Hunger, Heaven, and Hell

It's possible to worship God when you are afraid. But in fretfulness, I find it hard to pray. My dread can suffocate my prayer. I’m not proud of that. This humbles me before those who have a steel-hard spiritual strength that I lack. It forces me to reckon my own sin in one of its shapes, fear. Judge me or don't. Your call.

It’s possible to worship God when you are hungry. I have worshiped in hunger and thirst. But in those times I had chosen to be hungry and thirsty. It may be that hunger creates in the poor such dread that, like me in fretfulness, they find it hard to pray. And hunger alone might come between creator and creature. To be hungry is to be in danger of losing sight of God. Judge the hungry or don’t. Your call.

I don't have children. So my ability to worship while my daughter groans in her sleep for lack of food is entirely hypothetical. So I cannot judge the man with a hungry daughter who cannot lift his eyes to God.

This is a beautiful prayer, the beauty of which I would not wish on anyone:

     My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
        Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
     O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
        and by night, but find no rest. [Psalm 22:1-2 (NRSV).]


1. Helping the rich, hurting the poor.

That prayer might soon be the anthem of many hearts among America’s poor. An element of the House of Representatives has killed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps).

But they gave billions of dollars to Big Agribusiness – $195 billion over 10 years.


2. Hurt has its reasons.

Many if not most of these members of Congress confess Christ. So I am enjoined from hating them. But if I could ask them a question, it would be this: Congressmen, how do you beautify helping the rich and hurting the poor? What is the biblical lipstick you put on your legislative pig? Is it Matthew 13:12?

For to those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. [NRSV]

I would say, Jesus did not mean that men and women of power in our time should add to corporations’ fleets of jets at the same time that they put discount bakery-remainders above the grasp of a poor family. Jesus was talking about understanding.

I would urge them, Get that; that is a prayer my for you: get understanding. Your authority is greater than mine, but I will seek it, too.

3. Hearing from heaven and hell.
I am unlikely ever to be among members of Congress, such that we could share what we know about God. But in my place and time, I might share my ideas with Christian men and women who might share such ideas back at me.

And when two or three are gathered in his name, Jesus is there. I hope he brings Lazarus, from his parable, who was poor, who had sores that dogs licked, who did not get even crumbs from the rich man’s table, who’s door he starved at. Lazarus suffered in his lifetime, but now he gets every good thing in heaven. And maybe Lazarus will pray his own gospel story into the hearts and minds of we who speak together about hunger. Lazarus stands for the poor and desperate in Jesus’s Palestinian days and in our present time.

But if Jesus does not bring Lazarus, maybe he will bring up from hell the other character in that parable – the rich man, who did not love Lazarus, who did not help him, who suffers now, who suffers unbearable thirst, who will suffer forever. Maybe, from the rich man’s mouth, in which lack of spittle makes his mucous congeal into tiny, sharp pebbles, he will rasp a warning not to enjoy our prosperity as if God had prospered us only for ourselves. Not that Jesus wants the rich to have less; he wants the poor to have more. He wants them not to be hungry.


4. Where Jesus will be.

After food stamps are cut off, if that is the final outcome, Jesus will be in America. Jesus will be among the poor, just as he was among the poor of Israel two-thousand years ago. In that time, he did not enter a palace until it was time to die.

And for every man, woman, and child who suffers, Jesus will know their suffering as if it were his own. It will be his own. When we afflict the poor, we afflict Christ. Isn't that revealed in the nature of a brother, a father, who loves perfectly?


5.  Prayer.

Jesus, pray Lazarus into our hearts. Amen.

Lonely

Many years ago, I knew a woman who was married a long time, and she was faithful to her husband until the day that she died, almost.

She longed for more than what she had. Then she thought that she had found what she longed for. It was a man her age who had similar interests. She was a teacher; he was a principal. She liked to golf. So did he.

And he would call her on the phone and read psalms to her. He would ask her what she thought that one psalm or another meant. And he would praise the beauty of the psalms.

