Somehow I cannot imagine God up in the cosmic bleachers as war plays out down here on earth. Look! There’s God! He’s cheering for us! He’s waving our flag!
The Jesus I believe in is impartial, even to a fault. If he showed favor, it was only towards the weakest and most humble members of humanity. This country once welcomed such people, as evidenced by Emma Lazarus’ eloquent invitation to the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, and the homeless inscribed at the base of our Statue of Liberty. Now these are the people our nation has forsaken.
If the spiritual and Christian Left is to win this 21st century conflict, we cannot let anyone steal the Jesus we know. It’s up to us to insistently restate and defend the true Christian principles – Jesus’ principles – of justice, humility, grace, and compassion.
It’s up to us to walk with the poor, the sinners, and the undesirables.
It’s up to us to call national attention to the gulf between what both Christians, and non-Christians awed by Jesus' teachings, are called by Jesus to do – be peacemakers, lift up the hungry and impoverished – and the unjust, war-mongering, wealth-favoring policies of our self-proclaimed “born-again Christian” political leaders.
It’s up to us to refute the myth widely-held amongst the powerful and wealthy that power and wealth are somehow a mark of having established a personal relationship with Jesus, and that poverty and suffering are punishment for having not. To believe in this manner simply dishonors the teachings of Jesus, who chose a life of poverty, and gave his life for grace and compassion.
It’s up to us to insistently call attention to the planks Jesus would see in our national eye: our growing numbers of homeless and impoverished, our increasingly ill-fed and ill-educated schoolchildren, our evermore neglected disabled veterans and chronically ill.
It’s up to us to finger those on the righteously religious right as hypocrites for abusing the name of Jesus to promote their personal bigotries, hatreds, and revelational fantasies. It’s up to us to finger them as hypocrites for claiming to follow the Prince of Peace by serving the God of War.
It’s up to the spiritual and Christian Left to talk more, much more, about spirituality and about Jesus. While protecting separation of Church and State is of utmost importance, it does not require that religion be banished from public discourse.
If it’s true what my friend said, that the righteously religious Republicans have stolen God, then by continuing to let them control the religious conversation we'll soon let them succeed at stealing Jesus, too.
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