Faith Revolution

I was sitting around with a few colleagues discussing the priorities of Jesus during His ministry while here on earth.  It was obvious to us that people were high on Jesus’ list and therefore should be high on ours as well.  One person brought out the fact that there are some people that, out of necessity for various reasons, we must keep at arm’s length otherwise we would not have any “white space”, boundries or margins in our lives.  The talk soon turned back to investing in the lives of people, just as Jesus did.  One of the guys mentioned how important it was to find people with whom we have common interests in order to build intentional relationships.

No offense to that colleague, but that is just typical Christian thought that often brings disdain from people.

In that conversation, I stated that I agree wholeheartedly but I felt that it was also important (maybe more important) to build authentic, intentional relationships with people who are not at all like us.  You know who they are:  the sinners, the drunks, the young people with tatoos and pieces of metal stuck in their faces (and elsewhere), the potheads, the homeless, the guys with shaggy long hair and beards that don’t smell so good.  You know who I mean.  They’re in your town. Christians like to put their pictures on their missional powerpoint presentations and their posters announcing their latest short term missions trip or their upcoming outreach.  They are in the margins.  We have marginalized them.  They have become the poster child for our “least of these” campaigns.  We call them unbelievers, seekers, things like that. 

I wonder what they call us?  I wonder what we would do if they put our picture up in the bar down the street and called us some unflattering term.  I find them to be more polite.  They just do what they do and ignore us.

Did you ever think that to them, we are the people on the margins?  We never intermingle with them.  We don’t do things with them.  We just want to “save” them and encourage them on to bigger and better things, like helping them become integrated with our standards of living and become tithe paying members of our churches. 

Interestingly, over past year as we have gotten to know our new town and the people that live there, I have noticed something pretty profound.  First this is a great town.  I love it here.  The people are teriffic.  But I have noticed that in this geographical area called Cambridge Springs in which reside twenty-some hundred people, there are actually two different towns.  Rarely, if ever, do the two mix.  They are as separate community wise as North America is from Europe geographically.  There is this wonderful town of people who all do the same things.  They go to church.  They serve one another in love.  They visit each other, they do things together as a community.  Then there is this other community who just doesn’t measure up.  They drink, smoke and some of them do drugs, no doubt.  They have trouble getting or keeping a job and don’t dress as well or drive decent cars.  They’re living with and having babies with people they’re not married to. 

There may as well be a Berlin wall going through town.  That is how big the difference is.  We consider them marginal people.  Maybe it’s because we have helped put them there…on the margins.

I really have to wonder:  are those people the “least of these” or am I?  Do they need to learn from me or I from them?  Are they they ones that Jesus loves and am I the Pharisee that He has contempt for? 

I am in the midst of a budding friendship with someone on the other side of that wall.  He is not at all like me.  I am not at all like him.  I do not understand why he thinks and lives the way he does and I am sure he does not understand me either.  But we get along great and really like each other.  He’s taught me something that I could not have learned from anyone else.  I am grateful for that.

Speaking on leadership and character ethics versus personality ethics, Steven Covey wrote:

Perhaps, in utilizing our human capicity to build on the foundation of generations before us, we have inadvertently become so focused on our own building that we have forgotten the foundation that holds it up; or in reaping for so long where we have not sown, perhaps we have forgotten the need to sow.

No, but religion is; at least according to George Washington.  Here’s a snippet from his farewell address concerning the importance of religion and morality:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Here from the same speech is his thoughts on public credit which gives partial insight to his view of taxation:

As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible, avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it, avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertion in time of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear. The execution of these maxims belongs to your representatives, but it is necessary that public opinion should co-operate. To facilitate to them the performance of their duty, it is essential that you should practically bear in mind that towards the payment of debts there must be revenue; that to have revenue there must be taxes; that no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant; that the intrinsic embarrassment, inseparable from the selection of the proper objects (which is always a choice of difficulties), ought to be a decisive motive for a candid construction of the conduct of the government in making it, and for a spirit of acquiescence in the measures for obtaining revenue, which the public exigencies may at any time dictate.