They had an affair. It lasted a short time. Then he left her and started up with a PTA president.

In the short time that this woman had an affair with this man, she became deeply attached to him. He walked away, but her attachment to him stayed. She even stalked him. In addition to the attachment, another bi-product of the affair was her unbearable shame. She tried to take her life.

It had been her practice to pray every day. After the affair, when she went to pray, all she could say to God was "I’m sorry."

Within two-or-three years, she was dead. She did not reach the age of retirement before she died. On her deathbed, she confessed to loneliness.

Predators who clothe themselves in godly-seeming garments will always find it easy to take down women and men who long for God but don’t know how to find him, or don’t know that he is what they long for.

The rich find it easy to take down men or women who long for riches. (It is apparently an old saying that if you marry for money, you end up paying for it.)

Or someone might long for a highly-clever person. (I suspect that Russell Brand’s easy wit is what makes him to many women irresistible.) Or a beautiful person. Or a learned person. Or brave. Or famous. The ors could add up.

Statistics on marriage and divorce are kept by the Centers for Disease Control. I mention that without particular comment. The Centers for Disease Control tell us that every year, 6.8 people get married for every thousand persons in America; and 3.6 persons get divorced.

If I understand those statistics, more than half of all American marriages end up in family court. But a broad statistic like that says little. The first line of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." I've never been married, so I can't say. Nor can I judge any marriage that fails. I know for a fact that if I had married when I was younger, I would not have stayed married. That’s true no matter who I might have married. I was just too selfish.

That said, I believe the ability to live with longing and a willingness for that longing to be unsatisfied while we live is a gift from above. So is patience to channel our longing in a virtuous direction where we don’t necessarily get what we want, but we are at least somewhat satisfied with what we get.

When we burn for something, but we resist it for righteousness’s sake, maybe the smoke from that burning is a fragrance pleasing to God.

To this woman, this love affair drew her like a crackling bonfire on a winter’s night. While it lasted, it was a joy to her. It was less important to her lover. To him, discarding it was like flinging away a cigarette while reaching for another.

Let me say one last thing about the woman of this story. Please remember that she said that all she could pray after the affair was "I’m sorry."

I heard that from her in the time of her dying. Years after, I remembered that she had said that, and I thought of Jesus’s story in Luke 18, about the Pharisee and the tax collector. Both were in the temple. The Pharisee thanked God that he himself was so virtuous, not like other men, and, in particular, not like this tax collector. But the tax collector stood far off. He could not look up. In shame, he cried to God, "Have mercy on me, a sinner!" Jesus said that one of those men was justified before God, but not the other.

And these are words from Psalm 51:"The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." (NRSV.)

I regret that I did not at the time think of this story, and this psalm, to share with this woman.

But I hope that, one day, she will hear them from the lips of an angel.

The Right Question

This was the morning of studying small children. I saw them in Trader Joe’s; I saw them in Von’s; I saw them in a parking lot. They were with their parents.

And they were adorable. So cute. So happy. So protected.

One little girl was with her sister and her father. Father and daughter were talking, and the only part of the conversation that I heard was this:

Little girl: "I’m not a sidekick. She’s a sidekick." (Pointing to her sister.)

Father: "Not sidekick. Psychic." (All adults grin.)

1. Theology lurking.

There’s theology lurking here somewhere.

Some of my friends who are not believers hold a theological magic lamp. Its genii  banishes any notion of the existence of God. That magic lamp is evil in the world. If God exists and God is good, why does that evil exist?

I am mortal and limited in my understanding, like they are. So ultimately they should take up an issue this big with God. If they don’t wish to go to God with their accusation, then they might find someone who has really, really suffered, and who believes. And they should ask that person, "Why"?

But here is a limited answer from a limited man:

You are asking the wrong question.


2. Why is there good in the world?

Because the better question is this: if power is irresistible, and if power corrupts, and if some folk have an almost supernatural ability to accumulate power, why is there good in the world?

