The Way Home

One of our professors liked to tell the story of how his atheist friend would gather people around him and ask them why, if God exists, he does not simply show himself? Then he would look up to heaven and call out: “God, if you exist, prove it by striking me dead!” When nothing happened, he would ask his audience, “So if God really exists, why didn’t he strike me dead?”

My professor was witness to these little performances on more than one occasion. Once, when his friend asked the group, “So if God really exists, why didn’t he strike me dead?” he leaned in and whispered, “Just give him time.”

I love my professor’s response, but I can also appreciate his friend’s skepticism. Why, if God exists and wants us to know him, doesn’t he do something miraculous to convince the world that he is here? Why doesn’t he turn the sky green for a day or rain down food on the starving refugees in South Sudan? Why does God remain hidden?

Better people than I have asked that question – including some of history’s great men and women of faith. Job, who is famous for his patience in trial, cried out to God, “Why do you hide your face and consider me your enemy?”

Many poems by David (known as “a man after God’s own heart”), include the complaint that God had hidden himself. “Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” he moans in one, and in another he cries, “Why do you hide your face and forget our misery and oppression?”

These men were not atheists. In fact, they were renowned for their spiritual depth and perception, and yet they too wondered why God did not show himself. The prophet Isaiah also acknowledged God’s hiddenness: “Truly,” he said, “you are a God who hides himself.”

Even Jesus acknowledged the secretiveness – some have called it, “the shyness” – of God. Three times he described God to his followers as “the one who sees in secret.” The idea that God is hidden is not infrequent in the pages of Scripture.

Responses to God’s hiddenness vary greatly. Because he is hidden, some people go in search of him. When St. Paul went to Athens, the intellectual center of the world in his day, he told an audience of philosophers that God made things the way he did “so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him.”

Others do not look for the hidden God; they ignore him. If he doesn’t bother them, they’re not going to bother him. Let sleeping Gods lie. Still others vehemently deny God’s existence and do their best to convince others that he does not exist as well. Of course if he does exist, God could easily put an end to all this. So why doesn’t he?

There are several likely answers. First, it seems that God is not primarily interested in proving his existence to people. Even if everyone were to believe he existed, God would not be satisfied. He wants so much more than that. He wants to restore his creation, make right what has gone wrong and bring about an unending era of justice, love and peace. Merely convincing people that he exists will never accomplish his purpose.

Secondly, were God to constantly reveal his presence to individuals by miraculous acts, or to the world by one undeniable revelation of himself, people might do what God wanted but they would neither want what he wanted, nor want him to be God. His intention is to transform humanity into a people of justice, love and peace, not to intimidate them into compliance.

Thirdly, God must remain somewhat hidden in order to preserve people’s freedom. Were he to reveal himself fully, the freedom of choice (without which humanity is less than human) would disappear. That’s why C. S. Lewis pondered “whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realize what it will be like when He does.” When he does, freedom of choice will end and the reality of what people have chosen will become apparent.

Another, and related, reason for God’s self-restraint is that he is giving people the opportunity to change their minds about him. The Bible calls this change of mind “repentance.” So St. Peter states, “He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” St. Paul agrees: “God’s kindness leads you toward repentance.” This change of mind is far more than a belief that God exists. It is the realization that he is right and I am not; that he is good and that the life he offers is the best thing going.

If God seems hidden, it is not really because he is shy but because he is loving – fiercely, thrillingly, astonishingly loving. Lewis again: “You must have often wondered why [God] does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo … the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve.”

When my friends are sick, when my children are threatened, when things are spinning out of control, I want God to rethink and override this policy. I want him to come out of the shadows and show himself. I would undo all the long work of redemption to have things my way. But I know better. I know that he is good, not only when he comes out of the shadows but when, for love of us, he does not.

One more thing should be said. We think that God is hiding, and perhaps he is. But there is another way to look at it. Perhaps we are the ones hidden away, not him; hidden in a place where we cannot, for the moment, see him. Perhaps we are even hidden there for our protection, the way a joey is hidden in the mother kangaroo’s pouch or, better, yet, the way a fetus is hidden in her mother’s womb.

Earth is a womb. This is our gestation period. In the womb we cannot see our Father, though we sometimes hear his reassuring voice. It is here that we have the opportunity to receive the life we need to thrive in the larger world of heaven and to develop into the kind of beings that can live there. Our time here is preparing for that startling moment when we will see the Father face to face.

