Thursday Theology: Thoughts on the Mess We Are In (Set Two of ???)

Co-missioners,

We meant it last week when we launched a community discussion of America’s current political and cultural situation as seen through the confessional lenses we use at Crossings. Today we send you two ice-breaking contributions to the conversation. One of them predates last week’s post. It first appeared on Facebook. We secured the writer’s permission to use it here.

If what you read here should inspire you to send a contribution, a couple of reminders. First, direct it to our editor, Jerry Burce, jerry.burce@crossings.org. Second, keep it to around 400 words. We are not looking for comprehensive analyses of “what all is going on.” What intrigues us is the sort of thing you’d want to wedge into a conversation around a table because you find it interesting or revealing or enraging or befuddling. Or you’re bringing it up simply because there’s relief in spitting it out, and, who knows, someone else might find it useful too. In this conversation, we get to expect that others will listen, but not that they will agree with us. And if along the way I disagree with you or you with we, we will do so in a way that isn’t disagreeable.

You’ll find all this modeled in today’s offerings, for which we thank Matt Metevelis and Mike Hoy. A couple of other contributions came in two days ago. We’ll get them to you sometime this month, but not next week. The annual meeting of our Board of Directors takes place in St. Louis beginning next Monday. That team that produces Thursday Theology will be more or less consumed by that.

Peace and Joy,

The Crossings Community

____________________________________________________________________

More Thoughts on the Mess We Are In (Set Two of ???)
by assorted writers

+  +  +

From Matt Metevelis: “My Better Angels”

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

—Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861

I went to my nighborhood’s GOP caucus earlier this year. I was the only one of eighty-eight voters in my precinct to vote for “None of these Candidates.” (Nikki Haley was off the ballot).

I went fully to stand my ground and to have some sort of West Wing moment. Wanted to shout people down. Vent my feelings about what has happened to my country and my party. And while in line I was getting jacked up with all the hats, the dumb slogan t-shirts, and the ignorant conversations.

And then something strange happened. The event turned out to be so disorganized. Nobody had ballots, nobody knew their precinct, very few people had pens. I figured everything out pretty quickly (my parents were pretty involved in politics. so I knew the lingo).

As I filled out my ballot a very kind old lady, indistinguishable from the kind that fill the churches I’ve been a part of, looked at me forlornly and asked if I could help her find a pen.

I started my search. And I kept helping more people. I had a collared dress shirt on after leaving work, so I guess I looked official.

I spent the next hour and a half finding things for people. Helping them vote. Talking to them. One person from the local party thought I was the IT guy. A police officer came to vote and asked for help because he was on shift and needed to get out quickly. I yelled the situation as loudly as I could, and the room applauded and quickly got him a pen and ballot.

I met people who lived in my neighborhood. All Trump supporters. Not evil. My neighbors. I even got a few compliments about my knowledge of politics and conservatism when it was time to “discuss” in our precincts. I was happy to know that some of my arguments had not been heard or considered before. I learned a few things too.

I drove there feeling angry, pissed off, pugilistic. I drove home feeling gratitude. Not for our political situation—that’s a train wreck. I felt thankful for my neighbors. For that time in the sweaty screaming mess where we were all in things together, trying to get to work, trying to get back home, trying to share our thoughts. That rehabilitated my patriotism and my faith a little. I could almost hear Christ sitting shotgun telling me, “How about you just keep serving your neighbor and leave the geo-political stuff to me?”

What I learned most that night was that my neighbors needed me, not my righteousness. My sense of rectitude about public policy, civic virtue, and abstract questions of justice profits me and God’s other children nothing. God drive these realizations into us all. If we keep spending as much time, energy, and psychic bandwidth as we have on convincing ourselves that our neighbors are monsters, then what happened in Butler PA will happen again.

+  +  +

From Mike Hoy: “On the ‘Graze of God’ and the ‘Grace of God.’”

When Donald Trump was formally selected as the 2024 Republican candidate at the party’s Milwaukee convention, he said he was there only by “the grace of God” that saved him from the bullet that grazed him but did not kill him at the rally in Butler, PA. Then he went a step further and suggested that “God is on my side.” But the “grace of God” can never be a flippant religious answer to a very tragic moment, and not when it’s employed as Christ-less-ly as one hears Mr. Trump doing. I see Mr. Trump living and promoting an illusion. His sense of unity is only a unity about himself. His desire to have Christians vote (and believe me, I will—but not for him) is rooted in a sense of nationalism that is a perversion of God’s grace and gospel.

The “grace of God” implies confession, and in both senses of the word—confession of sin and confession of trust/faith. None of us can speak of grace apart from penance; and there is only One whom we confess as Lord and the true source of our unity—Jesus the Christ.

Perhaps Mr. Trump would have been better off talking about the “graze of God.” The “graze of God” is an awareness of the criticism that flies our way, calling us to account and to repent of the truth of our sin, evil, and justly deserved death. We are living in, and worse contributing to, a time of damning political rhetoric, divisiveness, humiliation of brothers and sisters, hurting and harming humanity and creation, and all along embracing blasphemous idolatry. The “gaze of God” is surely upon us, and we may also experience the “graze of God” that can never be simply covered up by a piece of gauze.

In this culture of despair, sin and evil come together in horrifying acts of violence, raising the question of theodicy: “why does God allow such evil things to happen?” Theodicy, however, can never be satisfactorily answered by seeking to pin down its origin (even though such reflection is surely warranted). The answer to theodicy is in its solution… the crucified Christ. On the cross the damning truth of sin, death, and evil are born in Christ’s body—and not simply under the “gaze” or “graze” of divine critique but under the full blast of judgment. Here is where our Lord battles sin, death, and evil for our sake. Here we receive by faith as true grace the “happy exchange.” We do not get what we deserve. We get the “grace of God.”