earthquakes, raging fires, hunger and poverty,, racism, militarism, consumerism, individualism, and even elections.
I recognize that there is a certain irony to this post. I hope in its current form there aren't any unseen micro-aggressions left. I think I also removed all the outright aggression as well. I don't want to shame anyone into trying to love better. Though sometimes I try.
I don't write to discourage people from supporting their candidate of choice, or following their conscience and not voting at all. I write, wanting the conversation to shift, love to come to the forefront, and Christians to remember -- not only that they are royalty but that they are already residents of the Kingdom of Heaven.
The new storyline that the Pulse killer was himself a closeted gay man changes this storyline drastically. It is wrong to call this a homophobic attack. Having said that, in some ways, it is much more devastatingly indicting of our current culture (I originally stated "American," but that is inaccurate. It is worldwide) or corporate psyche that pushes difference to the margins. Everyone pushes people away who are different (especially people that scare them or trigger their shame) to the margins of their psyches and physical lives. As we think about people who intimidate, frighten or repulse us, in our minds we have to make them small, ugly, repulsive,emasculated, and dehumanized. We make them "wholly other" to escape our shame and feel more powerful ourselves. For what we think we see in the one we hate is merely an image of our shattered selves that reveals the bits we or others broke off and would prefer stay hidden.
As a man, recognizing my tendencies to do this, and remembering doing it with homosexuals because of my insecurities, I relate to the above paragraph. All people do this, and not merely with sexual things (though sex is a powerful drive and it happens a lot in this arena). We do this with gender issues as well. Genesis 3 suggests that much of our misogyny is a result of this fear and is a resultant curse that drives men to "rule over" women.
Consequences and curses are nearly always connected to real life choices. Adam's chose to do nothing when the serpent tempted Eve. He was with her when she ate. The serpent didn't deceive him, and he still didn't say anything to try to stop her from eating. The only explanation I can find for his choices is that he was scared and so he froze -- a typical amygdalaian response. As men, we are famous for freezing. Our silence belies our fear. We are paralyzed by it and for a time, do not move or speak. When we ultimately do, if our amygdala is still in charge, we will most often act or speak violently. The level of our violence is directly related to the depth of the cortisol engulfing our amygdalas. At this point, we are hopelessly caught in a cycle that often becomes vicious and dangerous. I need to note here that though I am primarily speaking of men, women's brains are wired similarly, and though they may express violence differently, those acts are still sinister, kill, and destroy.
The reason the above conversation is vital to our understanding of this particular issue is that people live freely when fear is no longer a threat. What I realized this week is that as a 6'4" white male, who looks like he walked off the set of Sons of Anarchy, I don't know social fear like my gay friends. When I was much younger, I walked my dog Ashleigh -- a giant, gorgeous Gordan Setter -- down the north end of MLK in Portland late at night, greeting the prostitutes and drug dealers that used to hang out in my neighborhood. I was friendly to them, and they to me. Ashleigh made up her mind on a case by case basis. My lack of fear surprised those I encountered; many assumed I was a cop because I engaged them as humans who had worth without any fear. My wife never knew that freedom. I recently saw a meme about men fearing prison for the same reason women fear walking down the streets. My stature, my gender, and my race change the way that the world engages me. I have no fears about being physically attacked. My amygdala shoots into hyper-drive for entirely different reasons: creepy spiders and scary snakes, heights, or losing respect are what drive my amygdala crazy.
As a father of an attractive daughter, I'm aware that urban women live in a constant state of hyper-arousal and fear when they are alone on the streets. Fear accompanies them like a bad case of tinnitus. It is always in the background and never goes away. That is bad enough, but gays and transgendered people live not merely with a threat of physical harm, though this fear is all too real. They are forced to live with psychic fears surrounding their relationships as well, because who they are as people is not close enough to the center of other peoples' comfort zones. So they marginalize them. Not because they do or say anything; but merely because they've found freedom to embrace a part of themselves that scares others without that freedom to death. Ironically, their sexual freedom becomes their jailer.
My stature, gender, race change the way that the world engages with me. Police and authorities relate to me differently than they do people of smaller stature or people of color. My fears are not about being physically attacked. My amygdala shoots into hyper-drive for entirely different reasons. As a father of an attractive daughter, I've known that women live in a constant state of hyper-arousal and fear when they have to go out. Fear accompanies them like a bad case of tinnitus. That is bad enough, but gays and transgendered people live not merely with a threat of physical harm when they are out, though this fear is all too real. They are forced to live with psychic fear surrounding their relationships as well, because who they are as people is not close enough to the center of other peoples' comfort zones. They are marginalized, not because they do or say anything; but merely because they've found freedom to embrace a part of themselves that scares other (without that freedom) to death. Their sexual freedom, becomes their jailer, as others who do not know such freedom (because of their own shame)1 push them out of the center to the edges -- away from what they consider normal.