Why can these lovely children be fed and protected and loved by prosperous, safe parents?


3. The difference a question makes.

I heard of a scholar, a theologian, who studied God and evil. He spent years peering into grotesque events. After years of investigation, he ceased to believe.

I can’t judge him, but maybe that was bound to happen.

Maybe Paul had his reasons when he said in Philippians 4:4-9 (NRSV):

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.
Maybe Paul had his reasons when he said in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (NRSV):
Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
In a world where circumstances and powers and principalities conspire to steal away confidence in God, this habit of thanksgiving shelters faith.

Not that our thinking can add or subtract from God. He is not Tinkerbell.

But Hamlet is a theological play, and that theological play says this in act 2, scene 2: "[T]here is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Thinking affects belief. It affects how we know the world to be; that affects our ability to see what is within the cloud that surrounds God.


4. Easier for some than others.

It’s easier for me to give this answer, sitting in my office munching crusty french bread and sipping cold water, than it is for a woman sitting at the sterile bedside of her infant who’s lungs are failing. Or a holocaust survivor. Or a man without food for himself and his family. I cannot judge these people if they cannot believe, or if they cannot give thanks.

And maybe it’s easier for me to say what I say than it was for Paul himself. Or maybe not. But Paul did say these things, and in his life he was blinded, shipwrecked, beaten, whipped, stoned and left for dead, starved, exposed in harsh weather, and imprisoned. Yet he believed.

Thank you, Lord, for Paul. He inspires me.


5. What to do.

But the fact is that it’s easier to believe when your mind is not seized with suffering, as some people’s minds are.

So it’s right, first, to pray, as Jesus said, that we not come into a time of trial.(Mark 4:38 (NRSV).) He said this to his disciples in Gethsemane, as he knew he was about to be arrested, tortured, and crucified. Cruel circumstances have made the hopefulness of better people than me whither. Although for others, it has increased their faith.

Second, it is our missionary duty to help those who suffer. This theology regards the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) as a sacrament.

And we need to remember to be grateful to God in good times. We should remember to be grateful to see adorable, happy, safe, well-fed children. If we can’t do that, we have no hope when trouble comes.

Other People’s Sins

I know someone who is starting a divorce. I was telling him that, before I regained my hope of salvation, I might have married someone unsuitable. The person I was speaking with waived away that concern. "You could have married her and just seen if it would work out."

I exploded. "I just can’t! That’s not biblical!"

"Not biblical." It probably came across as "NOT BIBLICAL!" Harsh words to a man at the beginning of a divorce. 

But I was jolted by that attitude. Yet, I might have served him and me better by staying calm and understanding how he and I are alike.

1. The curse of talent.

It’s easy to be outraged by someone else’s sin.

It’s like a judge I was in front of in Orange County. At a hearing for a violation of my client’s probation, I was explaining my client’s mitigating circumstances. My middle-aged client had lost her husband, who had discovered that, with his new prosperity, he was now attractive to a girl no older than their daughter. Also, my client had always enjoyed excellent health, but she had started having seizures. Her marriage and her health were the solid ground under her feet, and they had crumbled beneath her. As her ground wobbled, her morality had wobbled.

But the judge cut me off. She said, "I’ve had a hard life, too. If I could overcome, anyone can."

I was angry that the judge believed that everybody had her gift for overcoming hardship. Good for her, but not everybody has that gift.

I worked under a woman who was an organizational genius. She couldn’t fathom my disorganization. On the other hand, she seemed not to grasp the overarching theme of a criminal case; I was much better at that than she was.

Some of my friends are great athletes. They love to exercise. Others don’t naturally find in themselves that gift of physicality. It’s not laziness; it’s different-ness.

2. Doing right, doing wrong.
 
And I seem to follow some biblical directions more easily than others. Passing over my virtues, here are some ways that I tend to fall short.


Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. [Matthew 5:39-42 (NRSV).]
I have resisted lawsuits against me; I routinely say No to people in the street who ask for money; and I don’t lend to every person who wants to borrow from me. And that would make me "unbiblical."

And:
[E]veryone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. [Matthew 5:27 (NRSV).]
I won’t give details; trust me.

Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." [Matthew 25:41-46 (NRSV).]
I have a closet-full of expensive suits, and there is a continent-worth of hungry people in the world.

(I see a trend. These are all from the book of Matthew. Is there an argument that Matthew doesn’t belong in the Bible? Anyone?)

3. The gift of discontent.

Enough. Point made. I’m grateful that God has enabled me to have what virtues I have. But when they come to mind, my faults make me uncomfortable. They humble me (and I need humility); they make me know that I depend upon grace; and they give me an ache to be better than I am – and good must come of that.

No small part of that discomfort is my distance from the dominant theology of this American age -- a theology that says that salvation is easy. I will never lack need of grace; but with God’s help I will continue to be better at seeking and doing the will of God. That’s because "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven." (Matthew 7:21 (NRV).)

4. Sympathy.

But I fall short. God have mercy when I forget that.

So I can’t judge this divorcing person. He made a mistake that I’ve somehow avoided, and he can’t bear the burden of the bad marriage. People fall under all kinds of temptations that aren’t tempting to me, or that are, but I manage to resist them. But I succumb to faults that others walk away from.

5. Preaching and futility.

And maybe I shouldn’t judge churches that screech against homosexuality as if men were slipping out their backdoor together even as the preacher preached; but in fact everyone sitting solemnly in the chairs in front of the preacher is like-minded on that subject.

I wonder about churches that preach sermon after sermon about the evil of abortion, yet nobody who attends that church would remotely consider an abortion.

I wonder about the liberal minister who preached an Easter sermon to Barack Obama and condemned the hard-heartedness of Republican politicians.

All of their own sins are dealt with? They have to talk of the sins of others?


6. Priorities.

Flight crews instruct passengers that in case oxygen masks come down, each passenger should put on his own mask before helping others. The Bible is like that.

Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye. [Matthew 7:3-5 (NRSV).]
So true. And so common in our consciousness that – I think I can speak for myself here – we risk losing sight of it’s power.

7.  Joy in heaven.

Luke 15:7 says that angels rejoice when a sinner repents. It’s not easy for me to change my ways, but it’s easier for me to change my ways than it is for me to make someone else change theirs. So if I make joy in heaven, it will more likely happen when I look in, not out.

God Ain’t Easy

Lincoln knew. In his Second Inaugural Address, he spoke of the Civil War’s bloody opponents:

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.

1. As then, so now.

I worship the Lord, like some of my conservative friends. Liberal that I am, I believe that for several months in 2012, every time someone said "God bless America", whether they knew it or not, they were praying for the defeat of Mitt Romney. My religious-conservative friends might think the opposite.

The Lord, as I understand him, takes the side of the poor, and he is pleased when the government of our country helps to control AIDS in poor countries, and he is pleased when the government of our country helps the legions of our hungry to buy food. But some of my friends know that the Lord said to help the poor and feed the hungry, but they point out, quite rightly, that he never said that the government should be a means of that.

I might be right or I might be wrong; likewise my friends might be right or wrong.

But right or wrong, it’s safe to say that all of us are so vastly thick in our knowledge of the depth and height of breadth and beauty and glory and love of the Lord that compared to what we don’t know, what we do know is very small. And what little we know is often wrong.

 2. Not looking, not seeing.

We like to know things. If mysteries don’t provoke us to seek answers, then they discomfort us. They make us feel small, and we don’t like that. So if we don’t chase knowledge of the Unknowable, we shrink the Unknowable to a size that suits our minds, we compress the glory of the Lord to a shape that fits our ideas . We don’t plead with God to impress his image on our souls; we look for his image in a mirror.

Idolatry is a way to shrink the Lord to the size of our minds. The ancient Israelites made a golden calf that they could see and touch, a golden calf with finite qualities. Know the calf: know the Lord.

