Giving Solace

I wonder, sometimes, at the limits of my capacity to give comfort.

I know, I know, there are folks who say the task of the prophet is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, but mostly what I see in the world is suffering.  Hurt and loss, fear and trembling, those things are everywhere and a near universal.  I ache at the inescapable ubiquity of the world's pain. 

The pastor's task is primarily to give solace, but there's a boundary to that calling.

That boundary lies in the unique needs of every soul I encounter.  What gives comfort to one person will be of no use to another, and words that are bright with grace to one ear might be gibberish to another.  

Almost all of my own resilience in the face of loss and sorrow lies in my trust in the reality of God.  I know, from my faith, that nothing that has occurred in our time and space is ever forgotten.  It's all there in the mind of God, and that includes the reality and personhood of everyone I've lost.  I am blessed with the knowledge that they are completed, and that their completeness is a blessing.

I also trust, in my understanding of the infinite creative power of God, that everything that could possibly be is as real to my Creator as that which is.  All of the universe as we can see it is not the limit of God's work.  So the loved one who was taken from us too soon, where we feel the loss of all that they could have been?  Where we lament that we never reconciled, and there are parts of us we never shared with them?  All of those lost moments may be beyond us, but they are not beyond our Maker.  In God, nothing of what they could have been is gone.  In that, I find comfort.

I also know, from the heart of my faith, that our seasons of suffering aren't something God inflicts upon us, as if the Lord were some distant, demanding and monstrous tyrant.  God participates in the fullness of our struggles, knows them round about and within.  Everything we experience is known and felt by our Creator.  Being Itself bears the weight of our sorrow, and I am comforted by that.

But if Jesus is not shared between you and I, how can I share that comfort?  

If you believe the universe is a blind trampling machine, a churning murderous thrum of quantum cogs and mindless algorithms, I will struggle to reach you with my words of grace.  You will hear my words as delusion, as foolishness, as the prattle of a fanciful, willful child.

I could, in that knowledge, simply withdraw.  Coil back into my own bedrock certainty, leaving you infidel and alone.

What an ugly and selfish act that would be.

If you suffer, now, and do not find purpose and solace in Jesus as I do, then my task is to walk with you.  

To hear you.  To celebrate with you.  To weep with you.  To offer you food and warmth and encouragement.

To be your friend, even in our difference.

Being a Friend and Being an Ally

In the struggle for justice in our culture, one of the terms that gets bandied about a bunch lately is "ally."  If you support the rights of LGBT folks (which I unreservedly do) you need to be an "ally."   If you support the rights of women, you need to be an "ally."  In the leftist circles where I lurk, it's as prevalent a term as "comrade" once was amongst the fellow-travelers of the communist era.   Is true, tovarisch!

But it sounds oddly in my anarcho-libertarian Jesus-following soul, which quails against it.

Perhaps that's because ally, unlike comrade, does not just assume a common goal or purpose.

The term "ally" assumes a common struggle against a common enemy.  It is, as a term, largely representative of the power dynamics between nation-states.  Allies go to war together.  Allies share common economic goals. That form of relationship is about power and power dynamics, writ into a set of established and negotiated expectations.  Allies have rules and contracts and treaties that establish their alliances, which serve the shared interests of both.

Again, the word has to do with the dynamics of power and self-interest, not organic affinity and appreciation.

Thinking in terms of the United States?  Saudi Arabia is an ally.  So is the current government in Egypt.

Canada, on the other hand, is a friend.  The kind of friend who breaks into your national song when the singer's mike fails at a hockey game.  The kind of friend with whom you don't really worry about boundaries, because you trust each other so much those boundaries really don't matter.  You can be completely yourself and unafraid with a friend.  This is not true with an ally.

Among the wisest of the secular ancients, that's why friendship was considered among the highest of the virtues.  Philia, that natural and volitional affinity, was a relationship of complete, freely given trust between one person and another.  Being an ally is a more sterile, formalistic, and mechanical form of relation, one in which lists of rules and trigger-avoidance-protocols define a carefully negotiated exchange.