Can you feel the bind? If one acknowledges this integral part of themselves, discovering the freedom that it brings, they place themselves in a societal jail of contempt; experiencing constant physical, emotional, and mental threats. On the other hand, if they don't acknowledge this core piece or drive, they are free societally --accepted and loved because they are part of the majority -- but they are bound internally, wasting away inside because they can't acknowledge a part of themselves that is very real and powerful.
Some people caught in this bind, are incapable of acknowledging it to themselves either because they believe their desire and their longings are morally wrong. If this is you, it is easy to understand why you get angry so quickly. Justin Torres poetically points out that, because of all these realities, the only place that the gay community experiences any true freedom is at the gay club. The club is the gay community's temple. It is the only place they know that they can go to be free together and play and release all the pent up tension that the hyper-vigilance of always protecting oneself creates. It is the only place for the gay community to release trauma together. He writes:
People talk about liberation as if it’s some kind of permanent state, as if you get liberated and that’s it, you get some rights and that’s it, you get some acknowledgment and that’s it, happy now? But you’re going back down into the muck of it every day; this world constricts. You know what the opposite of Latin Night at the Queer Club is? Another Day in Straight White America. So when you walk into the club, if you’re lucky, it feels expansive. “Safe space” is a cliche, overused and exhausted in our discourse, but the fact remains that a sense of safety transforms the body, transforms the spirit. So many of us walk through the world without it. So when you walk through the door and it’s a salsa beat, and brown bodies, queer bodies, all writhing in some fake smoke and strobing lights, no matter how cool, how detached, how over-it you think you are, Latin Night at the Queer Club breaks your cool. You can’t help but smile, this is for you, for us.
While that is an excruciatingly sad reality, It is the reality we've created (and by "we," I mean "us conservative type, white, apparently fearless males"). In so doing we have sinned greatly and owe a debt we can't repay. We can only ask how we can make it right; cause, the reality is we F**ked it up.
Jesus was clear that before we try to take the speck out of the other's eye, we need to take the 2x4 out of our eye. Because we like being at the center and holding the power, we keep refusing to do that. So before we about their "sin," we need to address our own first. We have put the gay community in an impossible situation, and we need to repent.
Dedicated to Jeffrey Tangeman, a college roommate that knew he could never be honest with me because of who I was rather than who he was. RIP, brother.
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1 I am not suggesting that everyone is a homosexual. I am suggesting that a high percentage of people have unresolved sexual issues. Relatively few explore and address issues surrounding their sexuality and that the shame that inhabits it.
I am late to the Youtube party. And surprisingly I do not find myself searching it for hours on end. And, here are four Youtube Channels that I really enjoy. I need to be careful because I am not endorsing their content. However, they are honest, thoughtful and challenge my thinking:
School of Life
I was sent this video and asked what I thought:
As I watched, I thought they got a ton right and a ton wrong. What I appreciated was the honesty that begs for ongoing conversation. Since watching this video, I've watched their video on strength and psychotherapy. I do not agree wholly with any of the videos. Some of them I find offensive, and I recomend the channel to you. Here is the link to the channel
The Bible Project
A former student, friend, and generally brilliant man posted The Bible Project's video on Jonah. That particular video directly addresses issues of our day. The video below is the video on Genesis, so you can decide for yourself, if it is helpful, and gives you new ways to visualize the Scriptures. Once again, I do not always agree with the exegesis of the videos, but find them to be great introductions to individual books of the Bible. In addition, they are based in my home town of Portland, Oregon, so they have to be one step closer to Jesus than the average "joe."
Their Youtube page is found here. You can search whatever book you may want to watch.
The Nerdwriter
The Nerdwriter was the first artist on YouTube that I watched. He sucked me in. His video on "Kintsugi" (Watch below) blew my mind. I use it on the gracefall.org page as an example of how I view my work as a soul artisan. Evan's worldview is not mine. And he is honest, talented, and opens up new avenues of thought for me whenever I engage his work. Here is the Kintsugi video:
If you, like me, have not discovered YouTube, these are good places to start. If you've been on YouTube for years and haven't found these channels. Check them out. And if you have other channels to suggest that are throughful, creative, engaging, challenging, and educational, feel free to suggest them either in the comments below or in a private message. Enjoy... And don't get lost
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