{"id":4316,"date":"2022-05-29T13:44:50","date_gmt":"2022-05-29T19:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/whatgodwantsforyourlife\/?p=4316"},"modified":"2022-05-29T13:44:50","modified_gmt":"2022-05-29T19:44:50","slug":"evil-and-the-witness-to-divine-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/whatgodwantsforyourlife\/2022\/05\/evil-and-the-witness-to-divine-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Evil and the Witness to Divine Love"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cRighteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.\u201d (John 17:25-26)<\/p>\n

The message of Scripture and the message of John\u2019s Gospel \u2013 in particular \u2013 is that God loves us more than we love ourselves that that we are meant for glory.\u00a0 But that love is of a particular kind, as John notes.\u00a0 It is an intimacy and knowledge known preeminently by the Father and Son, and it is an intimacy and love that can only be known by indwelling: That intimate state of existence that is marked by a oneness with the Son.\u00a0 That is why John uses images like the vine, and that is why his Gospel is filled with allusions to the sacraments.<\/p>\n

If we imagine that love can be given full expression apart from Christ, if we mistake our feeble attempts to express it for the fullness of love found in him, we have yet to learn much about our faith.\u00a0 The Christian journey is not about getting our passport to heaven and then being a good, loving person in some innocuous, well-meaning, vanilla sense of those words.\u00a0 It is about dying and rising with him in baptism, to be led into a life that continues to plumb the depths of God\u2019s fierce love which heals and restores the lost to the true purpose of their lives.<\/p>\n

That is a love that we will never fully comprehend in this life. \u00a0But it is the spiritual journey into which we are invited.\u00a0 By God\u2019s grace his Spirit peels away layer after layer of cruelty, pettiness, and selfishness. \u00a0But the Spirit also leads us into larger and larger expressions of God\u2019s love.\u00a0 It is what Maximus the Confessor described as a \u201csober inebriation\u201d. And it led the church to reach around the world in an embrace of divine love, building churches, monasteries, schools, universities, hospitals, and orphanages \u2013 breaking down barriers between the clean and the unclean, between men and women, between races and classes, the rich and the poor, and warring nations.\u00a0 It led the fight against slavery.\u00a0 It created a global culture, that however imperfectly talks about the self-evident rights and dignity of every human being.<\/p>\n

But if that relationship is about a love that leads us into glory, imagine what horrors can be committed by walking away from that love.\u00a0 If that love can transform the world, its absence \u2013 what we call evil \u2013 can plunge it into just as much darkness.\u00a0 It is that kind of darkness that has been on display over the last two weeks, in Buffalo, Los Angeles, and Uvalde: the deaths, the waste, the obscenity, the pain, the grief that follow in its wake.\u00a0 And we should name it for what it is.<\/p>\n

There are those who will not agree.\u00a0 They will argue that there is no god and, therefore, no such thing as evil, that the choices we make are thoroughly determined by sociological and psychological factors.\u00a0 But such thinking has left us without the vocabulary to name what is happening around us and in our own hearts.\u00a0 In the wake of every tragedy now, leaders of all kinds \u2013 including far too many clergy \u2013 say, \u201cI can\u2019t understand why this happened\u201d \u2013 or words to that effect. That is why we seem so lost, so powerless, so befuddled in the face of evil deeds.<\/p>\n

This does not mean that we cannot learn from sociologists and psychologists.\u00a0 It is worth naming the sociological and psychological factors that exacerbate evil that aids and abets it.\u00a0 To argue that certain acts are inherently evil is not about denying the factors that multiply its impact.\u00a0 Nor is the church\u2019s conversation about evil about refusing to consider the concrete steps that we can take to ameliorate the impact of evil deeds on the world around us.\u00a0 Church leaders led by the sober inebriation of Christ\u2019s love participated in the Civil Rights Movement and helped to create legislation that made it harder to spread hate and discrimination.<\/p>\n

But it is dangerous to assume that evil choices are reducible to a series of environmental factors that \u201cmake people do evil things\u201d.\u00a0 And it is childish to think of evil as some sort of possession that comes over people without antecedents or connections to the rest of life.\u00a0 Jesus takes on human flesh because it is in human flesh and through it that the power of evil and death exercises its influence over the world.\u00a0 That is why Hannah Arendt, having lived through the Holocaust, could still talk about \u201cthe banality of evil\u201d.\u00a0 Demon possession is the language that we use to describe someone who is inhabited by nihilism and the desire to destroy life.<\/p>\n

