Where is Holy Love?

There is a lot of bluster and blow right now from Washington and from voices that dominate on social media. I want to offer a way forward that is balanced, thoughtful and Christianly committed. There is a Jeremiah-like burning in my bones to say what I need to say and here is where I'm going to say it, here on my little blog and not post it all over the place.

I have been reading NT Wright’s book Following Jesus. (SPCK, 1994). In his chapter on the gospel of Mark he writes about Hitler. Yes, Hitler! That name that is bandied about so much to represent fascism and fear and world domination. I am not excusing for one minute the horrors that that man and his government wreaked upon the world and the echoes we feel and hear even today from that evil empire.

Wright doesn't excuse it either. He focuses on Hitler’s leadership and influence. Wright describes what Hitler said about Winston Churchill who was Britian’s Prime Minister at the time: “That man is going to set all Europe ablaze through his incendiary dreams of world domination.” Was Hitler looking at a picture of Churchill or into the mirror? In a moment of projection, Hitler accuses Churchill of exactly the things he is himself already doing.

Projection is the process of displacing one’s feelings onto a different person, animal, or object. The term is most commonly used to describe defensive projection—attributing one’s own unacceptable urges to another. For example, if someone continuously bullies and ridicules a peer about his insecurities, the bully might be projecting his own struggle with self-esteem onto the other person. The concept emerged from Sigmund Freud’s work on defense mechanisms and was further refined by his daughter, Anna Freud, and other prominent figures in psychology. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/projection)

The disciples James and John asked Jesus if they could sit on thrones on his right and left side when he came into his Kingdom. And Jesus said to them, “You don't even know what you're asking me”. (Mark 10:37-39) Wright then points to Jesus’ crucifixion and the two revolutionaries that hung on either side of him and says, “No wonder Jesus told James and John they didn't know what they were asking for”. He goes on to talk about the phenomenon of the Jews at that time that so much wanted to make Jesus the king and overthrow the Roman Empire in Israel. At different points Jesus literally walked away from them, at other points he tried to change their thinking, but they weren't having it. Wright again: “The problem was that to think in terms of revolution, or military revolt against Rome, was itself a total betrayal of the purposes for which God had called Israel in the first place.” (45)

After working with all sorts of people for the last 50+ years, my discernment is that President Trump and his followers are projecting their sense of fear and helplessness on to other people and institutions instead of focusing where the fearful and broken places are in themselves. When we are emotionally underdeveloped and have unresolved broken places in us, that only God can heal, one result of that brokenness is that we project onto other people the scary and hurtful things that we are feeling inside and don't know what to do about. It is much easier to blame someone else and use the power at hand to fix the external problem instead of making the difficult choice to change ourselves first. In this moment in time, several key players in culture and government have enough power and enough money to indulge their sense of making things right without wisely and prayerfully considering the source of the feelings on which they are acting. My brother calls this phenomenon “Throwing money at it.” Apt, indeed.

My discernment is that President Trump and those who follow him so closely are not only motivated by economic gain but are doing what they think is best based on deep feelings of fear and helplessness. We know that the thought patterns that come from generations of living in poverty shape a person’s world view. We see it in Eastern Kentucky, we see it in the Deep South and those are just the places that I am personally familiar with. The years that we have spent with world events and changes in our culture fostering a sense of helplessness and fear have led us to the place where we are now. Just the pandemic itself was enough to throw us off balance, much less the senseless violence that seems to spring up everywhere. It seems that following Jesus is not an option. The option that gets chosen is not recognizing, accepting, and impacting our own emotional underdevelopment and brokenness. That seems impossible, where are the resources to do that? Following our feelings to find a way forward instead of a grounded sense of wisdom and creativity is another choice that gets played out again and again. I wish I could say “go to a counselor” but in our healthcare climate that is almost impossible to do, financially as well as geographically. I wish I could say “go to church” but so many churches to day operate from a twisted sense of what it means to be Christian in the world.

What is the way forward? At the risk of being dismissed as yet another weird evangelical, which I am not, we in the US, at least need, a massive sense of turning back to God. We need to follow Jesus. We need to get our houses in order literally and figuratively, focusing on the God of Love as the God of our lives. The love I'm talking about is a love that encompasses a sense of owning our own mistakes and putting what we want for others ahead of our own agenda. Yes, “love your neighbor as yourself”, in Jesus’ famous words. Once we can realign with God's sacrificial love and God's agenda that even now is healing the world, we can take part in what God is already doing. We can be his Image-bearers wherever we are in the world.

Instead of looking for outside forces to fix our lives just as James and John looked to Jesus to become a political king to fix their lives and remove Rome from power, Jesus pointed out another way. He lived and died and was resurrected to model for us that His way was different. His way is clearly outlined in the Bible and totally available to us through the power and inspiration of the Holy Spirit within a healthy community of faith. Denomination doesn’t matter, faithful, sacrificial community does.

Every one of us can start now by realigning our hearts and minds and lives with God's agenda, with his Kingdom of Holy Love and from there from there the ripples only spread outward to the people in our lives and the situations we influence. Those ripples will begin to interlock, and our lives will be better. The fear and the sense of life being an emotional rollercoaster ride will be held at bay through prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit. Fear and helplessness are not managed by our reliance on a human leader who has his own struggles and his followers who have a misguided view of who the King really is.