The New Age Is On The Way in spite of….

The unifying theme of the Bible is not that our puny souls can or will be rescued for a hereafter home within the confines of the pearly gates above, paved with streets of gold—in some place called heaven.  It is much bigger than that!  We have made small that which is meant to encompass the world.  Jesus reminded the people of his time that something greater has come into the world. Something greater than the Temple, he said.  “Something greater is here.”

What is it?  What is that greater thing, this unifying theme of the Bible?  It is the Kingdom of God.  It announces the fact that this present age is dying and a New Age is struggling to be born.  This New Age is not in heaven, but here where we live, work, play, and love.  This world.  It is an unconsummated thing at present, but the Bible proclaims it is even now penetrating the old and will come to fruition.  We live in the tension between what is and what is meant to be—between the old kingdom and the Kingdom yet unseen and unrealized.  

When the Old Testament prophet spoke of swords beaten into plow-shares and a total end to violence and war (Micah 4:3; Isaiah 2:4; 11:9) he was speaking of the New Age to come.  When the prophets envisioned the desert that would “rejoice and blossom as the rose” (Isaiah 35:1), a time of unimagined plenty (Amos 9:13-15) they were talking about the New Age that is to come.  When the prophet said that a day would come when men “shall sit under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid,” he was announcing the coming of the New Age.  That very theme of the Old Testament takes on new meaning in the New Testament.

The Good News of the gospel is all about this New Age.  The gospel proclaims that the power of the New Age has broken in, has been let loose, and has grappled with the demonic powers of darkness, and defeated it on a Cross.  The old age lingers on in its death groans—but the New Age has already conquered it and will eventually be triumphant.  The old order is passing away, and the new order is coming into being.

Without this understanding, without this promise, without this larger vision of the New Age, we are caught, imprisoned, and held in bondage by the demonic powers of the present moment.  We can say things will never change.  We can give up all hope and responsibility for this world, retire from it by our self-congratulatory “I’ve been saved” mentality and not care about anyone else or anything else in this world, but this is not the biblical call.  God cares for all and calls us to give witness to His Presence, Justice, and Love right here, right now, in this world, the world He loves and intends to save and  make new. 

"Been There, Done That"

Warren Harding was a great guy.  He looked like a President of the United States should look, so they say.  He was a handsome dude.  He photographed well and the pictures of him in the rotogravure sections won him affection and respect.  He was, some say, the friendliest man ever in the White House.  He liked everybody. He wanted to help everybody.  He wanted to do favors for everybody.  His was not the forced affability of the “cold-blooded politician;” it was transparent and genuine.  Like Mr. Roger’s “Won’t you be my neighbor,” Mr. Harding wanted  everyone to be his neighbor when he become President in 1921.

No one seemed to see Warren Harding’s liabilities.  He had limited political experience. He was “almost unbelievably ill-informed.”  His mind was dull, vague and fuzzy.  His public addresses were profuse, pompous, pretentious and grandiose.  He struggled to find the right words (“normalcy” for normality, etc.).  He didn’t have the wherewithal to deal with all the many issues of governance and thus became utterly dependent upon those around him.  Harding had difficulty being honest.   After all he wanted to be helpful to all.  He would do almost anything to be helpful and neighborly—and he did!

His mind could not handle the new job.  Who could he depend on?  He gave his brother-in-law a job. He appointed his hometown personal physician to deal with the various health agencies of government, calling that position a “brigadier-generalcy.”  He selected his hometown lawyer-friend to be Comptroller of the Currency even though he had minimal banking experience.  No one paid much attention to all of this.  The public cared little about what happened behind the scenes.  What they saw, when they did bother to look, was the “well-lighted stage where the Harding Administration was playing a drama of discreet and seemly statesmanship.” Harding’s relatives and friends, given power, used it to enrich themselves.  This included what is known as the Teapot Dome scandal.

Warren Harding had a mistress and an illegitimate daughter.  Mrs. Harding was consumed with insane jealousy when she discovered this and became very angry when she became aware of the criminality within her husband’s Administration.  It has been suggested that she may have poisoned him—maybe even with the help of that hometown physician appointed to the  “bridgadier-generalcy!”

Maybe the writer of Ecclesiastes was right:  “There is nothing new under the sun!”  Does history repeat itself?

A Reality Check

Lately I’ve received a number of posts on Facebook that irk my soul.  One post announces:  “I’m proud to be an American and a Christian—bet no one passes this on because they are scared to admit they are too…”. Another post says:  “Wanna see my friends list shrink?  I believe in the wall.  I believe in God, and I believe that abortion is murder.”  Such posts suggest that to be an American equals being a Christian (or that a non-Christian is un-American).  These posts suggest that to be a Christian equals believing in the wall (to reject the wall is to be non-Christian).  To believe abortion is murder equals being a believer in God (to disagree with this judgment is to be a non-believer).  