No one who is delivered into that larger world will complain about their time in this one, any more than a healthy, happy child complains that his mother’s womb was too dark and crowded. In the larger world, sorrows will be forgotten, tears will be wiped away and mortality swallowed up in life. All God’s children – and he has so many in the womb of mother earth – will experience “joy inexpressible that is full of glory.”

He knows this is so, and he waits. He understands what to do for us and how to rescue us. Though things can get pretty painful and scary in this womb called earth, the Father is not afraid. He sees the joys that await us, joys that we cannot now imagine, and he is glad.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 1/18/14

In the late eighties, NBC debuted a drama titled Quantum Leap. Its main character, Sam, was a young physicist who had figured out how to travel through time. After his first experience of time-travel, Sam realized that he could not control when or to where he would time-travel next, so the show had him bouncing around through time, trying to set right things that had gone wrong in people’s lives and in the world. The hook to the story was that on each occasion Sam time traveled, he inhabited the body of some person living in that place and time. The people around him saw the person they had always known, but it was really Sam inhabiting his or her body.

Sam time-jumped into some pretty desperate situations: as the pilot of a supersonic jet – which he didn’t know how to fly; a prisoner in a chain gang; a mafia hit man – you get the idea. In every case, it would take Sam a while to figure out what was going on – that is, to figure out what kind of story he was in. Was he part of a love story or a murder mystery? Or was this an adventure story? Until he could figure that out, he didn’t know how to proceed.

In one episode Sam time-jumped into the middle of a sword fight. He was fighting for his life, but had no skill in the art of fencing. His adrenaline was pumping and it looked as if he was about to die. And then he learned – and we learned with him – that the sword fight was taking place in a theater as part of a play: he had leaped into the body of a stage actor.

When that episode began, Sam thought he was in one kind of story, when he was really in another. Or a better way to put it might be: he was in a story that was part of a bigger story. It was only after he figured out what that bigger story was that he knew what action he ought to take.

When it comes to understanding the Bible, one of the most important things we can do is figure out what kind of story it is – for it is a story. We might – and many people do – think of it as a travelogue that describes the journey of the soul to heaven. If that is the kind of story it is, we will want to take actions that conform to our role in the story. But what if we are wrong? What if it’s not a quest but a love story? Then our actions won’t quite fit with what’s happening around us.

It is important that our actions fit the story line because we are characters in the story. The Bible is the human story – our story – full of honor and shame, sacrifice and cowardice, generosity and greed. Because it is our story, it is absolutely essential that we figure out what kind of story it is. Otherwise, we will be fighting when we should be laughing, or repeating parrot-like the stage actor’s lines when we are not even on the stage.

The Bible is our story, and those who realize it can make a quantum leap forward in their spiritual lives. But it is even more important to understand that the Bible is God’s story. The grand narrative is about him, and what he is doing. We are characters in his story, not the other way around.

So what is his story? Is it an adventure? A mystery? A war story? The answer is, “Yes.” But it is also, perhaps more than any of these, a love story – the story of: a creator, whose love motivates him to sacrifice himself to save his damaged masterpiece; a father, whose love sends him searching for his lost child; a groom who, for love of his wayward bride, searches the world over to find her and be reconciled to her.

Our personal stories can’t and don’t stand alone. If one’s personal story does not find its way into God’s epic story, it will be lost. It doesn’t matter whether one’s life is a story of unmitigated success or of heartbreak and tragedy, it only finds its true significance when it is integrated into the great story that God has written and is graciously allowing us to co-write.

Published first in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, January 11, 2014

My family got religion in the spring of 1968. It had become clear that, apart from a miracle, my brother was not going to recover from the acute lymphoblastic leukemia with which he had been diagnosed. Looking for help wherever they could find it, my parents talked to the preacher at my grandmother’s church and attended a series of revival meetings held there.

I had never been to a church meeting like that. In fact, I don’t remember attending church at all, except on Easter Sunday, prior to my brother’s illness. The revival meeting was new to me. The earnest preacher didn’t just talk: he urged, pleaded and admonished us to begin a new life of faith. On the second or third evening, I responded publicly to the invitation and prayed to “receive Jesus.”

That was the beginning of my spiritual life and also the beginning of my religious life, which have not always been the same thing. I don’t want to understate the benefit the church has brought to my life – I cannot begin to measure its value to me or imagine my life without it. But on that night many years ago I not only received Jesus, I received religion.

