Listening in the Fog

Early last Sunday morning I went for a bird walk in the Great Marsh, the largest inland marsh in Pennsylvania, just twenty minutes from my home. The walk leader has spent years wandering the hundreds of acres of fields and woods and wetlands. Even in in the dripping fog he knew where we could walk safely. 

He called attention to the voices of Rusty Blackbirds, gathering in hummocks in a marshy pond, and paused to look for Pine Siskins in a field where all I heard were Goldfinch. 

"How can you tell those tiny sounds apart?" I asked.

"I study them. Every winter, I get out my disks and listen to them when I'm driving around. I get them in my head."

A few mornings later, kayaking on Marsh Creek Lake in even deeper fog, I thought about his words. I could hear the chips and chirps of birds hiding in brush along the water's edge, but didn't know the sounds well enough to be certain what I heard.

It occurred to me that in many ways, we're living in fog, surrounded by sound, but not always sure what to do with what we're hearing.

Part of that is pandemic fog: loss of schedule, loss of social contact has made it sometimes hard to orient ourselves. Also hard is the swirl of confusing information. The evidence seems clear that masks save lives, yet we still hear politicians mocking masks and suggesting COVID-19 is no big deal. Dr. Fauci says winter will be hard, the risks of contagion are high, and we'd all be wise to hunker down until we get a vaccine. Meanwhile from every direction we're urged to lighten up and get back to business as usual.

The political fog is even worse. Accusations of voter fraud, last minute challenges to election rules, changing narratives that contradict what the same person said just days, sometimes minutes before. How do we know what's true? How do we find our way?

If it takes study, practice and patience to identify the voices of birds, it takes even more study, practice and patience to understand what's true. Too often we coast along on information that comes through the easiest channels, only to find we've been deceived.

I stopped reading Proverbs after the 2016 election because I found it too sad to read words about wisdom and folly when people I have always respected aligned themselves with a president who to me epitomize the Proverbial fool. 

I last wrote about Proverbs in 2014: 

I find myself thirsty for wisdom.

Hungry for voices that address the complexities of our current situation, that blend compassion, justice, righteousness, understanding.

As I read through Proverbs, I see two ways of thinking set in opposition: 

• Wisdom and its close counterpart, understanding, yield order, calm, humility, respect, integrity, patience, justice.

• Folly, with its mocking refusal to listen, yields dissension, strife, pride, deception, laziness, oppression.

That second list sounds depressingly familiar. The first is in short supply.

In a situation calling for great compassion, careful conversation, and deep discernment, we have politicians pointing fingers, positing ridiculous causes, offering politically-motivated non-solutions.

The 2016 election season seemed to plunge us deeper into folly. My readings with Encounter with God this month brought me back to Proverbs:

Do not make friends with a hot-tempered man, do not associate with one easily angered, for you may learn his ways and get yourself ensnared (22:24). 

Our president has demonstrated this danger, and ensnared far more Christians than I would have thought possible. I've been struck at how quickly even a simple question can lead to fury. I've watched in horror when thoughtful Facebook posts of friends yield furious all-caps responses that totally miss the point. That pattern of offense and anger is hard to break. Once ensnared, it's difficult to break free. 

Apply your heart to instruction and your ears to words of knowledge (23:12).

So much of what we hear has little basis in fact. By any proper use of the word, Kamala Harris is no socialist. While George Soros may fund Black Lives Matter organizations, most protestors are just everyday people heartsick at the treatment of people of color. Some of them are my neighbors, friends, members of my family. To push back, even a little, or to ask a cautious question, risks a furious response. Or maybe worse: "I just say what I hear. It's what I believe."

Doesn't truth still matter?

It's good to be reminded that it takes work to find the truth. but if we apply our ears and hearts to listening well, maybe we can get there. 

In my post in 2014, I asked: 

How do we sow seeds of wisdom in places mired in anger or confusion?