And that is why the church needs to persist in naming evil.\u00a0 It is rare that it is clothed with horns and a tail.\u00a0 More often it looks like any other human being, and failing to name evil dulls our moral senses.<\/p>\n

What else can we do?\u00a0 I won\u2019t spend too much time arguing that we can support a variety of efforts that are already explored at length across the internet. \u00a0I do have to say that after several days of following the conversation about the events in Uvalde, that I am stunned that the conversation about this problem is so mired in ideological approaches to it, that we can\u2019t seem to take a divergent, complex approach to the problem that takes three basic elements into account: the perpetrator, the weapon, and his victims.<\/p>\n

That analysis clearly suggests that no single solution will suffice. To be sure, that will include gun laws and other provisions. Long term it will involve addressing the factors that contribute to the complex mix of social, psychological, and familial factors that help to create the violent ideology that prompts people to commit this kind of crime. And, because none of those approaches will have immediate effect, we also need to secure and protect our schools.<\/p>\n

If the average citizen can contribute anything to the solution, it will be the calm, steady, firm insistence that our representatives work to solve this problem in a way that is concrete, likely to succeed and shaped by a commitment to a viable solution.\u00a0 We can also engage our communities and schools in a conversation of what more can be done to protect our children in the meantime.<\/p>\n

But as a church, there is also a larger task that we can and should embrace.\u00a0 The loving oneness which we have been given in Christ is not a private grant.\u00a0 It cannot be expressed in isolation.\u00a0 The unity of the church as it is expressed in the love of Christ is meant to serve not just as a witness to the reign of God, but as the leading edge of the new reality that love makes possible.<\/p>\n

That role has been at the heart of the church\u2019s mission from the very beginning.\u00a0 But today it is not only central to our mission in theological and spiritual terms, it has become critical to the well-being of our communities.\u00a0 And that love needs to find active expression beyond the walls of our buildings.<\/p>\n

More often than not, the modern suburb (and, for that matter, the modern city) is no longer a true community.\u00a0 We do not know most of our neighbors, let alone a significant number of the people who live in our towns.\u00a0 We do not shop for groceries in the same place.\u00a0 We do not walk the same streets or visit the same post office (if we use one at all).\u00a0 Instead, we work long hours, pull our cars into the garage, and withdraw behind closed doors.\u00a0 Evil plainly thrives in disconnected communities where families are unknown to one another, where support systems are threadbare, and where people are often left to navigate misfortune in isolation.<\/p>\n

There are many ways in which we might address the events of the last week and we should, but none of those measures will mean very much in a world without a lived witness to the power of God\u2019s love. \u00a0As important as it was the Civil Rights movement did not vanquish racism. \u00a0As important as gun legislation is, it will not vanquish the darkness that led to the events of the last two weeks.<\/p>\n

If we are truly anguished and angry about those events, then we need to discern a way in which to reach out into our communities.\u00a0 We need to get our hands dirty \u2013 as the expression goes \u2013 in addressing the despair and anger that creates the horrors we have witnessed.\u00a0 We need identify ways in which we can address the brokenness and isolation in our communities \u2013 in ways that don\u2019t simply deal with the structural problems that promote violence, but that speak to the darkness in our hearts.<\/p>\n

Why? Because if the \u201cthoughts and prayers\u201d of some are not enough, neither is the attitude that says, \u201cpass a law, so I can stop worrying about this and get back to my life.\u201d\u00a0 And because \u2013 if the power of evil thrives in the absence of God\u2019s love \u2013 then it is also true that the embodied love of Christ is ultimately the antidote to the power of evil.<\/p>\n

Gracious and loving Lord, you poured out your life, the life that you share with the Father, in a sacrifice of love.\u00a0 And in our baptism we were buried and raised to new life in your crucifixion and resurrection.\u00a0 You have given your church the mission of forging bonds of love and care, bonds of love and care that witness to the possibility of new intimacy, new life, and the hope of healing.\u00a0 Use us, we pray to frustrate the power of evil and to nurture the reign of your love.\u00a0 All this we pray in the name of your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, who with you and the Holy Spirit, reign one God, now and forever.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\u201cRighteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.\u201d (John 17:25-26) The message […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":240,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3840,5,3849,3843,3831,3839,3846,3830,3851,3837],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buffalo","category-church","category-divine-love","category-gun-control","category-guns","category-los-angeles","category-school-safety","category-school-shootings","category-thought-and-prayers","category-tx"],"yoast_head":"\nEvil and the Witness to Divine Love<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\""Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. 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