3. The mystery.

Meanwhile, Moses was on the mountain, learning from God how to make burnt offerings, the smoke of which would rise into the sky, where God resided above the Israelites, un-seeable, largely inscrutable.

Moses pleaded to see God; God put Moses in the cleft of a rock, and he put his hand over the cleft while he passed, so Moses would not see God’s face and be destroyed. Moses saw only God’s back, and he lived.
 

To Job, God was in the wrong. Job accused God. Then God revealed something of his vastness to Job, and Job put his hand over his own mouth.
 
Sometimes desperate men of God have lifted this deep question:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?/ Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? [Psalm 22:1 (NRSV).]

This, in fact, is the mystery that, in one form or another, unbelievers sometime consider the summit of proof against a loving, powerful God. The lack of a satisfying answer to this question is, to them, the answer to every question about God.

 

Jesus, as a man, is accessible to us; but, like God, he is deeper than our understanding. And, as with God, we tend to project our ideas and attitudes onto him.

 

4. Unexamined ideas.

The glib is the enemy of the deep. We often fail to examine received wisdom. That’s as true of me as it is of anybody. But since I’m ignorant of my own error (if I knew it was error, I wouldn’t cling to it), I’ll pick on other people.

I learned as a young man that salvation was simple. Just say "Jesus Christ, come into my heart", or some version of that, and salvation is a done deal. Some of my friends believe that today. It’s their interpretation of what Jesus said to Nicodemus, about being "born again":

"Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." [John 3:3 (KJV).]

I wonder how many of my friends who have produced a child think that birth is easy?

I won’t say that there’s an easy answer in the Bible about what it takes to be saved; I admit that if you're willing to isolate some verses, the answer can seem easy. There are arguments on the side of easy grace. But people who believe in that might reckon the parts of the Bible that suggest that salvation ain’t easy.

 

For example:

Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. [Philippians 2:12-13 (NRSV).]

Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation – if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. (1 Peter 2:2-3 (NRSV).]

[B]ut those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. [Luke 20:35 (NRSV).]

 Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." [Matthew 24:41-46 (NRSV).]

And "If it is hard for the righteous to be saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinners?" [1 Peter 4:18 (NRSV).]

I’m not trying to plant panic. I’m just taking the wisdom received from some preachers and from people who approach us in parking lots with invitations to be "saved" and saying that they might be inviting us to adopt a simplistic, if not an entirely wrong-headed, understanding of God.

And I'm not pretending that the passages that I've quoted are a complete answer. There are comforting passages about salvation. Rightly or wrongly, I think that much depends on who you are. Rightly or wrongly, I think that God means to comfort the broken hearted and those who struggle and those who suffer; he means to goad toward love those who prosper and think their prosperity is for themselves only.

5. Paths to take.

"[W]hoever would approach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him." True for the audience of the book of Hebrews; true for us. We are called to seek the Lord.

To seek the Lord, we can test what we know about him by reading the inspired words of those who knew the Lord better than we do – the Bible.

Sometimes I wonder, too, if prayer isn’t more important than reading the Bible. For most of history most people could not read; that's still true in large parts of the world today. But almost everybody can talk to God.

Good preaching lifts the soul.
      
God is love; to love is to know God.

Or maybe, because God is deep and vast, there is no one way and no one combination of ways to journey toward knowledge of him.

6. Journey.

But it is a journey. No journey is more worthwhile. People spend years learning law, medicine, music, football, poker, Mark Twain, or art. People spend decades learning their spouse and discovering their children. These are all good things.

But none of them is, by itself, a path to a joy beyond our imaginations, which we’re called pursue piece by piece, piece by piece, day by day, day by day. The journey can start at any time; it should end when God says.

And this I also trust: God helps along the way.