I suggested four steps toward sowing wisdom and it seems to me now they're a good place to start when trying to listen in the fog that surrounds us. I share them here and invite you to join me in them:

1. Learn before speaking.

We can’t all be experts on every issue that confronts us, but we can take time to learn before we voice opinions. If we haven’t taken time to look a little deeper, hear both sides of the story, understand the pros and cons,  maybe we should ask questions and listen rather than repeat accusations that stir our anger but not our understanding.

2. Evaluate ideas rather than judge people.

Too often we listen just long enough to label those around us: with us or against us. Socialist, Commie, Fascist, Feminazi. Narrow-minded Christian. Tree hugger. Bigot. Those labels deepen our divisions, keep us from exploring real solutions, and demonstrate our lack of wisdom.

3. Recognize folly and avoid it.

There are TV shows I choose not to watch because they promote a mocking spirit. There are radio broadcasts I don’t listen to because they deliberately stir division. I work hard to find sources that are balanced, thoughtful, more interested in finding solutions than fixing blame. If more of us chose our sources more wisely, maybe those sources would be easier to find.

4. Pray for wisdom, for yourself, our leaders, churches, communities, citizens.

Growing up, I saw more than my share of division, pride, anger, deception. I wanted something different. When I first read James 3, I caught of glimpse of what I hungered for. I’ve been praying for that, for myself and our world, for four decades now. Please pray with me!

But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.  (James 3:17-18)   

Find posts on a mix of political issues, some as recent
as last week and some dating back to 2011

Evangelical?

Kate Shellnutt, Christianity Today, Oct. 14, 2020

Who are the white evangelicals we keep hearing about? 

What do they believe? 

I have always considered myself an evangelical. The word is rooted in evangel: good news. 

I’ve always believed the Christian faith is good news to the poor, the stranger, the broken, always prayed my life would be a demonstration of that good news: God loves us, redeems us, intervenes on our behalf. As we abide in him, and his word abides in us, we become like Jesus, living lives of sacrificial love. 

That vision does not seem to be shared by most who now self-identify as evangelical. 

Historically, evangelicalism threads through periods where the Holy Spirit broke down entrenched religious structures with new life, new love. Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregational: all sprang up from evangelical movements. Evangelicals across the centuries were known as people determined to live what they believed, turning their experience of Christ’s love into good work and joyful witness.

Houghton College, the Christian liberal arts college I attended in the 1970s, stood squarely in the evangelical tradition. We were taught all truth is God’s truth and all gifts are to be used in the service of the world. Fellow students went on to be missionary doctors, urban pastors, public defenders. 

Theologian and church historian Donald Dayton attended there in the early sixties. His father, Wilbur, was president during much of my time there. Discovering an Evangelical Heritage, Donald Dayton’s first book, documented the social activist out-working of evangelical movements. I’m certain he spoke at one of our required chapels, reminding us of the radical obedience of ancestors in the faith — abolitionist, leaders in the women’s suffrage movement, civil rights activists. To him, a hallmark of evangelicalism was “applied holiness”: faith that invited scripture and Holy Spirit to shape both work and worship.

That meaning seems long gone as the word evangelical, at least here in the US, has lost any recognizable relation to the integration of faith, learning and work that was the bedrock of historic evangelicalism. 

This election, Evangelicals have more
faith in Donald Trump, Kate Shellnutt
Christianity Today, Sept. 18, 2020

In the late 1970s my husband Whitney and I joined friends in early meetings of Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA) just as the Moral Majority was taking shape. While the ESA attempted a prophetic stance outside the avenues of political power, Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority cemented a pragmatic alliance with political conservatism. The word “evangelical” became synonymous with an agenda that in many cases has no resemblance to the teachings of Jesus, all held hostage by the repeated promise to end abortion and stave off gay marriage. 

By 1991, Donald Dayton recommended a “moratorium” on the word he had once celebrated, describing the term “evangelical” as “theologically incoherent, sociologically confusing, and ecumenically harmful.” 