Receiving Jesus has been an unmitigated good, the beginning of a new and extraordinarily rich life. Without Jesus, I would simply not be me. On that evening so many years ago, something happened that has shaped the person I’ve become and provided the dynamic for the person I am becoming.

But something else happened too: I got religion. And with religion came unexpected and undesired side effects, one of which was hypocrisy. No one intended for that to happen. The church, I am sure, wanted to make disciples, not hypocrites. But it happened nonetheless.

I think I picked it up, at least in part, from my dad. The church to which we had become attached frowned on smoking and drinking. My dad had already quit drinking (for the most part), but smoking was another matter. He tried to quit, but twenty-five years of heavy smoking was too much for him.

He was a barber, and he always had a pack of cigarettes with him in the shop. But when the preacher or some other member of the church would drop in for a haircut, the cigarettes would disappear. As a teenager I noticed, with a kind of wonder, how quickly and clandestinely he could dispose of a cigarette, almost in mid-puff, whenever he was surprised by a church member in public.

My dad’s talk could often be cutting and harsh. But when he was at church or was around church people, I never heard him say an unkind word. He was shamefully biased against minorities, but you would never know that at church, when some visiting missionary was urging us to send the gospel to Africa or the Far East.

I’m glad to report that my dad’s life gradually changed to take the shape of the doctrines he professed. He became much kinder – loving even – and generous to those in need. But for the most part, this happened after I was out of the house. I had already learned my lesson.

Jesus did not teach me to hide my struggles and failures or to project an airbrushed image of myself to others. Religion did that, though unintentionally. It seemed to me that no one else at church was even tempted to do wrong; much less did they do it. If I was going to fit in, I would need to hide all the bad things about myself, as skillfully as my dad hid his cigarettes.

Perhaps it sounds as if religion is the enemy of true spirituality. It is not, and it can even be its great and helpful friend. The tried and true practices of the church – call them religious, if you will – have helped millions of people experience true spirituality. Religion is not the problem, but the contraband that is sometimes smuggled in with it – hypocrisy, pride, envy and a judgmental attitude – is. Wise is the person who can distinguish between the two.

Published first in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 1/4/14

A businessman friend of mine was in a restaurant in a large city to meet a prospective employee. As he waited his arrival, a family passed by on their way to be seated. He hardly noticed them, until the husband – a total stranger – turned around. He looked my friend in the eye and said, “You are going to have a spectacular year.”

My friend was speechless. The only thing he could think to say was “Thank you.” The enigmatic prophet then added, “The Lord wanted me to tell you that,” and continued on into the dining area. When my friend got to his table, he looked for the man, but couldn’t find him.

One wonders how most people would feel if some prophet told them what was going to happen in their lives during the coming year. Would they rather hear that everything in life was about to change or that everything was going to stay about the same?

Unless things are going badly, most of us would probably prefer the status quo over the experience of significant change. We have learned – sometimes the hard way – how to act and think in our present situation, and correctly perceive that a change, for good or ill, will require us to change with it. And, frankly, that is not something we’re sure we want.

This reluctance is understandable and normal. Even the political progressive likes to have his dinner at the same time each night, takes her coffee the same way year after year, and reads the paper each evening in his or her favorite chair. People have spent a lifetime digging the rut they are in and feel they have earned the right to enjoy it.

We may want to decorate our rut, make it more comfortable and secure, but please don’t force us out of it. We want to feel differently – happier and more peaceful, less angry and greedy – but we want that to happen without having to change our routine.

People often resolve to change things about themselves at the beginning of the New Year. They want to weigh less, but they don’t want to change their eating habits. They want to become more spiritual, but they don’t want to get up early to pray or meditate on Scripture. They want to resolve conflicts, but they do not want to go to a counselor or sit down with their adversary. So nothing changes. The disinclination to encounter new (and potentially uncomfortable) experiences prevents us from making positive, life-enhancing changes.

Over the years I have asked hundreds of people about the conditions in which they have experienced the most spiritual growth. Nearly all have reported that they have grown most in times of hardship and conflict. Having heard that same report again and again, I came to believe that difficulty was essential to spiritual growth. Now I’m not so sure.

Perhaps the necessary condition for spiritual growth is not hardship, but change. The status quo is the enemy of progress. We won’t grow spiritually until we get out of our rut.