7. Prayer.

Lord, please un-satisfy us with our present knowledge of you, and make us yearn to know you better. Give us the means to know you. Along the way, call to us toward the direction we should go. Reward our seeking with understanding. Give us strength to persist until we come to where you want us to be. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Annie Dillard Does Not Believe

Annie Dillard is brilliant. Someone asked me why no American public intellectuals believed in God. She was the first candidate I thought of, she of the Pulitzer Prize.

I knew that she believed because I knew some of her work.

This was a woman who wrote about feeling her way through a library at night and taking a book that her hand landed on in the dark. When she turned on the light, the book was The Story of My Life, by Helen Keller. A numinous moment.

I read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. It’s a memoir, but it’s theology. I read parts of Teaching a Stone to Talk; parts only, because I left it in a hotel room. At the time, I wanted every American Christian to read "An Expedition to the Pole". I thought that to complacent believers, reading it would be like a groggy man splashing his face from a basin of icy water, though the details of it are hazy now, years later. To me, at the time, it was proof that Annie Dillard got it.

But now, her web page says that she doesn’t believe. Under "Religion", she says "None."

"An Expedition to the Pole" contains a description of a feeble church service, which, however, she found sacredness in. As I understand her website, she now calls it "hilarious".

It’s tempting to wonder what happened. I know some outline of her life, and there are things in that outline that I’m tempted to peer into for an explanation. But that would be glib. The truth is, I have no idea. The truth is that I don’t know what happened in the head of this brilliant stranger who once wrote of God with awe and reverence. I don’t know what happened between this brilliant stranger and a God that I understood better when I followed her thoughts.

She is smarter than me, so her unbelief would be more deeply-thought than my belief.

The unbelief of Annie Dillard absolves anyone of unbelief who has tried to climb to God on a tower that they built with ideas and analysis and knowledge. If Annie Dillard’s brilliance was not wings that would hold the wind of God, then no brilliance is.

And if I must admit that I don’t know why Annie Dillard doesn’t believe, then I also must admit that I don’t know why my friends who don’t believe tread the paths of the world like I do, but don’t see what I see or hope for what I hope for.

And if I must admit that I don’t know why Annie Dillard does not believe, then I can’t know that my own faith won’t pull away, or slip away, or wither away.

I know little of her life; I know none of her future. One day the story of her life will be fully written; that time is not now.

I don’t presume to know the end of that story; nor the end of my story; nor the end of my friends’ stories; nor the end of my family’s stories. These stories are being written. And the best stories go in directions that, looking ahead, you do not see, but, looking back, seem inevitable.

But in the meantime, I cannot count on smarts. What then? Sometimes, when my mind wobbles my faith, I look to God with desperation and hope and say, If I don’t believe in you, I have no hope at all!

I believe because I want to believe. I believe because I believe that life would be unbearable without belief. God forbid that I should be offered some bright worldly prize, a promise of prosperity or prestige or happiness, the price of which is unbelief, paid then or later.

I can keep praying. I can continue to pray for God to draw me to him, to make me grow in faith and love.

I can keep reading the Bible to learn how to live, then live that way. This is called Building your house upon a rock, so that when the storm comes, your house isn’t swept away.

I can keep seeking the company of believers, to surround myself with witnesses to faith.

I can keep remembering those moments in my life when the supernatural has intersected with the natural.

Most of all, I can keep hoping in God’s grace to make me believe, grace to resist what would take me away from God. I can’t control God’s grace, but I can hope in it. "For [the Lord] says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’" (Romans 9:15 (NRSV).) I can hope he will have mercy on me, and that I will receive his mercy humbly, not boasting in merit

Donkeys Like Us

Is Barack Obama arrogant? Yeah, probably.

Look. He rose from nothing; became the first African-American editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review; became a law professor at the highly-acclaimed University of Chicago School of Law; made millions from a best-selling memoir; became a U.S. Senator as a young man; and, against the odds, beat the Clinton machine and the Clinton money for the Democratic nomination for President. Then he took the most powerful office in the world.

Would a guy like that have a high opinion of himself?

Might.