Being a Christian is not synonymous with being an American or vice versa.  This is a travesty of the Gospel.  To be a Christian is not synonymous with believing in “the wall.”  To be against abortion is not synonymous with believing in God.  In other words, one can be a Christian and live in Ethiopia, or Kenya, or Great Britain or France.  A person can be a Christian and reject “the wall.”  A person can be a Christian and support the right of a woman to choose.

The Apostle John was given a vision of heaven (Revelation 7:9).  In that vision he saw a “great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language standing before the throne and before the Lamb.”  It was a diverse crowd, a multi-ethnic gathering. It was not a homogenous group. These people were not all the same—in fact they were different, in nationality, race, and in their thinking.  They were not living in the same neighborhoods or countries, they did not wear the same clothes and neither did they all think alike.  The Bible says no less than fifteen distinct ethnic groups heard the message of Jesus for the very first time and believed (The Acts of the Apostles).  They included Egyptians, Libyans, Romans and Arabs and others.  Alas, there were no Americans there at the time!

It is a false Christianity that seeks to establish a divisive “us” versus “them” mentality.  That mentality denies other people’s rights—both their freedom to choose and even their right to exist.  It is, as someone wrote a “Taliban mentality.”  It attempts to project religious authority over all people, limiting the right of conscience, controlling and limiting education, and seeking to enforce their particular moral code, which rejects and punishes all forms of what they deem to be “non-Christian.”  This is not the message inaugurated by Jesus.  It is not Christian!

America: One Hundred Years Ago

Intolerance is not new in the world nor is it new in this “land of the free and the home of the brave.”  Right after the War to end all wars (1919: 100-years ago) a group of super-patriots came into being.  Their mission, as they saw it, was to protect America.  President Woodrow Wilson lay ill in the White House, totally out of touch with the affairs of the nation.  Nature abhors a vacuum. Somebody had to fill the “empty spaces” and keep America safe.  One of these was the Attorney General of the United States,  A. Mitchell Palmer, sometimes called the “Fighting Quaker.”  His task, as he saw it, was to rescue the Constitution.

Mr. Palmer announced that the “Reds” (communists) proposed to take away everything from real Americans.  They plan to take your farms.  They intend to own your savings account.  He distributed this propaganda to the press, included pictures of “horrid-looking Bolsheviks with bristling beards, and asked if such as these should rule over America.”  The “Big Red Scare” was taken up by other politicians (and fanatics) until “College graduates were calling for the dismissal of professors suspected of radicalism; school-teachers were being made to sign oaths of allegiance; business men with un-orthodox political or economic ideas were learning to hold their tongues if they wanted to hold their jobs.” It was all propaganda, it was twisted truth, and some of it downright falsehood—but such propaganda continued long enough and loud enough can create hysteria.  

Everyone became a super-patriot.  All kinds of patriotic societies were organized and each conjured up new and ever greater menaces (mostly imagined) against the real Americans.  Among these were the believers in compulsory military service, the anti-evolution Fundamentalists, book censors, Jew-haters, Negro-haters, “upholders of every kind of cause,” and all of them wrapped themselves in Old Glory. 

Intolerance of one group inevitably leads to the intolerance of others.  It began with the Big Red Scare, but once Americans were scared—and that scare continually fed by the super-patriots—the resulting fear took on many forms.  Any group or element in society that seemed a threat to the so-called real American group—the white Protestants—was deemed alien or “un-American.”

The “gospel of white supremacy” was proclaimed.  “The dark-skinned races constituted a worse threat to Western civilization than the Bolshiviks.”  The super-patriots called  for an “undiluted Americanism.”  Even the Jews were seen as “plotting the subjugation of the whole world” and made responsible for “every American affliction.”  

Does history repeat itself?  

A Rainy Day

It’s dark outside.  “Springing the clocks forward” last night hasn’t made much difference—it is still dark outside.  I cannot see what is happening out there, but I do know it’s raining again.  I hear the music it makes on the skylights.  I enjoy the sound, but we’ve had an awful lot of rain here in Maryland over the past year or so.  In fact, Baltimore broke its rainfall record last year. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, “The Rainy Day” comes to mind:

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;

It rains, and the wind is never weary;

The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,

But at every gust the dead leaves fall.

And the day is dark and dreary; 

….

Be still, sad heart! And cease repining;

Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;

Thy fate is the common fate of all,

Into each life some rain must fall,

Some days must be dark and dreary.

Longfellow wants us to remember that a “Rainy Day” is not the end of the story—it will not always be “cold, dark and dreary.” “Behind the clouds is the sun still shining…into each life some rain must fall….some days (not all!)”  

On some of these rainy days I tend to forget Longfellow’s wisdom.  I stop seeing a “sun still shining” behind the clouds and start singing with the Ink Spots and Ella Fitzgerald, 

Into each life some rain must fall,

 But too much is falling in mine.

  But then I try to lift my chin up and sing with Lynn Anderson:

I beg your pardon

I never promised you a rose garden

Along with the sunshine 

There’s gotta be a little rain some time.

