The Wound

“Transformation has to do with the way the walls separating us from others and from our deepest self begin to disappear.  Between all of us fragile human beings stand walls built on loneliness and the absence of God, walls built on fear – fear that becomes depression or a compulsion to prove that we are special”

-Jean Vanier, “The Fragility of L’Arche and the Friendship of God.”

“We all carry a deep wound – the wound of our loneliness.  That is why we find it hard to be along, and we try to heal our aloneness by joining a community.  But to belong for the sake of beloning cannot help but lead to disappointment.  We must realize, as Jean [Vanier] says, that ‘this wound is inherent in the human condition and that what we have to do is walk with it instead of fleeing from it.  We cannot accept it until we discover that we are loved by God just as we are, and that the Holy Spirit, in a mysterious way, is living at the centre of the would.’”

-Stanley Hauerwas, “The Politics of Gentleness.”

Hauerwas, Stanley and Jean Vanier.  Living Gently in a Violent World: The Prophetic Witness of Weakness (Resources for Reconciliation; Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2008).

The Nation-State is not your Church

Influenced by Calvinism and Puritanism the Protestant religion is largely individualistic.   It is about “my personal relationship with my own ‘personal Jesus.’”  Identity too then is individual rather than corporate.  Identity is formed based on a relationship with Jesus alone, and not with his Body; in much of Protestant evangelicalism the church and the sacraments become secondary, and indeed often unnecessary, forms of unity.  This is in contrast to churches with a more focused (and some would argue well developed) ecclesiology (including the sacraments, especially baptism and Eucharist) such as Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Anglicanism.  One has to wonder if this individualistic focus of religion is one of the reasons many evangelicals are so enthralled by politics and political parties.  If religion is individualistic and does not provide a corporate structure in life another structuring mechanism must take its place, and for many this is politics, and especially political parties.  The result for many evangelicals is the nation-state becomes their church.   As Americans have come to give more loyalty, and place more faith in, to the nation-state they have begun to attribute theological principles to the American nation.  And have come to give less loyalty and place less faith in the Church.

SK on the cares of life

“Cast all your care upon God.”  You are to cast all care away; if you do not cast all care away, you retain it and do not become absolutely joyful.  And if you do not cast it absolutely upon God, but in some other direction, you are not absolutely rid of it.  In one way or another, it returns again, most likely in the form of a still greater and more bitter sorrow.  For to cast care away, but not upon God – that is distraction.  But distraction is a most doubtful and ambiguous remedy.

SK on Love

“To love God is to love oneself truly; to help another person to love God is to love another person; to be helped by another person to love God is to be loved.”