In 2004, Ron Sider co-chaired an attempt by the National Association of Evangelicals to reclaim a stance more in line with evangelical history, publishing a document called For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility. 

 The introduction announced: 

 Truth that brings life leads to flourishing and results in ongoing hope that guides our day-to-day approach to civic engagement. We also engage with a gracious and winsome spirit. We should not echo the rage and disrespect that typifies much of today’s political debates. Indeed, as the combative nature of 21st-century public discourse threatens meaningful efforts for the common good, the tone of our engagement will be as strategic as our involvement. Evangelicals of all political persuasions and backgrounds must demonstrate that differing opinions can be handled without demonizing, misrepresenting or shaming. 

Therefore, in challenging and in equipping evangelical Christians to be involved in policy making and discourse, the National Association of Evangelicals emphasizes that our involvement should model the servant call of our faith and the care and concern for the other. In so doing, we may find our political efforts not only strengthen the social fabric of our nation but also rebuild the plausibility of the Christian faith in the minds and hearts of our culture. 

The document is worth reading cover to cover, if only to grieve what’s been lost:

Our goal in civic engagement is to bless our neighbors by making good laws. Because we have been called to do justice to our neighbors, we foster a free press, participate in open debate, vote and hold public office. When Christians do justice, it speaks loudly about God. And it can show those who are not believers how the Christian vision can contribute to the common good and help alleviate the ills of society.  

It was a valiant effort to safeguard a valuable heritage but ultimately unsuccessful. Books have been written, with many more to come, about the way the word and tradition have been hijacked. 

 In 2017 Global Baptist News shared religion professor Miguel de la Torre’s scathing assessment, The Death of Christianity in the U.S.:

Christianity has died in the hands of Evangelicals. Evangelicalism ceased being a religious faith tradition following Jesus’ teachings concerning justice for the betterment of humanity when it made a Faustian bargain for the sake of political influence. The beauty of the gospel message - of love, of peace and of fraternity - has been murdered by the ambitions of Trumpish flimflammers who have sold their souls for expediency. 

 Jerusha Duford, granddaughter of the late Billy Graham, has been more gentle in her assessment, but with a similar conclusion:

My faith and my church have become a laughing stock, and any attempt by its members to defend the actions of Trump at this time sound hollow and insincere.

This week, she joined a new group, “Not Our Faith PAC,” a non-partisan group of Christians speaking out against Donald Trump, one of many such groups that have formed in recent months. In a press conference announcing the group, she said:

his attempts to hijack our faith for votes, and evangelical leaders’ silence on his actions and behavior, has presented a picture of what our faith looks like that is so erroneous that it has done significant damage to the way people view Jesus.

Evangelicals for Social Action, after forty years of making the case for an evangelical witness of good new for the poor, last month concluded, as Donald Dayton did decades ago: it’s time for a moratorium on the word “evangelical”. The organization has changed its name to Christians for Social Action.

Today the word “evangelical” in the popular mind has largely political connotations. For significant numbers of people, it signifies a right-wing political movement irrevocably committed to Donald Trump. Many young people raised in evangelical churches are turning away in disgust–abandoning evangelical churches and even sometimes the Christian faith itself. And the larger society thinks of evangelicals not as people committed to Jesus Christ and the biblical gospel but as pro-Trump political activists. . . .

Because of a shameful history of white evangelical racism, the black church has long refused to use the term evangelical for itself even though its theology and piety are very close to what the word evangelical used to mean.

Christianity is not dead. And the good news of Christ will continue to be shared around the globe by people whose lives have been changed.  As for me, I'll continue to read scripture, pray often, worship and love my neighbor as faithfully as I can. 

But for now, I’m stepping back from the word evangelical.

And joining others who say “Not Our Faith” to the demands of Donald Trump.

