Theory Sans Practice
I love my son, Everett. I can tell that my wife Niki and I avoided failure in at least one aspect of his life and that is in instilling confidence. Everett will watch the amazing things happening on So You Think You Can Dance or Americas Got Talent and announce "I think I could do that". We just finished his first year of YMCA soccer and he lets me know he wants to be a professional soccer player. We talk about the gifts that he has been given and ways that he could use those gifts for the benefit of the world and Everett is pretty sure he's going to be an inventor that will help poor and sick people. When you press a little further with Everett and try to figure out how all of these things will come into being in his life, he loses a bit of that confidence. For Everett, dreaming is not the problem. He probably gets a bit of that dreaming idealist personality from me. He wants to change the world and show the world what all he could do but the work of getting there is another story. I think Everett, though his story is a little less complex and more innocent, is much like the story we all share. How do we move from desire to fulfillment? How do we move from an imagination to realization? How do we move from a mere incantation to a divine manifestation? Or, how do we avoid the trap that the title of this post states, a theory without practice?
I think if you asked most churches, or even most "spiritual people" in this country, what really matters and they would have similar answers. We should love each other, no child should go hungry, all lives really do matter, we should care for the earth, violence is not a good thing, we should offer hospitality to strangers, there is something bigger at work in this world, and the list goes on. Yet, we don't really live as if many of those things are any sort of prority.
We should love each other?
I would say that this theory is shared by more people in this country and the world than any other belief. This belief that is tied to the greatest commandment and in many other ancient religious texts has become little more than a theory. It doesn't take long on the nation's roadways, on Facebook, in a check out line or even within our own denominations and sects, to see that the theory of loving one another has stalled out before it has reached true praxis. How do we love in practice and not only in theory? Well in Christian scriptures it means
1 Corinthians 13: 4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
But we are not patient with each other or kind. Social media shows the worst side of our boastful arrogant rudeness. We often, in an irritable and resentful way, insist that we are correct. We love seeing the mighty fall with little regard for truth. It most certainly does not look like patient endurance while bearing all things. Our practice of love is broken if it exists at all. If we are greeting only those who think like us, look like us and talk like us, how could we say that we love like God?
All Lives Matter
I love the Black Lives Matter movement. There a group of African American men and women (and those committed to stand with them) who are standing up, in the face of violence, abuse and years of slavery and death, are proclaiming to themselves and the world, that their lives matter too. It takes great courage to shout loud enough for the powers that be to hear you. If those in power are exposed they usually don't respond in kindness.
The response from many people, mostly the dominant majority, has been to proclaim that "all lives matter". Let's first say that indeed both of those things are correct. Black lives do matter and all lives do matter. the problem is that historically, one of those truths has had a hard time speaking that message without violence being perpetrated against them. It's hard to hold a rally when in the not so distant past your rallies ended with those begging their voice would be heard being beaten or murdered.
To those saying all lives matter, is that actually true, in the sense that you actually live as if it is. If you ask the people who want to make the distinction that all lives matter, not just black lives what they think about refugees and they will tell you it is to risky to bring them into our nation. They say that some of them may be a terrorist so even though young children, mothers and innocent fathers must die in their escape from violence because it isn't worth the risk. If that is what the same person who says "all lives matter" is saying about the refugee crisis then they would have to amend the initial statement to say "all lives but the refugees".
Drive through any major city in the US and you will find both in the city centers and the outskirts of the town, thousands of homeless men and women, in each city. The number of hoops that these men and women must jump through just to gain food assistance or temporary housing is beyond sad. So again the statement "all lives matter" must be amended to "all lives except the refugees and the people who don't work hard enough for me and the people who are addicts or those who find themselves on the streets because of mental illness or just a tough life experience". You see the "all lives matter" thing gets old pretty quick when it is evident that for many people that proclaim that message, the life that matters to them is their own.
Faithful Endurance
"Love endures all things". Would a person looking in on those who are confessing Christians, and say that they are a people who endure? Endurance means to suffer something painful or difficult, patiently. I think all of the examples of love made manifest through faithful endurance in this country could all be found among those who actually have suffered great pain and loss. As the African American population was experiencing slavery, segregation, lynching, hangings and beatings, the Black Church sang even more loudly that "we shall overcome"! The LGBT community, though they were sent to the fringes of society, called horrible names, beaten and killed, are courageous enough to have a Pride Parade in many different cities around this country while they patiently endure. The migrant workers in this country are taken advantage of by farmers who somehow (legally?) keep them in shacks, transporting them in the backs of pick-up trucks to make unjust wages working back breaking hours. Yet these communities endure, their beautiful culture remains in the dance, food and hospitality to strangers. This is faithful endurance.
The list goes on and on of people who have experienced the most suffering in this nation who have kept the most vibrant and lively communities. They are faithfully enduring as a sign of love to each other and to this nation that they are committed to see grow in justice and love. Maybe faithful endurance for the privileged in this country will have to start with hearing the stories of the oppressed.
An Obsession With Violence
Most people who are believers in God, Allah, YHWH would hold peace as an essential teaching. For some reason, much of our time is spent then justifying he violence that does exist among us or is engaged in and even perpetrated by those confessing believers. We even call violence "entertainment". Can you imagine a person living in a world where they don't need to turn on the television to see Game of Thrones level violence, they can just look out their door.
We value the 2nd amendment more than we do those whose lives have tragically been cut short due to senseless gun violence. Preemptive violence is supported and championed by people who confess a God of peace. It is confusing to those who do not believe, and we are finding that it is confusing to our younger generations who can no longer hold the tension between the God they are taught to believe and the God that would justify such violence. The response of the unbeliever is to run as far as possible from the believers because they seem to be crazy hypocrites. The response of the youth is to join with the smaller communities of people committed to the practice of non-violence and the issues of social justice. Many of the churches and religious institutions have lost their voice when it comes to a proclamation of peace. It isn't too late but we better repent before it is.
What Now?
I really don't want this to be too negative of a post, though I fear many will see it that way. Remember how we started the post though, telling the story of my son Everett. When Everett says he wants to be a professional soccer player, I don't just tell him that he isn't good enough. I tell him to get out in the yard and kick the ball. When he says he wants to be an inventor I encourage his desire and help him find the types of books that may help him learn what it would take to invent. When he says he thinks he could be on So You Think You Can Dance, I let him dance wildly through the house.
Church, we must put our theories to practice. A theory "sans"practice is nothing but empty words. We must understand that if we want to be obedient to God's first command that we must love the world in a way that is self sacrificial. We must give a louder voice to those who have been silenced, welcome the stranger and faithfully endure with those who are truly suffering. If we are at the point in this world that we think that the best response to violence is more violence, I suggest we open our ears to the people who live in a violent inner-city, those who have survived the mass shooting tragedies, and those who have survived years of bombing overseas. They truly can tell stories about what that violence does. If peace doesn't look like the peace of God, it is a bogus replica that won't transform anyone or anything. Finally, go do work. Practice, practice and practice. Be willing to fail, be willing to say the wrong thing, be willing to occasionally misunderstand and offend. And if you are the one on the receiving end of each of us who is practicing, show grace when we fail, say the wrong thing and offend. We are trying to live together in a world that seems to be shrinking. We are sharing space with people that 100 years ago we never would have imagined. The result can be something beautiful if we are willing to put in the practice and faithfully endure. I'll end with one of my favorite verses that, in this post, seems to say it all.
Micah 6:8 NRSV
8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?