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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