The neighbor unlike myself

Wikimedia Commons, James 919 2017

I have a new friend of uncertain origin, uncertain motive, undeniable beauty. 

 A week or so ago a Black-throated Blue Warbler landed on my patio table while I was drinking my morning coffee just a foot away. 

It appeared to be looking for crumbs from my breakfast muffin, but then hopped onto the arm of the chair where my feet were propped, cocking its head to examine me. I’ve never seen a wild bird so casually interested. So unafraid. It studied me for several long minutes, then dropped to the patio below, picking at crumbs, looking for bugs, moving toward the potted plants nearby, then continuing on through the garden edge and out onto the lawn. 

 It came by again a few day ago, looking for bugs in the logs that line by woodsy garden paths. Then again yesterday, back on the patio while I sat there with my breakfast in the cool, overcast dawn. 

Just the day before I had a different kind of guest. I would have missed it if not for the cardinals loudly objecting, just at dusk, in the trees at the back of the yard. They sometimes chip with a loud warning, but I’d never heard quite so many gathering together carrying on with so much energy. I pulled out my binoculars and watched them jumping from tree to tree, then there, in the middle, a large brown shape; a Great Horned Owl, silently watching. I watched them carry on, watched the owl, until called inside for an evening Zoom meeting. 

I carry that imagine in my mind, and the picture of the lovely warbler, watching me from the arm of my chair. In God’s economy, diversity is a given. Every warbler has its own lovely coloring, its own preferred food source, its own needed habitat. Every owl has its own call, its own flight pattern, its own distinctive nest. 

Does the word “different” make you uneasy? Or does it fill you with joy? Or hope? Or both?

I have always preferred friends different from me: different temperaments, different stories, different life experiences. Among the treasures of my life: evenings around a camp fire with a woman who grew up in Vietnam, then spent years in a refugee camp after the fall of Hanoi. Long, laughter-filled walks with the brown, freckled granddaughter of southern sharecroppers. Afternoons gardening with a Ugandan refugee. 

I am thankful that the churches I’ve attended, since old enough to choose myself, have been welcoming places for a wide mix of God’s people. Our current church is a friendly mix of cradle Episcopalians, new converts to the Christian faith, people who left fundamentalist churches years ago and are finding their way back toward a waiting Father. We have members born in other nations, others states, baptized or confirmed in other denominations. Our stories and assumptions are very different. Those differences force us to listen well, walk humbly, think before we speak. 

Today four children were baptized into the family as rain threatened the service on the church’s lawn where we gathered in folding chairs, camp chair, benches, all socially distanced, sporting a wide mix of masks. 

The final words of the baptismal vows set me thinking: 

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? 

I will, with God's help. 

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being? 

I will, with God's help. 

Last week was the vice-presidential debate, with the first woman of color taking the stage. I’ve heard Christians dismiss Harris as a godless socialist, and have seen the much-shared social media posts saying she refused to be sworn in as senator on a Bible. In reality, she regularly attends a Baptist church, refers to scripture often when she speaks, and was sworn in with a well-worn family Bible. She is far more moderate than many others of her party, like Joe Biden often attacked from the left for her pragmatic, non-radical stance.

Policies that some might describe as socialist she would explain as love for neighbor. She speaks of this fairly often, in terms like those from a 2019 speech:

Jesus tells us how we should define neighbor. Jesus tells us your neighbor is not just the person who lives next door, who drives the kind of car you drive, the person who shares your zip code, the person who has their school at the same school your children attend, who shops at the same grocery store that you shop at. 

No. 

Jesus tells us your neighbor is that man by the side of the road who you walk by, who has faced hardship, who may be one of those people who has an opioid or a drug addiction, may be one of those people who has fled one of the murder capitals of the world and seek refuge here in our country, may be one of those people who lives in one of the 9i counties of the United States who, if they are a minimum wage worker, cannot afford a one bedroom apartment . . .

