A moratorium on moratoria: Share the story!

Image used with permission (CreativeCommons)

I'm a bit perplexed by the number of Christians (a group which includes me) who choose this Holy Week each year to unplug from their online connections so they can "focus on what really matters."

Is this our message? I'm pretty sure this might be received by others as a subtle "you don't matter." Doesn't this contradict our mission? I thought we were supposed to be at constant readiness to present the story.

Here we have a perfect opportunity, at this most important time of the year, to demonstrate the power of the Incarnation in our own tangibility, to connect with others in an intentional participation in humanity, and we consciously reject the chance. Given the choice, maybe we should only come online during Holy Week, to "focus on what really matters."

Social media has been dropped in our laps as one of the great revolutions in communication. Just as the printing press brought the vernacular scriptures to the people for their understanding and the deepening of their faith, and just as an Empire-wide use of Greek facilitated the easy propagation of the truths of the message that has so profoundly called us to action, perhaps we should get on board with this new revolution and take this opportunity God gives us to communicate once more with a world hungry to hear that there are things stronger than death and destruction.

Our hesitancy might marginalize us and make it appear that we are more interested in anti-social media. Let's not do that.

See
Oakland Cathedral attack officially ruled hate crime
with special attention to the analysis near the end of how the community can respond.

Death and taxes and faithfulness

Used with permission: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

Benjamin Franklin etched into Western thought this pessimism: we can be sure of nothing save death and taxes.

He has a point. Even Old Faithful isn't so reliable anymore, but we all know we're going to die. On the other hand, pretty soon after you die, you don't have to pay taxes anymore.

But then, back to the first hand, you don't have to die anymore either.

This is faithfulness in a nutshell: a character of integrity that makes expectation a reliable indicator. It's not necessarily good. If I'm a career criminal (which I'm not, by the way), you can reliably expect that I'm going to get away with something immoral at some point soon. It's what I do. It's who I am. It's my character.

It's the character of life to have death and taxes.

But let's ponder a shorter definition of faithfulness. Trust. We can trust that life will dish us death. Taxes? I think those got added on somewhere along the line. We can weasel our way out of some of those, at least.

But Death...? Death is faithful. It's reliable. We can expect it.

It's part of a promise from long ago, a promise whose fulfillment is made very clear in an event we commemorate tomorrow morning. Some theologians even argue that it was an act of mercy from a God who was aware that the creativity and consequence of human evil would only increase if we were allowed to live forever. Death was a blessing, and God promised to the people that he would undo the impossible situation their selfish greed had created.

Read more about the raising of Lazarus from the dead and what it tells us about Easter.

But that's not the end of the story. God was faithful to the rest of his promise. He decided to give this death thing a try himself. This created a bit of a problem: either God needed to ungodify himself and cease to exist, or death needed to be redefined.

Hint: take door number two. End of problem. Death reframed as celebration, an act of power, an episode in everyone's personal narrative of eternity.

Here's the problem with my initial premise: Franklin was wrong. Taxes are political, a function of our geography and political boundaries. And death is transient, a power that only lasts so long. To those who argue that religion is a fairytale developed by sad simpletons who wish there was some hope beyond the grave, I can only encourage them to ponder that our faith is a response, not a cause. Reality has already been written. We're not trying to fix it. It's faithful.

This post is part of Bridget Chumbley's Blog Carnival on Faithfulness.

Previous carnival entries have focused on lust, love, church, peace, patience, kindness, and grief.

The Carnival is open to anyone who would like to participate. It is designed to encourage dialogue, cooperation, and personal growth.

Good grief

Used with permission under the Creative Commons License

Charlie Brown is famous for his frustrated "Good grief!"

He repeated it often enough that others have discussed if there is such a thing. Is there? Why would grief be good? Shouldn't we avoid it? Isn't the experience of grief a sign of our weakness?

No, not exactly. Perhaps we could cope with challenges more effectively if we accept a new old idea: Grief is good if it leads to positive change.

Grief does something similar to pain. It calls our consciousness to accept what the subconscious clues are trying to tell us: Something is wrong and should be addressed.

Pain is caused by all sorts of things, but grief is almost always a function of unresolved expectations in human relationships. (This is true even for the grief of loss. Something was left unfinished.)

How much suffering could be averted if we identified, articulated, and addressed misbehaviors early? How many arguments and fights and wars could be avoided if we said "I'm sorry" more often? How much more joy would there be if a nearly immediate recognition of grief rapidly translated to a response of love, which replaced the grief with mutual elation for both parties involved?

Lent culminates in a triumph of goodness, a manifestation of power, a victory of all that is good, a certification that Life is--as it should be--stronger than death.

But Lent also calls us to two actions. Granted, the first action is internal and invisible to others, but it is still action, the action of introspection. But the second is more apparent, the demonstration of new behavior. Lent demands an examination of practices and habits, thoughts an desires and passions. Lent calls us to behave constructively, consistent with the dignity inherent in our humanity.

Some members of churches with a developed monastic tradition refer to a "baptism of tears" as a sign that internal change is taking place. The religious word "repentance" could be substituted here. The point is that we reach a state where we recognize our mistreatment of others and consciously desire to undo it.

We can't, of course. But we can behave differently from there on out.

A dose of good grief would be good for all of us.

This post is a submission to
Bridget Chumbley's One Word at a Time Blog Carnival
on the subject of "goodness."

Other submissions have covered
lust, love, church, peace, patience, and kindness.