Hardship – illness, conflict, bereavement, unemployment, etc. – change the situation in which we operate and, in so doing, create space for personal and spiritual growth. But space for personal and spiritual growth can be created in other (more exciting and less painful) ways as well: by acts of generosity, changes in routine, new friendships and exploits of faith.

I’ve often seen people experience rich personal growth when they first begin going to church. I’d like to attribute this to the preaching, but I don’t think that is the case. Rather, their change of routine – prompted by faith – has created room for spiritual growth. New activities result in a “disequilibrium,” as Mark Scandrette puts it, “that can create space for change.”

Perhaps our number one New Year’s resolution should be: “Create space for change.” We can do that by volunteering time to help the homeless or feed the hungry, by taking a class or attending church – there must be a million ways. But one thing is for sure: we’ll find little space for change – and little room for growth – until we do something to climb out of our rut.

First published in the Coldwater Daily Reporter, 12/28/13

Finally: Take a deep breath and slow down. Enter into Christmas with poise. Ask Jesus to come again, this time into your life, but be sure that you are collected enough to notice when he does. Most people in Bethlehem missed him the first time he came and, if you are not careful, you’ll do the same. Jesus can come to a person at any time, in the guise of someone in need or in the generous love of a friend. When he does, don’t miss him.

On 12/10 I sent a letter to the editor of The Coldwater Daily Reporter, responding to an op-ed piece by the night desk editor, Chris Worst (see: http://www.thedailyreporter.com/article/20131206/NEWS/131209491/1007/OPINION). I carbon-copied Mr. Worst as a courtesy and have since communicated with him by email. He says that he disagrees with my letter on many point, but was respectful. I am hoping that he and I can have coffee together soon and get to know each other better.

Mr. Worst did express appreciation for the respectful tone of my letter, and mentioned that his paper had received other letters that were negative in tone. I urge Christians, who are to love even their enemies (that is, the people who are enemies toward them) to show respect and kindness even when disagreeing with the views of others. If we do not follow our Master’s instructions in this, we may win a battle or two over some moral issue, but we will surely lose the culture war – and our own joy and peace in the process.

Response to Chris Worst

To the Editor:

            Chris Worst, the night desk editor for The Daily Reporter, wrote an op-ed piece in the December 6^th issue titled, “Marriage Equality Is Inevitable.” I have appreciated Mr. Worst’s work, but would like to respond to what I believe are inaccuracies or misrepresentations in the piece. I do not believe these were intentional – Mr. Worst was relaying the talking points that the advocates of gay marriage have developed over the past few years – but they are, I believe, misleading.

            First, Mr. Worst raises what he terms “the most common argument against gay marriage, that of it going against the Bible.” He admits that gay marriage contradicts Jewish and Christian scriptures, and quotes as evidence Leviticus 18:22, which forbids sexual relations between men. He does not try to argue that this particular command is no longer applicable but that the Bible itself cannot be considered a reliable guide to moral behavior in our day and age.

            He does this by comparing the prohibition against homosexuality to a command that comes later in the book of Leviticus: “Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard” (Leviticus 19:27, KJV). He makes the point that “… you don’t see Christian zealots protesting at funerals over shaving, do you?”

            But this is one of those misunderstandings. The prohibition against cutting off hair or beard made perfect sense in the culture to which it was given. It sits along co-texts on divination and the cultic practice of cutting one’s body in necromancy. Many ancient cultures used hair cut from the head or beard in sorcery and divination, which is what is being prohibited. It is hermeneutical malpractice to compare the two prohibitions without considering their contexts.

            Further, Mr. Worst suggests that the “Defense of Marriage Act” is a violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment, which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” But it is hard to see how the Defense of Marriage Act established religion. It rather was intended to maintain an established tradition that has been practiced by peoples of various religions (and of no religion at all) around the world and across time. I found the comparison to “Sharia law” to be way over the top.

            Next Mr. Worst uses what has become the most common argument for gay marriage: that two people who love each other should be able to be married. In other words, marriage is really all about our feelings and desires. But marriage has always been about much more than that. The Book of Common Prayer, first published in 1549, states “The union of husband and wife in heart, body and mind is intended by God for their mutual joy; for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity; and, when it is God’s will, for the procreation of children and their nurture in the knowledge and love of the Lord.”

