Evangelicals and Catholics (religion in general) share a common trait: docility under authority. Those in charge know how to play the game, grooming people to surrender their minds, accept domination, and even invite it. For promises of safety, salvation, and sanctification.
Looking over the years, the Calvinist notion of an educated clergy and an educated membership has mostly guided my work.
To awaken the gifts of God, the image of God, in people: the power of the mind, to think through the issues and challenges of life, to frame good questions, to craft creative responses to crisis and need, to protest pretense and domination, to be content with the absence of "answers," and to resist those who would offer up sham solutions to the spiritual, existential, anxiety every human being has to bear.
Religion, in my view of things, is that which gathers up the bits and pieces of life, our experience, our history, our context and our circumstances, and in the gathering up, to reveal patterns of healing and hope, and patterns that threaten and destroy.
Religion "talks" to God, as a way and means of easing us out of ourselves, so that we might have the larger perspective of things.
Religion "listens" to God ... through quietness, and through action ... through community and contemplation ... through the Sacred Texts, and those who've put themselves on the line for faith, hope, and love ... which includes the whole fabric of justice: that people can be safe, and live and work to the best of their ability, to realize their God-given character, their place in the world, and what it means to love with wholeness of heart and mind.
Religion is a human thing - we reach for the heights, we plumb the depths, we seek meaning ... this kind of energy can set us up for the "silver-tonged" apostles with "another gospel."
But the selfsame energy of religion strives to create and recreate God's world - to fulfill and build upon original mandate of creation: to care for the garden, to be our sibling's keeper, to name the animals with care and compassion, to respect the limits of our mortal lives, and to enjoy God forever.
Some thoughts on religion ... this morning, July 1, 2021.
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