Posts tagged spirituality
Christians and the Needy (and everyone else)
This may seem like an anti-Rick Warren post. It’s not, I promise. This may seem like a partisan-politics post. It’s not, I promise.
However, in response to a tweet that Rick Warren made today, there are a few things I have to get off my chest, hopefully in a civil fashion.
First, the tweet in question:
And now, some context.
With this tweet, Rick Warren is promoting the P.E.A.C.E. Plan, an international initiative to “mobilize Christian churches in working together to plant churches that promote reconciliation, equip servant leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, and educate the next generation.” Now, I don’t know much about the Plan, but those are all ideas I can get behind (as long as educate ≠ indoctrinate). So I have no beef there.
However, the tweet wasn’t really about the P.E.A.C.E. Plan. Or at least, that’s not the part that screams loudest.
Intentionally or unintentionally, Warren is using Matthew 25 (specifically verses 31-46) as an indictment of the Affordable Healthcare Act, insinuating that it is the role of the church alone to provide care for the poor and the sick.
Inspiration: Love is a Thread
directed by Nathan Salciccioli
for The Justice Conference
Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual, for the ideal: that longing which draws people to art. Modern art has taken a wrong turn in abandoning the search for the meaning of existence in order to affirm the value of the individual for his own sake. What purports to be art begins to looks like an eccentric occupation for suspect characters who maintain that any personalized action is of intrinsic value simply as a display of self-will. But in an artistic creation the personality does not assert itself, it serves another, higher, and communal idea. The artist is always the servant, and is perpetually trying to pay for the gift that has been given to him as if by a miracle. Modern man, however, does not want to make any sacrifice, even though true affirmation of the self can only be expressed in sacrifice. We are gradually forgetting about this, and at the same time, inevitably, losing all sense of human calling.
If we are to use the words ‘childish’ and ‘infantile’ as terms of disapproval, we must make sure that they refer only to those characteristics of childhood which we become better and happier by outgrowing … Who in his sense would not keep, if he could, that tireless curiosity, that intensity of imagination, that facility of suspending disbelief, that unspoiled appetite, that readiness to wonder, to pity and to admire?
Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.
On Enemies
Tiffany and I go to bed a bit early. Not extremely early, but early enough for a number of our friends to label us as “old people.” Last night, we went to bed about 30 minutes too early.
Early this morning, I came in from my run, fresh off of U2’s “I’ll Go Crazy if I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight,” and Tiffany informed me that Osama bin Laden had been killed by U.S. Troops on Sunday night. President Obama made the official announcement shortly after our bedtime, and the Twitterverse erupted into yet another playground fight immediately following.
These days, nothing important can happen without everyone broadcasting “where they stand,” and usually this stance is taken in direct opposition to some neighbor on the other side of opinion. I’ve tried recently, with some success, to stay out of these weekly catfights. But this isn’t a post about how partisan debate is splintering our community. Instead, I want to write about something that I’ve actually been thinking a lot about these last few days: enemies.
I remembered something Father Tom told me– that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
The deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity. We discover an older unity. My dear Brothers and Sisters, we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.
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