            The fact is that homosexual behavior has been present throughout history. Some cultures, like the ancient Romans, openly practiced pedastry for centuries. But no culture in the history of the world, until very recently, ever considered homosexual relationships to be the same thing as marriage. This was not a religious view – the people involved were from many different religions and some held no religion at all – it was the view of history.

            Though I disagree with Mr. Worst on the advisability of gay marriage, I do agree with him on some points: divorce is more damaging to the institution of marriage than the legalization of gay marriage. I also agree – though I wish I didn’t – that the legalization of gay marriage is inevitable. Our culture is (after a propaganda campaign of several decades) moving faster and faster in that direction. Its momentum will likely carry it to fulfillment.

            One final thing: I sense from Mr. Worst’s tone that he has encountered “Christian zealots” who, like the people from Westboro Baptist Church, approach the issue with anger and contempt, and with no desire to understand the opinions of others. I have no desire to be one of those zealots. In fact, I, like many other Christians, find it every bit as offensive as does Mr. Worst.

            This year Americans celebrated Thanksgiving by spending about 30 billion dollars on meals, travel and ancillary expenses (not including Black Friday spending). Approximately 45 million turkeys were purchased and cooked. And, according to AAA, approximately 43 million Americans traveled over 50 miles to spend Thanksgiving with friends and family.

            Americans give their money and time to celebrate Thanksgiving Day. They give their afternoon to watch the Detroit Lions. They give their diets a reprieve. The one thing they might not give on Thanksgiving Day is thanks. It’s the missing ingredient in our celebration.

            And that’s a shame, according to Dr. Robert Emmons, professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, because giving thanks is good for a person – really good. Emmons has done ground-breaking research into the causes and effects of gratitude. His findings suggest that it is simply unhealthy – physically and emotionally – to lack gratitude.

            Dr. Emmons has written that there “are reasons to believe that experiences of gratitude might be associated – perhaps even in a causal fashion – with happiness and well being. Researchers, writers, and practitioners have all speculated that gratitude possesses happiness-bestowing properties.”

            Emmons’s research found that grateful people make better neighbors. They were more likely than others to help someone with a personal problem or to offer emotional support to another.

            His research also suggests that there are physical benefits associated with giving thanks. People who regularly focus on their reasons for gratitude get more sleep and enjoy better sleep quality. They even experience fewer symptoms of physical illnesses.

            Giving thanks is emotionally healthy as well. Those who do so regularly report a greater sense of optimism and a more profound connectedness to others. They feel less lonely. The bottom line is that thankful people are happier and healthier than their unthankful peers.

            So what does it take to be a more thankful person? Apparently it does not take better or more comfortable circumstances. Emmons randomly divided students into three subject groups. One was to keep a journal of gratitude-inducing experiences, another a journal of irritants and the third a journal of events that affected their lives during the week. It is statistically unlikely that those in the gratitude group experienced more positive circumstances than the others, yet they were happier and healthier than their peers in the other two groups.

            This strongly suggests that gratitude is not dependent upon one’s circumstances but on one’s determined choice to reflect on the positive aspects of his or her circumstances. The person who is intentional about counting blessings is almost certain to find more blessings to count than the person who is not, and will be in a much better place to do so when life gets tough.

            And since, as Dr. Emmons puts it, gratefulness is “anchored in spirituality”; and since “a secular perspective is going to tend to erode that sense of gratefulness”; it is important to strengthen one’s spiritual life. Many find reading the Bible, praying and joining with a church enormously helpful to this end.

One staple of the spiritual life is the prayer of gratitude. St. Paul, when instructing his readers on the life of prayer, says: “…in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” Pray about everything, he says, but do so with thanksgiving.

            Another way to become more thankful is to act thankful. Expressing gratitude – even when one does not feel it – can trigger a gratitude response. When a person can’t think himself into a new way of acting he can often act himself into a new way of thinking.

            It turns out that giving thanks is not just a religious duty. It’s good sense.

First published in the Coldwater Daily Reporter, Saturday, November 30, 2013

Christians have over the centuries used differing, and sometimes even contradictory, terminology to describe conversion. How does a person begin the Christian life? What are the initial experiences that evidence a person’s salvation?

Catholics and some Protestants have sometimes suggested that the Christian life begins with baptism. This accords well with biblical texts like St. Peter’s invitation to “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.” St. Paul, likewise, said: “Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name.”

