Faith is believing in the impossible because we have a God who is master of impossible.
The more I travel, the more I see how important it is to each population to see that their history of the good and the bad is remembered by others.
When one in three Black men are in prison, those larger systemic injustices become a part of what it means to love our neighbor as ourself. We care about dismantling institutional racism. That begins in relationships when you see injustice happen.
If you have two coats you have stolen one. We have no right to have more than we need when someone else has less than they need.
Sometimes our tunnel vision is limited to what we see outside our window. Until racial injustice becomes personal then I don’t think it moves us in our gut.
What the Black lives matter movement is doing is they are making it personal. They are making it hash tagged, exposing the racial injustice that continues to haunt our country in a way that you can’t ignore. There is power in injustice becoming personal.
That is part of our critique of some of the charity and service work is that we can still keep relationships at a distance by creating programs that offer services but we don’t really create a reconciled community.
There is a difference between feeding someone and eating dinner with them. If every Christian at home just made room for the stranger we would end homelessness overnight.
If every Christian family brought in a child who needed a family we would put the foster care system out of business.
When it comes to the big issues like immigration, everyone has a role. The government has a role. The church has a role. Every Christian has a role.
We have a relational problem with those who are suffering or who are different from us. All of us are most comfortable around people who are like us culturally and economically.
There is one big misunderstanding of the monastics leaving society.
We can ignore suffering no matter where we live. There are people who live a few miles from me who never see much poverty or the injustices that live on our doorstep.
There is extreme poverty in Appalachia, where I was, and increasingly poverty is not just an urban thing.
I like how someone once said being a Christian is not about having new ideas but having new eyes. This is the ability to have our hearts broken with the things that break the heart of God. That is part of what it means to be a Christian.
That is the power of the Eucharist. At the communion table you have rich and poor together in the early church and they were being challenged.
As my friend said that when people say the church is full of hypocrites, he says we always have room for more.
We can also cling to the treasures of our faith and get rid of the things that are cluttering that. It is a time we are seeing some trending away from the things that were cluttering our faith.
There is an innocence or purity that we see in renewals and in the Mennonite church and a new an invigorated civil rights movement.
I have this certain reluctance when it comes to this idea that we are spiritual but not religious and we want Jesus but not the church. Why can’t we have both?