If that doesn’t help lift my spirit I’ll sing the “hope” part of Bobby Vinton’s 1962 song, “Rain, Rain Go Away, Come again some other day.”  And if that doesn’t work, my mind  will go back to Longfellow’s “Rainy Day” and relax in his words:  

Be still, sad heart! And cease repining;

Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;

Thy fate is the common fate of all

Into each life some rain must fall.

Bunkum and Balderdash!

Mr. Trump called the Anti-Hate Resolution passed by the House of Representatives on Wednesday “disgraceful.”  He described Democrats as the “anti-Israel party” and implied that to be critical of Israel is to be an “anti-Jewish party.” (He has also said that to be a Democrat is to be unAmerican). Bunkum and Balderdash!  Anti-Semitism is not the only form of hate, bigotry and prejudice in the world, and certainly not the only form here in this land of ours,  and criticism of Israel is not necessarily anti-Semitism, just as criticism of Iran is not necessarily Islamophobia.

Democratic Rep. Eliot Engel said, “I’m going to vote yes on this measure today. Obviously all forms of hatred and bigotry are intolerable and we should go on record in saying so….” But, he added, “I wish we had a separate resolution about anti-Semitism.  I think we deserved it.  I think it was wrong not to have it…but I want to say very clearly and very loudly that anti-Semitism will never be tolerated by me.” (What about anti-Muslim attitudes—shouldn’t they be addressed, too? Or the treatment of African-Americans, Native Americans, immigrants, and on and on?)  Bunkum and Balderdash!  Rep. Liz Cheney said, “While I stand whole-heartedly against discrimination outlined in this resolution, the language before the House today did not address the issue that is front and center,” and suggested that Rep. Omar “deserves to be rebuked, by name, and removed from the House Foreign Affairs Committee so that there is no mistake about the values and priorities the House stands for.”  Why would you rebuke this woman by name and by punishing her?  Bunkum and Balderdash! 

The hypocrisy is so blatant!  The president of the United States can say an African-American woman has a low IQ and Mexicans are rapists and criminals—but a member of Congress (a woman of color) should be reprimanded (by name) for her blunder?  Why would we even suggest that anti-Semitism should be addressed specifically and singularly as a particular hatred or bigotry and ignore the fact that Mr. Trump has continually belittled Muslims, women, African-Americans, and the media?  Bunkum and Balderdash!  Rep. KIng’s comments on immigrants were ignored for years until just a few months ago when he was reprimanded for referencing white nationalism—but the president of the United States says he is a Nationalist and no one seems to care (based on his own rhetoric) what that means?

Donald Trump thinks the Anti-Hate Resolution is “disgraceful.”  What does that mean?  What is he saying?  Is he suggesting that other forms of hatred, bigotry, and intolerance do not need to be addressed in any specific way—only anti-Semitism?  Perhaps that is what Liz Cheney and Eliot Engel want, too.  If only one hatred is addressed, then we can just go on lambasting all the others we hate who are not addressed.  Bunkum and Balderdash!

Bigotry is bigotry.  Intolerance is intolerance.  Hate is hate.

The Anti-Hate Resolution

Martin Luther King, Jr.  talked about an American myth, a myth that says “you can’t solve  this problem (he was speaking of course about segregation) through legislation; you can’t solve this problem through judicial decree; you can’t solve this problem though executive orders on the part of the president of the United States.  It must be solved by education.”  King agreed that education played a role in changing attitudes, but he also saw the importance of legislation.

“It is not a question either of education or of legislation,” King said.  “Both legislation and education are required.  Now people will say, ‘You can’t legislate morals.’  Well, that may be true.  Even though morality may not be legislated, behavior can be regulated.  And this is very important.  We need religion and education to change attitudes and to change the hearts of men.  We need legislation and federal action to control behavior.  It may be true that the law can’t make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important also.”

Can the problem of hate, bigotry, and prejudice be resolved by the Anti-Hate Resolution passed (407 yea-23 nay) in the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday?  I doubt it.  But it might help “control behavior.” It might make our society a little more conscious of  our hate, bigotry, and prejudice.  The resolution was precipitated by  the alleged anti-Semitic rhetoric of Rep. Ilhan Omar (one of three Muslim women in congress).  But let’s be honest and real.  We need a resolution of this sort, not because of one congresswoman’s comments, but because of the behavior, hate, bigotry, and prejudice that dominates our legislative, judicial and executive branches of government.  We need such a resolution because of our own personal and societal attitudes in this regard.  

The Anti-Hate Resolution won’t solve the problem.  But the very fact that it was needed says we have a problem—in congress and out of congress.  The three Muslim lawmakers made an important joint comment after the resolution was passed:  “It’s the first time we have voted on a resolution condemning anti-Muslim bigotry in our nation’s history.”  The resolution condemns all forms of bigotry and from all sides—“Whether from the political right, center, or left….”

It will take more than this Anti-Hate Resolution to move us toward decency, community and love, but at least we are doing something! At least we are recognizing it.  At least we are saying it is wrong. At least we are aware that it isn’t one person who needs to be admonished, but all of us.