In the days leading up to Christmas, our daily newspaper published an article by a local pastor entitled, Uncomfortable Truths in This Season of Light. As it turns out, the title gave the plot away.
The subject was the nationally reported story of a Roman Catholic church in Dedham, MA that’s outdoor creche featured baby Jesus inside a cage, with the surrounding wise men barred from reaching him because of a wall. The sign above the creche read, “Peace on Earth?” Here the obvious reference is to the current hot-button issue of immigration on our southern border.
In explaining the priest’s decision to erect the controversial creche, the author quotes him as saying that he was “just trying to start a conversation.” In the same vein, the author herself argues that regardless of whether one agrees with using the creche to raise the issues or not, the “bigger question” is “how do we talk about this.”
And yet, ironically, her article, along with its reproving title, does more to shut down conversation than start one. What one finds instead is soft-pedaled contempt for those who see things differently than she.
At one point, she admits that the border issue “is a hard one for most of us,” but perhaps especially “in this season of cherished traditions” [italics mine].
Characterizing the reaction of some members of St. Susanna, she writes, dismissively, “Some parishioners don’t want to be reminded about the children in detention in our country. When they come to pray or worship they don’t want to think about families who come from dangerous villages in Central America and have arrived to seek asylum. They don’t like the political overtones of the creche and want to see a traditional scene devoid of any references to the current situation on our Southern border.”
I couldn’t help wondering how she could speak so authoritatively about what is in the hearts and minds of these individuals. Had she ever met them? Had she ever talked with them? My guess is not. And yet she deems their views lacking.
Barely concealed is the inference is that holding traditional beliefs is misguided and wrong, if not coldhearted. Tradition is for those who selfishly refuse to look squarely at life, blinkered souls who just want to live in the safe, enfolding cocoon of the past. As such, they are singularly incapable of thinking intelligently or critically about contemporary social and political issues. For were they able, they’d no doubt agree with our enlightened author.
She informs us that the priest “was hoping to take our world today and put it together with the Christmas message.” He was “trying to promote some gospel activism because Jesus, the man whom his baby grew up to become, was political.”
A thoughtful reader might ask, “But what exactly is this Christmas message of which you speak?” As it is, she never really explains, but does suggest, loosely, that “peace on earth” is to be achieved through the “gospel activism” of the political outsider, Jesus.
The funny thing is, for traditional Christianity, the Christmas message has nothing to do with the birth of a political figure, but the long-awaited Messiah, the one who later would tell Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world” (much to the chagrin of many of his early and, apparently, modern-day followers). The “peace” premised by Christmas, in other words, is not a humanly-ordered peace but the kind “the world cannot know.”
Dare I say it, but the traditional, biblical narrative is this. After the Fall in the Garden of Eden, God makes a promise, first to Abraham, that at some future date God would save humanity from the corruptions of this world. The Hebrew faith envisioned this as “the Day of the Lord,” that moment when God would break into time and restore life in accordance with God’s original intent.
The Christian idea is similar, but with a twist. Though Christians also believed that God would indeed send a messiah to return all the world back unto its Creator, they didn’t see it happening in one fell swoop. Instead, Jesus, the same long-waited Messiah, had ushered in a new era that would remain incomplete until his Second Coming.
During this interim period (between Jesus’ birth, death, resurrection and the Second Coming), the church is tasked with preparing the world for its future divine consummation. The church is to faithfully announce the salvation offered in Christ, that all might know the peace God ultimately shall establish over all the earth.
In this telling, Christmas is not a political call for human beings to fix the world, for us to engineer for ourselves peace on earth (as if such a thing were possible). Rather, Christmas is a reminder that God alone is capable of fixing what ails us, and that this same God has sent a messiah (savior) into our darkened world through whom the fullness of divine peace one day shall come to pass.
A troubling aspect of the author’s narrative, as with so many like it, is the fatal conceit that we in the church somehow have our act together, sufficient to know what others need to do to effect justice and peace in our world.
This is at best naïve, betraying a simple moralism that not only fails to consider the vast, bewildering complexities and intricacies of life, but is mostly blind to the deceptive, shadow side of the human heart, with its incongruities and often hidden desires and motivations.
