My life is generally ordered around a somewhat vague but rigid sense of fairness. More than, usually, love or generosity or even practicality, I decide what to do in any given situation using mostly a self-designed barometer of what's fair. Do I want to return this cart to the designated spot? No, but that's what's fair. Is it helpful to beep at the lady who just cut me off in the Target parking lot? No, but she was being unfair. Not all my examples take place in a Target parking lot but you understand what I'm saying.
This is how we relate to each other. Think about the very angriest you get - it's likely it's when you feel something unfair has happened to you.
A few weeks ago I interviewed a man who was shot by the National Guard during a Vietnam War protest at Kent State University in 1970. I was struck by hearing him talk about the emotional realization of what had happened to him - he had more sadness, I think, talking to me about the moment he realized that he could be unjustly shot and no one would get in trouble than he had about actually being shot. And consider the cognitive dissonance here - I'm not blaming him, because I do this too - but here was a kid who'd spent years protesting a war he found to be profoundly unfair. He knew the world wasn't fair. But he still couldn't believe someone would shoot HIM. I get it.
***
For Lent I've been re-reading all four Gospels. It's engrossing, reading them quickly like this, in huge chunks. More than when I try to parse and meditate over tiny passages, this makes Jesus' personality - and maybe something like his style? - emerge more memorably. And I will tell you: there has never been a time for me when pop-culture descriptions of Jesus have seemed more obtuse, oblivious, self-serving and outright wrong.
A familiar passage made my jaw drop again the other day. I'm going to paraphrase it.
Open on: Jesus running into a Syrophoenician woman. (AKA: not Jewish.)
Lady: Jesus! Thank God! My daughter desperately needs you. She's oppressed by a terrible demon.
Jesus: I didn't come to help *your kind.* You're basically a *dog* to me.
Guys. Jesus said this. HE SAID THIS. (Picturing the 2018 headlines now. "WHITE AS SNOW: JESUS IS ACTUALLY SUPER RACIST." "JESUS SPEWS BIGOTED RHETORIC AT INNOCENT WOMAN; FAILS TO RECOGNIZE AND ADEQUATELY APOLOGIZE FOR HIS OWN PRIVILEGE; IS THE ACTUAL WORST")
Jesus wasn't being accurate here - he meant what He said, but he wasn't being accurate. He came to bring the Gospel to everyone - Jew and Greek alike - and watching and hearing the compassion with which he tends to every person he meets makes it clear he deeply loved people regardless of ethnicity (and didn't consider anyone a dog.) But He hadn't taken the step yet to open the gospel to the Gentiles, or even told his disciples yet that that was the plan. (Another thing standing out to me while reading the gospels quickly like this: timing. It is very, very very important to Jesus.)
Back to our scene:
Lady: Ok. I get it. I'm not Jewish. You didn't come for me. Whatever. But I'll take whatever you give me. The leftover crumbs from the food you feed the privileged.
Jesus: wowowowowowowowwwwwwww..... my Father has clearly given you an understanding of what I'm doing here. I can't believe this, it's amazing. Yes, yes, yes yes yes I will absolutely help you.
Can you believe this story?
***
Here's the thing I'm straining to say: for Jesus, the emergency was the gospel. IT WAS AN EMERGENCY. Think about the ways this interaction could've gone - he could've spoken to her gently, healed her daughter and used it all to teach his disciples that "there is no longer Jew nor Greek." In other words, he could've set down his message for a moment and done a great act of racial reconciliation. But he didn't.
It was entirely and wholly unfair that Jesus said this to that woman. She held absolutely no responsibility for not being born a Jew - just as the Jews had no responsibility for the happenstance of their privilege. But instead of wallowing in the injustice of it, the woman - a typical mother, if you ask me - focused instead on her daughter. I don't care if you didn't come for me. It does me no good to pull out my hair or grab a megaphone and cry about how unfair you're being. Whatever. Just help my daughter anyway; I know you can.
Immediately this takes my mind to the passage later, when his disciples think they're going to score some brownie points by waxing poetic over the beautiful temple in Jerusalem. "These great buildings, Jesus! It's so cool that God is your Father." And Jesus says "who cares about these? they'll be torn down in three days. They don't matter."
Jesus came for one thing: the Gospel. Telling people that He was God's son and that the kingdom was here was an emergency to Him. It's clear from the rest of the gospels that He cared about other things - including racial reconciliation and respect for His Father's house. But these were not even close to THE thing. Social justice wasn't his primary mission (are you listening, liberals?) Neither was preserving or promoting institutional acknowledgment of His Father (are you listening, conservatives?) He'd all but ignore these issues completely when it was more important to advance his primary mission.
