Doghouse

Untouchables and the Way of Jesus

The Untouchables in America.










Nationalistic Religion is a replacement for Jesus who is the Center. Having written for the Far-Right DougTenNapel.com blog I had missed this obvious fact. They can only talk around the periphery of an Old Testament judgmental God. They are not even for the justice such a God is passionate about because they would exact it upon their foreign enemies but give our own leaders a free pass simply because they are ideological counterparts with whom they agree.

Tom Fox wrote in one of his last journal entries before he was abducted and killed by Islamic extremists:

The only way we will gain love is by giving it to others, even those we
disagree with. Love of country must always be subordinate to love of God. Love
of country alone sets us on a course towards the disasters that have befallen
other counties over the centuries. Charting a new course must begin now before
it is too late

I suppose this is what I have been trying to get at in citing Bonhoeffer's Ethics on the Ultimate and the Penultimate. It seems, on the outside, to be just a literary argument (anyone who has studied accenting in Ancient Greek will appreciate this). It isn't. It's a huge paradigm shift from one to the other.

Fox is correct. Love for country, any country, should be a reflection in a smaller degree for our love for God. By supplanting God with Nationalistic Pride we become idolatrous. Then we justify acts of violence under the idol of Nationalism.

Then comes the blood and the killing.

These ways are as far from Jesus as can be fathomed by any rational person. Fear and hate based, they repudiate faith, hope and love.

Yesterday I printed a part of he Sermon on the Mount. I received an angry letter from the young man who I was addressing. He made no argument...and he stayed as far away from Jesus' words as he could.

There they stand.

I do not deny that the way of peace-making and non-violence is not itself fraught with peril. It's instructive to note that where non-violence has worked best against oppressive regimes there is some context already for Gospel. Ghandi understood this in India with Imperialist Britain. The blows they received haunted the conscience of a nation that was still somewhat informed by Christianity and the notion of justice.

This also happened in the Philippines in a revolution that was primarily spiritual and based in non-violence.

But it did not work in Tienneman Square. The Communists simply ran over the protesters and never gave it much thought.

I suppose the answer is once again found in the words of Jesus "Be innocent as doves but wise as serpents."

In our case we are dealing with Extremists who, as Hitt so aptly describes, are so rabid that they will kill without remorse or thought.

This does not absolve us, but it is cause.

In the meantime many innocent people are dying or being maimed from a war that is unjust from both sides. It's an old fable that there is a good side and a bad one. War is simply evil, like sin and death.

Jesus made sure to meet the "Untouchables" of his day, who were seen as evil and beyond redemption.

Tom Fox mirrored that in his own way and it cost him his life. Some will say that was foolish.

Some think Jesus foolish.

I don't.

Deal.

Word.

posted by Obi-Mac BakDon @ 8:12 AM