Your neighbor, my neighbor, may be - WILL BE - someone different from ourselves. That's a gift and opportunity, not a problem or a danger.  

Today, International Day of the Girl, it’s worth pausing to note: the US has never had a woman president or vice-president. Pennsylvania has never had a woman governor.

There are men and women who can’t envision a woman in leadership. Just as there are people with white skin who can’t imagine voting for someone with brown or black skin.

I’m troubled when I hear fellow Christians repeat slander about Harris without stopping to ask if the statement is true.

I’m troubled to hear that there’s only one vote God will accept. That’s a tragic lie, no matter who says it.

I’m troubled to hear labels that dismiss and diminish. Troubled to hear complex problems flattened to one tired, unworkable solution. Troubled to hear the immediate dismissal of different ideas, different approaches. Deeply troubled at the lack of love and respect for those not exactly like ourselves.

I’ve written much in the past about voting out of love for neighbor. Some of those posts landed in a section called “What’s Your Platform,” mostly written in 2012. 

Others were part of a series in 2016. All still apply.

• Beyond the Party Platform July 24, 2016
• A Different Way July 31, 2016 
• Election Fraud and Rigged Elections, August 10, 2016 
• How Long Will the Land Lie Parched? August 21, 2016 
• Walls, Welcome, Mercy, Law August 28, 2016
• Workers and Their Wages, Sep 3, 2016 
• Educating Ourselves On Education, Sep 10, 2016 
• Let's Talk, Sep 17, 2016
• The Language of the Unheard, Sep 24, 2016
• Maintain Justice, October 9, 2016
• Defending the Indefensible, October 16, 2016 
• Plan Your Vote: Platforms, Parties, People, October 23, 2016
• The Politics of Hate - or Love, October 30, 2016 

That series ended with Election Examen. I wrote:

We’ve been living through the most destructive campaign season in at least the last half-century, with swirling rumors, echo-chamber accusations, wild statements about God’s plan or preference, a growing inability to listen to any view or fact that doesn’t line up neatly with our own.

That election was just prelude to this even more divisive season and the likely unrest that will follow. The God of warblers and owls, of springtime and fall, of all truth, all nations, invites us to hold still, listen well, then speak, vote, act in a way that shows our trust in him and our love for neighbors, even those unlike ourselves.

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
I will, with God's help.
Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
I will, with God's help.

Citizens

I've been struck this week by how political parts of scripture are.

I read every morning with Encounter with God, a practice I started when my husband Whitney was president of Scripture Union USA. This week the readings were in Revelation. 

On Thursday, minutes after hearing President Trump had tested positive for Covid-19, I read the header for the notes on Revelation 17: How the Mighty Are Fallen. The chapter is about the fall of Babylon, an oppressive commercial empire "rooted in pride and independence."

Glittering, flaunting, and powerful, Babylon brooks no rivals and corrupts everything it touches. It offer so much, but nothing it gives satisfies - it gives materialism without morality, pleasure without purity, and wealth without wisdom: an empty life. The world of the city trader, the multinational, the entrepreneur selling to the consumer society, may at times be profoundly anti-Christian.

The daily APPLY section said: "Recognize where things are smoke and mirrors. Pray for discernment, that you may not be duped."

I know Scripture Union notes are written years before they appear here in the US. The notes on Revelation were written by Colin Sinclair, a minister from Scotland who was Chair of Scripture Union's International Council in 2014 when Whitney and I attended an international meeting in Greece, where we met Colin and his wife Ruth. 

He was certainly not thinking of our current political scene when he wrote those blistering words, but how close to home they hit. I pray daily for discernment as I watch so many taken in by smoke and mirrors, duped by empty promises and the corrupting promise of power.

Friday's reading in Revelation 18 hit even closer with the header Power-Crazed Worldliness and the opening prayer: 

Lord, keep our affections centered on You.

Consider: Thank God that we are citizens before we are consumers. We are called to look out for others, not just ourselves. Remember whose citizen you are.

