By Jim Schact
For years I have thought and mulled and prayed about three central Imperatives, whether they are from something I understand to be God or not: (1) Love one another; (2) Create Gods Kingdom on earth; and (3) be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. So we are to wisely and innocently love one another while we seek to create the kingdom of God. For me that requires boiling things down so I can understand them, and hopefully this will be of some help to you, as well.
This, particularly the loving one another thing, seems to require looking at the nature of our existence as people. First, we are subjective, limited by seeing the world through our senses, beliefs and experiences. There is no such thing as an objective observer and each of us view our own needs and survival differently than we view anyone else’s. Secondly, we strive for the survival of not only ourselves, but of everything else we care about. This could include our family, soul, beliefs, culture, country or world. Third, we learn to discriminate, to make choices based on generalizations from experience. We learn what causes us pain, what makes us laugh, and who loves us, from our experiences and we make choices based on those experiences. And Fourth, we create organizations and societies that reflect us, with all our good and bad and history.
Life and the world as we know it reflects our nature and what we have created.
Wise (and innocent?) people from many cultures and faiths have shown us both the problems in creating God’s kingdom, and steps toward it. We have been shown that we are not just separate entities, but also a connected whole. We have been shown the ways in which our survival depends on each other. We have been shown that our beliefs about each other are so often not true, that if we take the time and effort, our differences can be understood and respected. We have seen how, with care, patience and by working together, we can create a more just and equitable world.
Experience has shown how hard this creation is. Far more people have been willing to kill for what they want, than to die for it. People rarely give up any comparative advantage, regardless of whether that advantage is in beauty, wealth, family, knowledge or love. Once people believe they are right, changing their minds is nearly impossible. It is easier to be among people we understand and know. People have limited patience and energy. People like being important and having power.
And having people in charge of creating the Kingdom of God poses problems. Having that Kingdom limited to believers of a certain God, or even of any God at all poses even more. Who judges what cultures get to survive? All peoples and cultures seek to continue, and have biases. I don’t mourn the loss of Aztec civilization or the apartheid created by South African Boers, but many fought for those cultures and mourned their loss. I would mourn the loss of any more Native American cultures. And how do we deal with Israel and the Palestinians? Jews have experienced genocide over and over again so the desire and need for a homeland is well justified. But Palestinians have the same needs.
When cultures are fighting for survival, they find ways to discriminate and deny rights, and a way to justify it. Republicans justify it as Making America Great Again. That is easy to oppose. But what about Native American’s exclusions of non-tribal members from certain rights? Or what about the concern of Israel if there was one state that in the future Jews would become a minority and it would stop being a Jewish state? The argument that a culture’s very survival depends on discrimination against others has been made with good cause down through the ages, and has justified much I find abhorrent.
So let’s use all of our wisdom and innocence to treasure our common humanity, to create the Kingdom of God, if only for just a moment or a blink in time with a few people. And let’s do so humbly, with gratitude for those who have gone before use and who walk with us. Why bother? You will have to answer that for yourself. For me the effort is part of who I am and is the only way I can appropriately honor those who have loved me and made my life possible.
photogram: Shanna Mahan