But many Christians challenge the idea that baptism has a causal role in conversion. They particularly disparage the practice of infant baptism, which they claim lacks biblical warrant. They argue that baptism is a sign, not a cause, of the inward experience of the grace that comes to a person through faith.

Some Christians, particularly Evangelicals, use the term “born again” to describe one’s entrance into the Christian life. This language has the imprimatur of Jesus himself, who coined the term when he told a respected religious leader that he “must be born again,” for one cannot otherwise “see the kingdom of heaven.” Evangelicals understand a person to be born again by an act of God that in some way corresponds with a person’s faith in Jesus.

Descriptions such as those given above are grossly oversimplified and cannot be understood apart from the theological milieu from which they come. It’s clear that differences exist, but it may be possible to harmonize some of these perspectives, since the vocabulary of conversion, as it is used in the various theological camps, is not necessarily mutually exclusive.

However, in discussions of conversion, insufficient attention has been given to the word itself. In theological parlance, “conversion” is commonly used to describe the moment of entry into the Christian life. But the Scriptures rarely, perhaps never, use the term in this way. In Scripture, conversion is something that happens to a person, which begins to turn him or her into something he or she had never been before. As such, conversion is more than a starting point.

Conversion changes a person’s identity, not merely his or her destination. Usually when the subject of conversion is discussed, the underlying assumption is that the whole point of conversion is to alter one’s destination from hell to heaven. But the biblical passages about conversion lack a strong emphasis on destination. Rather, the emphasis is placed on the change a person experiences, a change that brings healing and forgiveness and a new kind of life.

It is regrettable, but in some parts of the Church the emphasis on a person’s introduction to the Christian life – call it conversion, if you will – is emphasized to the neglect of almost everything that follows. The Christian gospel is reduced to an invitation to the afterlife and, as such, has little bearing on the way a person lives in the present.

Where such views are held, the broad biblical term “salvation” is used synonymously with much narrower terms, like “forgiveness” or “justification.” But this is something the biblical writers do not do. The confusion of these terms results in a truncated gospel, in which the good news is about nothing other than getting into heaven when one dies.

To be fair, some who hold this view go on to say that a person who has responded to the good news ought to obey God, as a way of expressing appreciation to him. But this hardly does justice to biblical teaching or personal experience. The Bible does not speak of people being saved into heaven but into a kingdom and a life – a life that starts now and continues forever.

If the moment of conversion is what Christianity is all about, then faith will, of necessity, seem irrelevant to daily life. But conversion is to a qualitatively different, transformed kind of life. It begins now, not at some future date, and is relevant to everything a person is and does.

Published first in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, November 23, 2013

Our culture is swimming in an ocean of contempt. And we’re drowning.

Politics, which has for the better part of two decades majored in the science of smear, is a major source of this social pollution. Liberals call conservatives stupid and conservatives call liberals un-American. Campaigns are organized around opportunities for disdain and mockery. In recent years, political commentators have openly called their opponents “idiots,” “liars and murderers” and, in one notable case, even called the president of the United States a “jackass.”

The inevitable result of such contempt is more contempt. And with it, resentment, bitterness, hostility and gridlock. While Americans complain about Congress’s inability to get things done, they have taken the contempt of Congress – and within Congress – for granted. But how are people supposed to work together after they’ve just called each other idiots?

Contempt is destructive to communal life and wellbeing. According to Princeton Professor (and Rabbi) Uri Cohen, ancient Judaism prohibited the use of mockery, except when it expressed contempt for idolatry. In all other cases it was forbidden. Likewise, in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus strongly warned his followers against using contemptuous language.

Contempt eats away at any social institution, whether political, ecclesiastical or familial. In a paper titled, “Ridicule as a Weapon,” Professor J. Michael Waller quotes the Czech novelist Milan Kundera as saying, “No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled, because laughter is the rust that corrodes everything.”

But the rust of contempt not only corrodes great movements, it eats away at families and churches and communities. Contempt is a social cancer.

In the bestseller, “Blink,” Malcom Gladwell relates the research of Professor John Gottman, from the University of Washington. Gottman has been able to identify couples who will experience relationship failure with an accuracy that is unmatched by marital therapists, marital researchers and pastoral counselors.

His secret? Professor Gottman watches couples for the four key signs that predict serious marital discord: defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism and contempt. When he sees such behavior, he knows that a couple is highly likely to split up.