The note continues: 

A lifestyle built on possessions, position and pleasure will not last. Its fall is tragic, dramatic and ironic. . . Seemingly invulnerable, the seeds of its destruction have been sown. Its desolation warns all imitators: get too close, and you risk infection.

Christians must acquire a critical objectivity about their culture, and then dare to be different. The city's sins carry a very heavy price tag . . . If money and power mean everything to you - then prepare to lose the game.

Those chapters in Revelation show God's judgement on political and economic systems founded on exploitation, lack of regard for the poor and afflicted. "Get too close and you risk infection."

Today's reading in Psalm 72 holds up the values God expects in any ruler. Colin Sinclair's note makes an unexpected point:

Kings in Israel were like constitutional rather than absolute monarchs. They were subject to God's law. Their rights and duties were written down and deposited in the temple (1 Samuel 10:25). The king must have heard the part of this psalm's prayer: that he defend the afflicted and crush the oppressor and that he deliver the needy and protect the weak. Radical expectations indeed. 

Tracking those duties of Biblical kings, I come again and again to this: administer justice.  

I've posted in the past about God's insistence on justice. In 2014, Justice for All, I spoke of carrying the word as a prayer:  

Justice is one of those words encompassing a rich mix of multiple meanings, illuminated by interchangeable translations between the Hebrew words mishpat and tzedaqah and the English words justice, righteousness, equity, mercy, victory, salvation, “doing all that’s good and right.”

In that post I quoted Tim Keller's Generous Justice:

The mishpat, or justness, of a society, according to the Bible, is evaluated by how it treats these groups. Any neglect shown to the needs of the members of this quartet is not called merely a lack of mercy or charity but a violation of justice, of mishpat. God loves and defends those with the least economic and social power, and so should we. That is what it means to “do justice.”

In 2017 I wrote another post on justice, Outcry, about the prophet Nehemiah's outcry against unjust leadership, and the need to cry out against even greater exploitation on the part of our own national leader: 

The exploitation of Nehemiah's day seems mild compared to the inequities of our own.

Our Congress just approved the richest cabinet ever, including a billionaire who has used her wealth to buy influence and shape public policy in a way that has worsened segregation and undermined education for the poorest and most needy.

Our president has defrauded workers and has cheated thousands of students of both tuition and time. 

Now, as then, I find myself wondering: have God's people been duped and infected with a love for power that blinds the ability to see and cry out against injustice? 

In our service this morning on the front lawn of my church, our rector, Richard Morgan, reminded us that the Pharisees of Jesus' day believed they were right in opposing him. They were so locked in to their own loyalties and ideas they couldn't recognize Jesus, even when he stood right there in front of them. In his sermon, Richard asked: "what would it take to help you hear God?" He described the political ruts we find ourselves in and asked again "what would it take to change your mind? What would it take to really hear God?"

For us, today, what would it take to hear God? 

My mail-in ballot arrived this week. I'll be voting prayerfully this afternoon and putting it back in the mail tomorrow.

As I do for every election, I'll be spending time on Vote411.org, a League of Women Voters website that offers links to candidates' positions and answers they provide to questions on key policy positions. 

I make it a point never to vote for candidates who refuse to answer Vote411 questions. If they don't care enough about what voters think to answer a few questions and provide some links, then clearly they don't deserve my vote. 

In some cases that makes my decision easy. In others, I'll be looking for evidence of integrity, faithfulness, compassion. I'll be looking for concern for the poor and the displaced, and a willingness to stand up for those who face oppression. 

Scripture makes clear: God will judge a nation's leaders by how they treat the poor, the weak, the stranger. 

Our loyalty isn't to party. Or a person. Or even a particular position. 

It's time to pray for discernment.

Time to remember whose citizens we are. 

The Reverend Robert Schenck explains how God changed his heart. Other links in this post were found at Christians against Trump and Political Extremism