And for those who follow the Nazarene as their Teacher in all things, the term "ally" sounds with a peculiar dissonance against the radical command to both love and friendship.   "A greater love has no-one than this," says Jesus, as he swore his life to his friends.  Not his "allies."  The Greek word for "ally" does not appear in any of the teachings of Jesus, nor does it occur in any of the Epistles.

It's also challenging, honestly, to integrate the conflict-assumption of the "ally" concept into the radical agape ethic taught by the Nazarene.  Sure, one can have enemies, those ruled by brokenness and the injustices created by our hunger for power.

But the idea that your calling in existence is to go to war with those who your allies war with?  It stands in tension with the ground of the most fundamental ethic of Christian faith.  It is difficult to be authentically Christian and part of that form of binary relation.  Attacking and tearing down are not the methodology of the Way.

Yeah, I know, there's that one overturned table episode that's everyone's favorite conflict-prooftext, but last time I checked, an overturned table is not the defining symbol of the Christian ethic.    Neither can we create easily demonizable caricatures of those who inflict injustice, even as we oppose injustices.  That reflects neither the complex agape ethos of Jesus nor the justice-orthopraxis of soul-force satyagraha.

It is why, if they approach their commitment to discipleship seriously, Christians make somewhat awkward allies in a conflict.  They cannot be trusted in a fight, because their commitment to grace and mercy is too radical.

Hell Hath No Fury

It's been coming for a while.

Following a recent leadership transition at the tippy-top of my wife's organization, things started shifting in ways that augured poorly.   Despite an amazing work ethic, a deep knowledge of her field, and a track record of turning around a struggling area of her organization, the missus found herself today on the wrong side of a restructuring.

A new CEO brought in a bevy of highly paid restructuring consultants, with the idea of totally changing the entire business model of the organization.  Everything about the organization, or so this new CEO overtly told everyone on staff, has sucked.  I'm going to save it by being the powerful transformative leader you poor pathetic sods have needed all along.

Lord knows that's not ever a good sign.  In congregational leadership literature, that's an almost guaranteed mark of a pastor who's going to leave wreck and ruin in their wake, but the corporate world hasn't clued in to that reality yet.  Nor have many churches, not to mention the board of one particular nonprofit membership organization.

So my wife's reward for years of dedication, long work hours and demonstrated excellence in delivering the core competency of the organization?  A pre-holiday pink slip, one of dozens done today in a typically corporate style, with the CEO hiding away while their flunkies do the firing.  

That, of course, leaves our household with a nontrivial 75% drop in income.  Not being fools, we've prepared for this possibility, and have a healthy war chest stashed away.   And my wife is a remarkably competent and capable human being, who will find an organization that appreciates that.  Still, it stings, and the anxiety of not knowing where things will head is deep, despite the kind whisper of my Master's voice in my ear.

It also leaves me pondering the spiritual challenge of the day: forgiveness.  Having a heart of forgiveness towards those who have harmed you is absolutely central to the Christian life, and it's something I find I can practice without too much strain.   If you strike me, turning the other cheek is easy.  It is an act that defies both your anger and my own, and that refuses to let brokenness define being.

What I have found considerably harder is finding that heart of Gospel forgiveness for those who have harmed others, particularly those I love.   When someone harms my wife, or my child, I find forgiveness...harder.  Having watched the tears and the dismay of the last few months, my reaction is more primal, more feral.  Mess with my family?  I want your bloody head on the end of a pike.   I want the sky above your driveway to fill with eagles, which descend upon you in a shrieking cloud with razor sharp talons extended.  I want there to be a thunderclap, and a smoking pair of shoes where once you stood.  I don't feel merciful.  I feel as forgiving as a slighted Roma matriarch.  Even the fires of hell seem somehow inadequately hot.

Which is why it is good I am not God.

I remind myself, of course, to think systemically, and to understand the complex underlying dynamics that go into every human action.  I remind myself of the importance of looking towards the future in hope, and letting go of the things that cannot be changed.

And I remind myself that, not being God, I am not the one who is the measure of justice.  It is not for me to understand the balance.  That is best left to the Maker of things, whose capacity for both grace and justice...thankfully...exceed my own.