FEAR INDICATES THE ABSENCE OF SOMETHING

Wendell Berry has come to mind a few times today so I went with it and when I got home from work I pulled his book Sex, Economy, Freedom, Community from the book shelf. The first section I turned to pretty much answered why Wendell Berry has been on my mind.

Breaking free from the mistaken notion of Christian Nation and Christian Religion and the idea that our form of economy and political system had been established by God as a blessing to the world was a tough one to break free from. But what a marvelous thing it has been. It's still torturous at times hearing the rhetoric and witnessing the behavior coming from those who still hang onto it as if it somehow reflects Jesus into the culture/world but hey...we've never been promised an easy road to walk where everyone would agree with us...even the religious community. Maybe especially the religious community?

Things seems to be in a time of great shifting in the world once again and these kind of times will produce in people much anxiety and fear and sometimes even revolutions. I long for a day when the earth is full of a people that are no longer afraid and no longer fall for the lies coming from those peddling fear and who in times of shifting stand out as peacemakers and heralds of the good news that love and freedom have come into this madness, and by the way they live, the peace and joy of which they speak is a visible reality. Something that is painfully absent in what we see coming from the Christian Nation crowd.

“Despite its protests to the contrary, modern Christianity has become willy-nilly the religion of the state and the economic status quo. Because it has been so exclusively dedicated to incanting anemic souls into heaven, it has, by a kind of ignorance, been made the tool of much earthly villainy. It has, for the most part, stood silently by, while a predatory economy has ravaged the world, destroyed its natural beauty and health, divided and plundered its human communities and households. It has flown the flag and chanted the slogans of empire. It has assumed with the economists that “economic forces” automatically work for good, and has assumed with the industrialists and militarists that technology determines history. It has assumed with almost everybody that “progress” is good, that it is good to be modern and up with the times. It has admired Caesar and comforted him in his depredations and defaults. But in its de facto alliance with Caesar, Christianity connives directly in the murder of Creation. For, in these days, Caesar is no longer a mere destroyer of armies, cities, and nations. He is a contradictor of the fundamental miracle of life. A part of the normal practice of his power is his willingness to destroy the world. He prays, he says, and churches everywhere compliantly pray with him. But he is praying to a God whose works he is prepared at any moment to destroy. What could be more wicked than that, or more mad?

The religion of the Bible, on the contrary, is a religion of the state and the status quo only in brief moments. In practice, it is a religion for the correction equally of people and of kings. And Christ’s life, from the manger to the cross, was an affront to the established powers of his time, as it is to the established powers of our time. Much is made in churches of the “good news” of the gospels. Less is said of the gospel’s bad news, which is that Jesus would have been horrified by just about every “Christian” government the world has ever seen. He would be horrified by our government and its works, and it would be horrified by him. Surely no sane and thoughtful person can imagine any government of our time sitting comfortably at the feet of Jesus, who is telling them to “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you…” (Matt. 5:44).

— Wendell Berry