***
We can't make the world more fair. It's just true. We can't. We've been trying since we started walking upright and we still haven't accomplished it, so learn the lesson. It takes some pretty intense hubris to think we'll get it right now that *we're* here.
So we need to de-throne our first priority of asking "For whom is life most unfair, and how can we help them?" That can't be first for us. We need to push forward with affection for the poor and marginalized because God loves them, and because tending to our brothers and sisters is a holy work called for by Jesus - but we cannot do this because we think we're going to solve it.
We have to believe this for two reasons:
1. So that we do not lose focus on sharing that God's kingdom is being established for the sake of "justice."
2. So that when we do not see justice win, it does not shake our faith.
Jesus didn't really care that much about what was fair and what wasn't. (It would've been fair to just leave us here to die, if you want to go there.) He cared about fairness inasmuch as he cares when we hurt and he hates the exploitation of people and power and privilege - but he does not care about it more than establishing his Kingdom, and calling its workers to understand the seriousness of the task and the the perilousness of relaxing when they think they're doing it right.
If the Jesus you like to believe in is focused primarily with making the unfair fair, you must give him another name.
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
Monday, January 15, 2018
I Never Trust My Feelings/ I Waited for the Remedy
On Saturday I was in a bad mood because the snowstorm cancelled my trip to Phoenix. So Aaron, Naomi and I were on our way to Easton to return some Christmas presents when I turned on Sufjan Stevens, the obvious choice for this most solemn of moments. After a few songs of me thoughtfully going "mmm" and "oh wow" to several of the lyrics while staring thoughtfully into the middle distance, ("Should I tear my eyes out now/ before I see too much?") Aaron suddenly said (with his I'm-In-Charge-Here voice) "ok we're turning this off" and switched to his own playlist. Sufjan can take a good mood and make it bad, so bad moods pretty much go full Requiem-For-a-Dream when he's on. In my (correct) opinion.
Most of the time I have no idea what he's talking about, and it's just the melody and instruments that make me want to curl into a ball. An example: The very first episode of "This is Us" opens on a Sufjan song and - this is not an exaggeration - I literally decided then and there that I would never watch that show. I know what they're up to. It's just emotional manipulation! I don't need that in my life! Anyway - I don't really pay that much attention to his lyrics. But sometimes I catch little things and, to make myself feel better for him, I imagine that he's being so .... incredibly .... pain-stakingly ... self-reflective and pedantic. Like that whatever he's imagining, or whatever terrible meaning he's infusing into his little rememberances are ludicrous. "Lemon yogurt/remember I pulled at your shirt?/I dropped the ashtray on the floor..." like, I imagine someone who remembers this scene in his childhood hearing this song and being like "STFU Sufjan, wasn't that just the time we went to Grandma's house to get some fruit roll-ups and play Mario? Damn dude."
There's a point to this - it's that I think I might do that, and it has taught me a really good lesson. I really shouldn't trust most of my emotions. I respect them, of course. If Sufjan makes me go fetal I can express that freely and let myself get it out, and then probably get a treat later because life is hard and I deserve it. But I'm also getting better (I hope) at not making decisions in that fetal position. That's what I'm trying to say.
I haven't been good at that in the past. You can imagine all the crash diets I've decided to go on in those millions of 10-second intervals during which I've stood on a scale, or the number of times I've read a terrible story in the news and vowed never to leave the house again with Naomi, ever. These are not good decisions.
I never trust my feelings, the old Stevens bard says (then why you keep writing about them, bub?)
And here's the feeling I've been having the most lately: I'm doing this wrong, probably.
"This" being not necessarily Life in General, although yes, sometimes that. But for the purposes of this entry "this" means "being Naomi's Mom," and I've been told by more seasoned mothers that this is pretty much a hallmark of parenting forevermore, but I'm plagued by guilt on a very regular basis.
Now that Naomi is more self-aware, she is becoming more and more interactive. She makes pretend things in her pretend kitchen and tells me about them with pretend words. She points to squirrels out the window and brings me books for me to read to her while she backs up, dump-truck style, into my lap (this is one of my favorite visions of all time.) So I find myself asking, after reading the exact same if-you're-happy-and-you-know-it book 500 times in the same day - how many hours should I spend doing this? Should she play on her own? Can I read my book on the couch while she's sitting here? I know the answer to this is yes, and I do, but while I'm doing it I swear it feels exactly like if we had company over and I just sat there like an asshole with my nose in a book in front of them. Am I the Entertainment?