1. The donkey.
 
But here’s the thing: arrogance isn’t the only thing about him. He’s also a loving family man; he’s a thoughtful policy wonk; he’s a serious Christian; he cares about the welfare of the humble; he reaches out to his adversaries (too much, say his critics on the left). He takes risks (Osama bin Laden).

Some people won’t acknowledge the bad in him. Some won’t acknowledge the good. Some believe good things about him that aren’t true. Some believe bad things that are lies.

But our political leaders, including Obama, aren’t cartoon villains, and they aren’t storybook heroes.

They’re complicated. Like you and like me.

As Martin Luther (I believe) said, A man is a donkey, sometimes ridden by God and sometimes by the devil.

2. The Word.

  Why don’t we get that?

We’re a nation dominated by Judeo-Christian traditions, a nation of people of The Book.

So we should.

The Bible is unlike other ancient texts of history and origins. It doesn’t photoshop our historical forbears; it doesn’t edit out all evidence of their sin and fault. Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son, the son of his old age, in obedience to God, such was his faith; but he also sent away his servant girl with his other son, by her, into the desert, where, but for God, they would have died.

Ten of the twelve patriarchs plotted to kill their brother, Joseph, but instead sold him into slavery to a passing caravan of foreigners.

David loved God with his whole heart; but in the book of Kings, he had sex with another man’s wife. And then, when she got pregnant, he killed the husband to hide his own fault.

By tradition, the apostle Peter asked to be crucified upside down, because he felt unworthy to die as his Lord had died; but while Jesus was in custody before his own crucifixion, Peter denied him three times. When Jesus was arrested, all of his remaining disciples fled.

So the bedrock book of our culture is clear: people are complicated. They are capable of greatness and great love; the same people can be cruel or cowardly or foolish. This truth embraces the great men of our tradition.

3. A sports metaphor.

Why can't we see our leaders that way?

Sometimes we seem to think and speak about our leaders with the restraint and thoughtfulness of a sports fan chauvinistically shouting up his favorite team or putting down a rival team.

4. Myself, ridden by the devil.

And I have been guilty of this. When George W. Bush was president, I happily read Maureen Dowd’s book Bushworld. I gobbled down the delicious disparagements of our president. Ditto when I read Shrub by Molly Ivans.

And in these days, I've had the habit to spend thirty minutes four days a week watching John Stewart on The Daily Show as he hilariously explodes the hypocrisy of Republican leaders and conservative media.

5. Ridden by God.

But I’ve stopped.

I don’t watch The Daily Show anymore. I choose not to watch a man, however clever, put other people down.

I’ve tried to be disciplined about Republican leaders. I’ve written essays on the virtues of Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and Rick Perry, none of whom I could imagine voting for.

6. The Why of it.
 
If the Bible is believed, to see someone as complex is to see them as God sees them. Why shouldn’t we have the habit of seeing as God sees?

And to see someone as evil and only evil, to cherish our hatred of him or her, is sin. Is Jesus’s call to love our enemies a nice idea from a dreamer of dreams? Then, too, 1 John 4:20:

Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.

7.  Practice.

I’m a man of faults and virtues. My friends and family likewise are men and women of faults and virtues. However hard, I try to know that about my adversaries and my enemies, too, when I take wisdom.

And I pray for those I oppose. Sometimes, I pray for opposing counsel in cases I have, even if I lean toward having a low opinion of them.

I think that the Minority Leader of the Senate, Republican Mitch McConnell, would harm the country for the sake of his ideology. I tend not to think highly of John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, but it’s easier for me to see him as complex than McConnell. But I pray for them by name every day, sometimes twice.

It’s easier to think of someone as reachable by God if they are complex, as opposed to evil. It’s easier to pray for someone whom you think is reachable by God.

And praying for persons in high positions, after all, is the will of God. (1 Timothy 2:1-2.)

Or we can do otherwise. It’s our choice. After all, we are complex creatures, sometimes ridden by God, sometimes by the devil.