Christianity For the SBNR
I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that Jesus was right. I’m going to assume that when he envisioned the “Kingdom of God,” a reign where the merciful obtain mercy, where the meek, that is those who reject the use of coercive power as a means to even the most legitimate end, inherit the earth, where the peacemaker is called a child of God, I’m going to assume that when he cast his eyes into the future and saw the direction God was moving, he was right. Jesus, along with prophets and poets from religious traditions throughout history, understood the direction or telos toward which creation is evolving.
If that’s the case, and I believe it is, then the new UN Goals for Sustainable Living surely reflect such a vision as well . . . and when you think about it, that’s amazing. I know they have no teeth. I know that many of the people who voted for them won’t lift a finger to make them happen. Hell, plenty of people don’t even understand them, but somehow the UN, the United Nations, all of us together, know this is the direction humanity must take. It’s stunning that they could agree on an agenda that seeks to eradicate poverty and hunger, works toward gender equality, good health care, quality education and the kind of justice that generates peace. It almost feels like the voice of God whispering across the field of eternity, calling us forward into what is good, and true, and beautiful.
That’s how I feel when I read “The Beatitudes,” (Matthew 5:3-12), especially when I read them out loud. But when I study them, when I read what other people have to say about them, the question comes up (in my heart as well as theirs): was Jesus for real? Did he really intend that human beings could live this way? One possibility is that way back then he thought that might be possible one day, so he set the bar really high and hoped for the best, but now? Now we know something about our base instincts, the pre-programed fight or flight response, the selfishness and violence inherent to a species whose genes remain in the evolutionary mix.
Armed with that knowledge, is it reasonable to expect that we can live into his vision for the reign of God? Is it reasonable to expect that humanity can make any appreciable progress on the UN Goals for Sustainable Living, when the richest and most powerful of our societies entertain the possibility of electing officials who would build walls to keep immigrants out, ramp up military muscle to “make a point,” and who speak as though black lives, Afghani lives, Guatemalan lives and Syrian lives matter less than those they imagine form the mainstay of American culture? Strangely, my answer is YES. In fact I think it is ultimately inevitable. So yes, BUT not as we continue down our purely materialistic path. I believe humanity can step forward into a new moment but only if we experience a profound spiritual awakening, only if we recognize the creative power and drive of the God Jesus called Abba.
The reality is we pretty much know how to accomplish the goals the UN mapped out before us; what we don’t know, we can most certainly invent. What we lack is the spiritual will, the sense of purpose and meaning that comes with a deep and practiced connection to the presence of love. It surrounds us, permeates us in fact, but we are so knocked out by our own idea of what is real, we can’t see it. We are asleep, asleep to the reality of who we are and what we are doing here.
That said, I’m enough of an optimist to think that just maybe we might be waking up. I think we are becoming aware that there is more to this universe than the material it is made of. And as we awake, we will realize that each one of us is a unique expression of the creative power, let’s call it what it is, a unique expression of love, that founding force, that evolutionary impulse towards what it beautiful and whole and next. Each one of us is an expression of the love intelligence that animates creation’s evolutionary story. Each one of us has a unique role to play, a unique obligation. Not because we live in fear of a God in the sky tossing thunder bolts, but because we know what it means to be loved by all that is, to know what gives each life its value. As we wake up to that, this world will move forward. It will evolve. If it doesn’t now, it will in time. It’s inevitable. God gets God’s way. My evidence for such a claim? 13.82 billion years from the big bang to Shakespeare. I’m not too crazy about the speed of the progress, but it has a direction, a telos. Jesus got it right.
God is on the move now. We look at the world and see chaos, violence, atrocity, starvation, environmental degradation, and we wonder how we can ever move forward from here. That’s just because we cannot imagine how to make it happen; we don’t realize is that it is in these powerless moments that Spirit is on the move. This is when the power that creates goes to work. It’s not a coercive power; it is a creative power. It’s not born of the materialist universe, it grows in the heart of God and is expressed in you and in me. You don’t have to do it all, just your part. But the first step is to Wake Up. The first step is to wake up to the reality of the movement of love in your life. It’s there. Really, if the UN can agree on a set of goals that look for all the world like the “Kingdom of God,” I figure Spirit is on the move.
People all over the world are finding ways to call Spirit into the project. Look for people doing it. Fan that flame. It is not a pipe dream when the power of God is at your back.
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