This existential crisis centers on one really, really wayward belief I'm starting to realize I have: that I'm responsible for bringing Naomi here. My thought proof goes like this:
1. I brought her here.
2. She did not ask to be brought here.
3. Sometimes "here" can be really painful.
4. If she experiences that pain, it's my fault (because 1 and 2.)
5. Therefore, If 1-4, than I should make her as happy and comfortable as possible.
I know how this goes. I know she needs to be independent, and that it's an incredibly useful and important tool for life for her to work out how to be content and imaginative on her own. I know that constantly entertaining her is neither feasible nor good for her. But what I need to know (this is an "I believe, help my unbelief! situation) is that I didn't bring her here. I didn't do anything to deserve her, and I didn't choose her. God gave her to me. This is a hard thing, because the physical, emotional and mental process of bringing her here was so painful and exhausting, and I'd like to take some credit for that (and I do. Some.) But in the broad sense, I really didn't bring her here.
But the rub: if I accept that, that means she's not mine really, and THAT i just won't accept.
I accept, help my... unacceptedness? Unaccceptability?
Peace, friends. If you're happy and you know it, clap your damn hands.
Most of the time I have no idea what he's talking about, and it's just the melody and instruments that make me want to curl into a ball. An example: The very first episode of "This is Us" opens on a Sufjan song and - this is not an exaggeration - I literally decided then and there that I would never watch that show. I know what they're up to. It's just emotional manipulation! I don't need that in my life! Anyway - I don't really pay that much attention to his lyrics. But sometimes I catch little things and, to make myself feel better for him, I imagine that he's being so .... incredibly .... pain-stakingly ... self-reflective and pedantic. Like that whatever he's imagining, or whatever terrible meaning he's infusing into his little rememberances are ludicrous. "Lemon yogurt/remember I pulled at your shirt?/I dropped the ashtray on the floor..." like, I imagine someone who remembers this scene in his childhood hearing this song and being like "STFU Sufjan, wasn't that just the time we went to Grandma's house to get some fruit roll-ups and play Mario? Damn dude."
There's a point to this - it's that I think I might do that, and it has taught me a really good lesson. I really shouldn't trust most of my emotions. I respect them, of course. If Sufjan makes me go fetal I can express that freely and let myself get it out, and then probably get a treat later because life is hard and I deserve it. But I'm also getting better (I hope) at not making decisions in that fetal position. That's what I'm trying to say.
I haven't been good at that in the past. You can imagine all the crash diets I've decided to go on in those millions of 10-second intervals during which I've stood on a scale, or the number of times I've read a terrible story in the news and vowed never to leave the house again with Naomi, ever. These are not good decisions.
I never trust my feelings, the old Stevens bard says (then why you keep writing about them, bub?)
And here's the feeling I've been having the most lately: I'm doing this wrong, probably.
"This" being not necessarily Life in General, although yes, sometimes that. But for the purposes of this entry "this" means "being Naomi's Mom," and I've been told by more seasoned mothers that this is pretty much a hallmark of parenting forevermore, but I'm plagued by guilt on a very regular basis.
Now that Naomi is more self-aware, she is becoming more and more interactive. She makes pretend things in her pretend kitchen and tells me about them with pretend words. She points to squirrels out the window and brings me books for me to read to her while she backs up, dump-truck style, into my lap (this is one of my favorite visions of all time.) So I find myself asking, after reading the exact same if-you're-happy-and-you-know-it book 500 times in the same day - how many hours should I spend doing this? Should she play on her own? Can I read my book on the couch while she's sitting here? I know the answer to this is yes, and I do, but while I'm doing it I swear it feels exactly like if we had company over and I just sat there like an asshole with my nose in a book in front of them. Am I the Entertainment?
This existential crisis centers on one really, really wayward belief I'm starting to realize I have: that I'm responsible for bringing Naomi here. My thought proof goes like this:
1. I brought her here.
2. She did not ask to be brought here.
3. Sometimes "here" can be really painful.
4. If she experiences that pain, it's my fault (because 1 and 2.)
5. Therefore, If 1-4, than I should make her as happy and comfortable as possible.
I know how this goes. I know she needs to be independent, and that it's an incredibly useful and important tool for life for her to work out how to be content and imaginative on her own. I know that constantly entertaining her is neither feasible nor good for her. But what I need to know (this is an "I believe, help my unbelief! situation) is that I didn't bring her here. I didn't do anything to deserve her, and I didn't choose her. God gave her to me. This is a hard thing, because the physical, emotional and mental process of bringing her here was so painful and exhausting, and I'd like to take some credit for that (and I do. Some.) But in the broad sense, I really didn't bring her here.
But the rub: if I accept that, that means she's not mine really, and THAT i just won't accept.
I accept, help my... unacceptedness? Unaccceptability?
Peace, friends. If you're happy and you know it, clap your damn hands.
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