Seeing with God's Eyes (mid-week)

Seeing with God’s Eyes

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

August 7, 2019

“Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? ... Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?”  (BCP, 305, from the Baptismal Covenant)

I have heard recently, from several people, that they cannot have friends who support President Trump and his policies.  “I just can’t bear to hear them spout their hatred and bias, and don’t want to be guilty of enabling Fascism” is the usual reason given for turning aside from friends from decades back, or even from family members.  Painful as such breaks are, some justify them by saying “I am tolerant of everything but intolerance itself,” and pointing to systemic bias and discrimination and how deeply harmful mere personal bias becomes with joined with a dominant position in society and the implicit privilege this brings.  Privilege blinds those who enjoy it:  they are usually unable to see their own bias.  So the need to break from them is all the stronger, if only to witness to them about something they are unable to see. 

Most of you know my own left-leaning political persuasions (I am not sure if that is by way of a boast or confession!).  Many have expressed support when I in preaching touch on how I believe the Gospel directly relates to many issues that are confronting us as a people.  But some have gently chided me privately for keeping and even valuing the friendships I have with those who differ from us in their views of immigration, women’s and minority rights, and race.    

We must not enable wickedness, or stand idly by when great horror against whole classes of people is carried out by a government that supposedly represents us.  This is why it is such a good thing to see the recent comments by the leaders of Washington National Cathedral and Presiding Bishop Michael Curry calling out the President for hate speech.  But that said, we must not fall into the trap of adopting the very bigotry we condemn as wickedness in others by putting ideas above people, and by reducing any human being to a mere political opinion or partisan affiliation.    

We human beings seem to be hard wired in such a way that we band together with those we see as “like us” to the exclusion of “the others.”  Tribalism, sectarianism, partisanship, and, yes, even racism, xenophobia, and fear of sexual minorities are all manifestations of this near universal failing, the desire to book everyone as either one of us or one of them.  

But Jesus calls us to be better than that.  “Who is my neighbor,” asks the lawyer.  Jesus replies by telling a story where the “neighbor” is the one who shows compassion on a person in need who is not part of their tribe, the parable of the “Good Samaritan.”  He asks us to imitate God, who pours out the blessings of rain and sunshine equally upon the righteous and the wicked.  “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” he says, which in the context means, “Be compassionate every bit as much as you see God having compassion.”   

“Treat others as you would be treated” Jesus says, the Golden Rule.  But this also means evaluating yourself by the same rules you evaluate others by: “The measure you apply to others will be the measure applied to you.”   “Don’t complain about the speck of dust on another’s eye when you can’t seem to pull out the log stuck in your own eye.” 

Never reduce a family member or friend to a mere caricature of a person by booking them merely as a sum of their political opinions and actions.  In so doing, we are not seeing the image of God in them, who, like us, are imperfect creatures of God. 

Accepting the fully well-rounded humanity of others and ourselves means seeing past differences and maintaining relationships despite such disagreement, especially when the disagreement is on basic values.     

None of this means, of course, giving up on pursuing justice and the dignity of all.  Desmond Tutu’s line still applies:  “Silence in the face of oppression means you are siding with the oppressor.”  But it does mean being respectful, and in never taking as a default position assuming the worst of motives for our opponents. 

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn said it clearly: the line between good and evil is not between groups of people, whether it be between nations, economic classes, races, or political parties.  The line between good and evil is thin, but very clearly defined, and it runs down the center of each and every human heart.  And who wants to kill a part of his own heart?  It is so much easier to simply blame others and assign all evil to them.  He said this in reference to his guards and interrogators in Stalin’s system of political prisons and concentration camps: even they had a choice between good and evil each moment.  Denying that they too were created in God’s image meant denying his own humanity. 

I invite all of us to listen more intently to those from whom we differ even as we continue to engage them, relate to them, and express our values and beliefs and the reasons we feel they have gone astray. 

Grace and peace.  –Fr. Tony+