But even among these four negative behaviors, one is worse than all the rest: contempt. Contempt, Gottman says, “is qualitatively different from” these other behaviors and “far more damaging.” Contempt, according to research, can even predict the number of colds a husband or wife gets – it is so stressful that it affects the immune system’s ability to fight off infection.

Contempt is used to reject and exclude others from community – even when it is a community of two in a marriage, or of four in a family. And with contempt, what goes around comes around. It is a communicable disease. It spreads from person to person through insult, sarcasm, mockery and body language (rolling eyes and scornful facial expressions).

Jesus, who understood better than anyone the dynamics of social interaction, saw contempt as devastating to a life well lived. In his famous “Sermon on the Mount,” he begins his teaching on true inner goodness with a warning against anger and contempt.

Anger is usually, in our experience, wrapped up with a sense of self-righteousness and carries with it a component of malice. “But,” as Dallas Willard once put it, “contempt is a greater evil than anger… it is a kind of studied degradation of another . . . It is never justifiable or good.”

The instruments of contempt – profanity, mockery, insult, and the like – have no place in family life or national conversation. Jesus warned in the most vigorous language possible that those who use contempt will pay a dreadful price for it. In America, we are already making payments, and the interest rates are skyrocketing.

According to Nicholas Eberhardt, writing in the Wall Street Journal, entitlement transfers from the government to individuals have grown by 72 percent since 1960, and that is after adjusting for inflation and population growth.

Entitlement spending now comprises two-thirds of the federal budget. Half of all American households currently receive income from the government in entitlement payouts. The government owes, in the form of its entitlement commitments, approximately $7,200 for every man, woman and child living in the United States.

But it would be a mistake to think that the poor and the elderly – the recipients of Medicaid and Medicare, of welfare benefits and Social Security checks – necessarily have an “entitlement complex.” It would be an even bigger mistake to think they were the only ones.

Entitlement thinking is pervasive in our culture. Both corporate CEOs and the Occupy Wall Street protestors who despise them are vulnerable to its infection. The entitlement mentality has poisoned middle-class trade unions. It has corrupted IRS officials. Our nation’s entitlement obligations threaten to disable the economy, but that’s not the worst of it (in spite of what fiscal conservatives say). It’s the mindset of entitlement that’s killing us. And we’re all tainted by it.

And not just us. Entitlement thinking is found on the other side of the Atlantic too. So the Most Reverend Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, speaks of “a culture of entitlement” in London. And his is just one of many voices sounding the alarm in the West.

Let me add my voice to that chorus, though I will leave others to address the economic impact of entitlements and point the way out of the fiscal morass in which we find ourselves. My concern is with the debilitating spiritual consequences of entitlement thinking.

For one thing, it makes entering the spiritual life problematic. A rich spiritual life is predicated upon God’s grace, not upon my rights. The very idea that I deserve salvation makes it impossible for me to receive it. In Jesus’ story, it is the publican (not the “Republican,” just to be clear) who goes home justified. Unlike the Pharisee, who looks down on him, he knows he doesn’t deserve God’s favor. Yet he’s the one who receives it.

The entitlement mindset makes gratitude, which is such a vital part of the spiritual life, impossible. There is no spiritual health apart from gratitude, but there is no gratitude in the entitlement mindset. How can I be grateful for what I believe is mine by right? Moses long ago warned: “When you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down … and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God.” That is how the entitlement mindset works.

Entitlement thinking also leaves a person unprepared for the difficulties of life. Jesus warned, “In this world, you will have trouble.” It is guaranteed. Yet when a person who feels entitled to comfort, health or happiness encounters hardship, it threatens to undo him. Adversity leaves him angry and disillusioned, but it cannot make him strong, for the entitled are not capable of perseverance.

The entitlement mindset discourages personal effort, without which there is no spiritual growth. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, wrote that a rich spiritual life is only found in “vigorous, universal obedience … in watchfulness and painfulness, in denying ourselves, and taking up our cross daily; as well as in earnest prayer…”

Spiritual joy is found in sacrifice, but that is not a place the entitlement mindset cares to go. A person who feels entitled stands ready to sacrifice others to his cause – even his spiritual cause – but he will not sacrifice himself. Yet, ironically, apart from such sacrifice spiritual growth and joy are not possible.

Published first in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, Saturday, October26, 2013