“There is something I have felt the need to say, that I have spoken about in various settings, extemporaneously, because my thoughts on the subject have not been entirely formed, and because it is painful to me to have to express them. However, my thesis is always the same, and it is very simply stated, though it has two parts: first, contemporary America is full of fear. And second, fear is not a Christian habit of mind. ”
— Marilynne Robinson

Earlier in her essay on fear, Robinson claims that “America is a Christian country.” Only she does not mean that in the way it is normally declared. Her claim is full of warning, in relating the Christian faith so closely to a nation state whose disposition and practices are decidedly sinful.

It is true that fear is at the root of so much of our wickedness. The Bible talks about the fear of death as the captivity from which humanity most needs to be freed. Christians are not permitted to fear indiscriminately. If we believe that Jesus has defeated the powers and principalities of this world in his life, death and resurrection, then it should be reflected in our lives. So what does it say that that our country claims so much fear and so much religion simultaneously?

It means that much of our country is Christian in name only. This is not a controversial statement, or at least it should not be. No part of our tradition nor our scriptures testifies to the purity of any worldly power. In fact, the majority of the Bible is highly critical of the sins of the powerful.

“Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”
— Hebrews 2

In order to render ourselves useful to our surrounding culture, we must first find true words about its condition. As King said, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” While most of us remember Martin Luther King for his focused work around racial justice, his work encompassed a much larger field of view. At the time of his assassination, he was criticized on all sides for bringing the Vietnam War “into the field of [his] moral vision.” King was a preacher by trade, and his perspective integrated various societal sins under a common rubric. Violence against black bodies and violence against enemy combatant bodies erupts from the same broken national soul. We could add to that the violence against the land that connects with this national impulse to control and subdue.

“Christianity in the Western world lives and moves within a diseased social imagination.”
— Willie Jennings

I have been thinking a lot about fear lately, particularly as we watch those in power snuff out the life of our black and brown neighbors. I went back and read through long form essays from the last several years and found that fear, racism and violence have long been understood as interpenetrating sins. It is fear that inflates military spending, which in turn supplies local law enforcement with spare military gear. Once armed to the teeth, these powerful soldiers train their imaginations around their constant fear of death. Police training is full of fear, deforming the trainee in the process of grooming him for combat. This is tragic, and should compel Christians to pray for the police, that they would find healing for the wounds inflicted in their very training. Again, this is within the stream of Christian tradition. In the early years of the Jesus movement, there were serious debates about whether Christians could even serve in the military or politics. Both of these vocations are morally hazardous, as a glance out the window or through the computer will illustrate. When a society is armed to the teeth, and then pumped full of fear, the wages of sin come to bear on the most vulnerable. Unredeemed fear leads to violence which leads to death. This is integral to the arguments about police reforms and anti-racist training needed to purge our fear and move toward love. The time for this work was yesterday, last year, last century. So there is no pride in coming to these basic conclusions about sin and death so late in the game. Only prayer for the work ahead.

“I just don’t think Americans fully realize how terrorizing it is to black males when we are falsely suspected as violent criminals. All Americans seem to be thinking about is their fear of us—not our fear of their fear. Black males fear racist fear because we know from experience what happens when the police are called, when the Klan is called, when faces are reddened, when purses or ropes or guns are clutched, when they cross the street away from us, or cross the street toward us clutching their police badges, or their badges of white masculinity.

It is terrifying to produce so much unwanted and unwarranted fear. And then we are harmed. And then we are killed.”
— Ibram X. Kendi

Playlist from week #26

The daily from 6.24 starts this conversation I am continuing here.

In Pasadena as it is in Heaven

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