As the prophet Jeremiah sagely put it, “The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse – who can understand it?”
But there’s something else at work. And it’s a big deal. It has to do with a subject I’m always harping on about – the Mainline church’s implicit rejection of traditional Christian understandings in favor of a late 19th and early 20th century invention – the Social Gospel, along with its twin cousins, progressivism and modernism.
The focus here is on seeking “justice” through social and political means, an approach that implicitly deemphasizes the ever-present struggles of the human soul and, thus, its existential quest for spiritual redemption and salvation. Here the individual’s heroic struggle is replaced by quixotic demands for social and political perfection in the here and now.
Besides, it mixes metaphors, the spiritual and the political. As you may recall, in my October 24th post entitled, Diversity and The Herd of Independent Minds, I discussed the thinking of Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920), theologian, journalist, and one-time prime minister of the Netherlands who is best known for his theory of the “spheres.”
His basic argument was that God created the world and gave each creature a specific role to play in honoring God’s command that we human beings subdue the world and seek to order it properly, in accordance with God’s will and the gifts God has given us.
The proper role of the Christian church, its proper sphere of influence, Kuyper insisted, is spiritual.
This does not mean that political or social issues are irrelevant to the church. It just means they don’t constitute its primary mandate. Certainly, the church can and does seek to influence political and social matters, but ultimately it must recognize its limitations and defer to those whom God has granted proper authority.
Does this mean the government is always right? Of course not. It’s made up of fallible human beings. Does this mean the church (and others) should not offer input and moral suasion? Of course not. On the other hand, I don’t think we want the government telling us how to do church, either.
That said, in my years in the ministry, I’ve been struck repeatedly at how singular many of our clergy are regarding social and political problems.
As a case in point, the author of our article cites just one reason for welcoming immigration across our southern border. She recounts a youth mission trip she led in 2005 to a detention center “for unaccompanied youths” in Arizona.
Her argument takes the form of emotional anecdote. She quotes one particular boy who asks, in broken English, “Why does your government hate us so much?”
As heart-rendering as his comment surely is, it’s probably not best to craft federal policy based on a child’s perspective. Besides, one could well argue that those most responsible for his predicament were his parents who, by knowingly breaking the law, chose to place him in jeopardy. In a broader context, one also might suggest that if the opportunities for crossing the border were not so plentiful, many would not have to suffer the indignities and hardships that result from being caught and lawfully detained.
Recently, the American public has been inundated with religious leaders, such as our author, as well as others, including politicians and media figures, who tend to blur the distinction between religious priorities and those of the state.
How many immigrants should we allow into the country? No doubt there are tens of millions who would love to come here. Given this fact, what is the responsibility of the government? Should it allow in absolutely everyone who wants to live here? If not, how many should it accept? And who should be turned away, and by what means? This is just a sampling of the kinds of questions church leaders simply don’t have to address.
What about crime? What about drugs? And what about the fact that most of the immigrant population, often poor, uneducated, and sometimes sick, is typically placed in communities that can ill afford to absorb them (while wealthy communities remain blithely untouched by the influx)? How do those communities with limited economic and social capital pay for the needs of the dispossessed?
I’m not arguing here one position over another. My heart goes out to those who wish to come here seeking a better life. Why wouldn’t they? I’m simply pointing out the consequential challenges and difficulties faced by anyone involved in governmental decision-making as it relates to immigration.
Now, if a church member personally wishes to take an immigrant into their home, he or she has my admiration. It’s consistent with the charitable and sacrificial nature of the gospel.
Curiously, though, I don’t know a single pastor who has done this, even among the most vocal. Surely it’s one thing to put one’s moral convictions into practice, but something else altogether in forcing someone else to pay the price for my magnanimity.
So, with all this said, I can’t help but wonder whether at least some of the members of St. Susanna (as with a few of the article’s readers), who found themselves troubled by the walled creche, just might have thoughtful, reasoned concerns, both theological as well as social and political.
And given this possibility, rather than dismissing their concerns out of hand, what if we actually decided to take the author’s suggestion and start a real, honest conversation?