Everyone Can Do It 


Is the ability and commitment to dialog with all others an important virtue along with faith, hope and charity? 

So I was talking to Stephen this morning on our way back from visiting mom and the rest of my family that lives in Ohio. In fact, I had been thinking and talking about my insights into human spirituality for most of the morning. I’d keep saying, “So, do you mind if I say one more thing?” And Stephen was basically open to listening to me about this. In one of our conversation snippets I was talking about how what all humans are trying to do is to transcend their finite nature.  
 
“There are two ways that human beings transcend their limits,” Stephen said, “when they are hopeful and when they are altruistic.” He said other things too, but these stuck in my mind and I thought them over.  
 
We have these stories we’ve received of Jesus Christ dying on the cross, rather than to give in to the God-denying demands of his confiners. As I said earlier in this journal, I may not be sure of the literal truth of these stories, but from them I do understand a lot about the human relationship to divinity. So I said to Stephen, “You know, I think you are right. And what is more, the act of Jesus Christ dying on the cross represents both of these. It represents an act of hope AND an act of altruism.” The act of hope lay in Jesus’ faith that he would be raised from the dead and the act of altruism lay in the fact that he was willing to drink the cup, painful as it was, for he believed he was called to do this, to take the predicted Messiah’s role. Or at least, this is what the storytellers of Jesus’ life, such as Paul, would have us believe. 
 
I also had the insight that Jesus’ acts of having faith in God to raise him from the dead and willingly dying for his Father’s work have their parallels in His two commandments: love the Lord God with all your heart and might and love your neighbor as yourself. Perhaps this is part of the recognition of Paul that of the three virtues, faith, hope and charity, the greatest of these is charity. 
 
Part of me wants to stay in the safety of these tried and true Pauline insights. Part of me wants to be convinced that lurking behind the midrash is the real Jesus Christ, actually born in a stable of a virgin mom and crucified between two criminals. Actually risen out of the tomb to ascend to Heaven. But, try as I might, all I can muster is to admit the possibility thereof. I will simply never know for certain unless it is made known to me. Of course, if faith is living as if it were true, I could do that, or try to. But I think it better that I try to make the quantum leap to a new religious awareness. Different midrashic and later traditions make getting to the facts impossible. 
 
I must simply confess my own faith. The forces that created me permit me to dialog and act with them. My faith, when I can hold on to it, is a way of seeing the world as everybody’s world. Everybody gets the chance to create their own theology, and everybody gets the chance to honor the theology of their neighbor. I can do this as a Christian, a Jew, or a New Age Junkie. Maybe even as a Crip or a Blood. But we seldom do. Maybe even I never do. 
 
The tool that we have, though, is to stay in dialog with everyone that we encounter. I must never storm away angry at the atheist, at the terrorist, or at those who storm away angry. And of course I will storm away angry, again and again. What a tough road to hoe. But I do believe I have the vision clear in my mind. This is where we are headed, the human race and I. This is the Omega Point to which we must evolve. Love and honor for everyone now, no exceptions, and constant willingness to dialog. Jesus did it. Martin Luther King and Gandhi called it nonviolence and did it. Those who believe that they can do it through Jesus can do it. And everyone else can do it.  

Posted: Sat - November 5, 2005 at 03:50 PM          

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