Last week I began reflecting on a question that someone asked at the Los Ranchos Presbytery Pastors Retreat: What does our current political situation tell you about the human condition? The answer I offered last week (which you can read here) was that our current political situation discloses how given we are to what I call “practical atheism,” the practice of living as if there are no real values, truths, or justice other than those that we simply negotiate with one another. I ended by noting that this predilection is not a ‘red’ or ‘blue’ phenomenon. It is a human phenomenon and is rooted in our finitude.
The Christian tradition has long reckoned with the practical atheism to which we are inclined. We reckon with it best when we remember that we always reflect and speak from within this finite condition, not as if we can somehow float above it. At the same time, we are heralds of “The Word of the Lord,“ a phrase which points to something more profoundly and eternally true than the truths that we negotiate with one another. In other words, “The Word of the Lord” is that which does originate outside of the human condition, but it always spoken into the human condition by those who are within the human condition. What emerges from a fully finite and limited human community called “the church” proclaiming a “Word of the Lord” are two things.
First, we are a humble community, because we know that this “Word of the Lord” is not simply an expression of our own brilliant ideas or an exertion of our own will to power. It is a word that convicts us insofar at it convicts anyone, saves us insofar as it saves anyone, and sustains us insofar as it sustains anyone. While we might be proclaimers of that word, we are not exempt from its effects. Ironically, our greatest strength lies in how open we are to letting the “Word of the Lord” humble us, even as we proclaim it. This humility is also what keeps us from being “Fundamentalist” whenever we proclaim “The Word of the Lord.” We remember that God’s Word is always spoken to a particular situation and cannot be simply parroted to a different situation without being distorted.
Second, on many occasions our proclamation of the “Word of the Lord” compels us to embrace perspectives that may seem utterly ridiculous to others, perhaps even to our own limited way of thinking. The cross is the primary example. The Apostle Paul said plainly that the message of the cross is considered foolish to the wisdom of our age. Of course it did in Paul’s day, writing to people living under the shadow of the boastful Roman Empire. And it still seems ridiculous today, to those of us living under the shadow of the boastful American Empire. The cross? Redemptive suffering over redemptive violence? Every action movie and most tales of political history argue otherwise.
Too often “atheism” today is alleged to be whether one believes in a six-day creation, a young earth, or some kind of “man upstairs” who is pulling all of the levers of life. In the Christian Church, I think the challenge of “practical atheism” for our day is the same challenge that faced the Apostle’s community: Do we believe in the message of the cross? Or, to put it in other ways: Do we ascribe to nonviolence, do we believe that it is more noble to die than to kill, do we believe that it is better to give than to receive, do we believe in loving our enemies, do we believe in doing good to those who persecute us? Do we practice such things, or at least aspire to be discipled into this way of life?
Lent begins next Wednesday and we will mark the season with an Ash Wednesday service at 7:00 pm. Throughout this season, the question will reverberate in my mind: What does our current political situation tell us about the human condition? We will be looking at how our experiences of grace and our practices of remembrance shape our identity as God’s people.
Mark of St. Mark
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