Justice

On Friday there was a fist-fight in the middle of the dining room. For the amount of people we serve violence is actually quite rare. But somebody had gotten ripped off, and the victim's friend saw the thief in the dining room. There was none of the usual verbal jousting - one man simply launched into the other and a little street justice was handed down.

Of course, none of it was justice at all. The guy who got ripped off is still ripped off. The pain and fear and anger he might be experiencing is just as palpable, just as real. The guy who bore the brunt of the 'justice' is now angry also and almost certainly looking for someone to vent that anger on. What has actually been created is not justice but a spiral of violence that has no way of ending - no way, that is, unless someone, until one of us, says 'No More'.

Can there be justice without retribution? Perhaps if we want to create justice, real justice, not just something that looks like justice or seems like justice but something that really and truly is justice, then we might consider finding those who are a victims of injustice and loving them. Perhaps we might find ways to restore what has been taken from them, to return to them not just the physical things they have lost but the manifest peace, comfort and security that injustice denies, that injustice destroys, that injustice replaces with fear, with want and with the undeniable anguish of the soul. We say love conquers all and we quote the scripture that says this very thing with scarcely a thought for what it means in the dust and grime of the streets we walk every day, with scarcely a thought for the simple reality that justice isn't justice at all until it seeks out those for whom it is denied. It isn't a concept, it isn't a metaphysical construct, it isn't child of the law and the labour of the courts, it's the way we must live, seeking to lift up those who cannot themselves rise, seeking to love those who despair of ever knowing freedom. Justice is love, seeking to be born into the world and it seems to me that the very act of seeking out those for whom justice is denied is an essential characteristic of justice. Justice searches for those who do not know her and it searches for them through us. 

This is what God did in Christ, at the cross, where God's 'justice' became indistinguishable from his love, where Christ's love was given it's ultimate expression in self-sacrifice. This is what it means to be who Christ is. It means we go looking for those who are suffering the weight of injustice, it means that we offer a justice indistinguishable from love and that a love for both vicitm and perpetrator. We're not very good at the self-sacrifice part but, honestly, we're not very good at the 'seeking-out' part, either.

Tall Tale

Tall Tale is a guy who doesn't seem to have trouble finding work. Remaining employed is another story. He works as a common labourer, finding jobs with independent contractors. He's very persuasive, and intelligent, and it wouldn't surprise me if he simply talks people into hiring him. Two weeks later, though, he's out of work again. Here's the thing - every single one of his jobs end when his boss refuses to pay him.

It's getting a little hard to believe that every employer he's ever had refuses to cut him a cheque at the end of his first pay period. There must be a reason why this is the pattern of his life but I can't figure out what the reward is for his behaviour. We all have blind spots - aspects of our behaviour that we hide from our self. But this guy has been living in a homeless shelter or his truck, in an entirely predictable cyclical pattern, for the last four years. You would think he might have had an epiphany somewhere along the way. All his psychic energies, however, are directed towards telling other people what's wrong with their lives.

Without humility, wisdom escapes us.

Truth

Perhaps you've heard the same expression I heard tonight. Perhaps, like me, you've said it in the midst of a conversation about spiritual things. After all, It does sound spiritual. "All truth," the saying goes, "is God's truth.

Well ...No, it's not.

When I was a teenager I worked in a hospital kitchen in our small town. There was an older woman who  worked as a dishwasher. She spoke poor, but passable English with a heavy, east European accent. She was a nervous type of woman, pleasant and smiling, but nervous just the same. She had a number tattooed on her forearm. I did not witness this, but was told by other staff that two police officers had come into the hospital cafeteria for lunch. On seeing them in uniform, our dishwasher was overcome with fear and couldn't finish her shift.

I don't know what her experience was like during the war, but I do know it was about as close to Hell as we humans can create. I know that her experience in that death camp was her particular truth, and God had absolutely nothing to do with it. Cancer is an awful truth. Suicide a terrible truth, as is fear, pain, loneliness and loss. When you're in the midst of any of them they are a truth as powerful and as real as any other and I want you to know these are not - they absolutely are not - from God. No, God's plan was the Garden of Eden, God's plan was paradise, but we had a better idea. It seems to me that our rebellion, in ways both great and small,  is a truth God lives with as well.

Near the end of Jesus' time on earth he took his disciples aside and said he would soon be leaving, but would return for them. He promised that there was plenty of room for all of them to live together, with his father God, in his glorious kingdom. Then Thomas - Oh! Doubting Thomas! - asked how the disciples could join him as they had no idea where he would be.  It was at this moment that Jesus chose to say, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.  There may be a lot of different ways to intrepret that statement, given that context, but surely one of those ways is to know that Jesus is promising that no matter what our current truth may be, he is present. War isn't his idea. Abuse, grief, pain, illness, death - none of them were meant to be our truth. But though we don't know the way through our difficulty and pain, though we don't understand where Jesus seems to have gone, though we can scarcely grasp the idea of his coming again, he remains with us, he weeps with us, and for us, and sometimes through us. I think Jesus is also saying that when we face death - when we face that final, great and irrevocable truth, he is the one that has come back from the dead, he is the one that has come back from heaven in that very moment, to meet us as we cross that dark, cold  river.

In the end, Jesus isn't saying that he is a truth, or even all truth. He's saying that he is the truth. The memory of those concentration camps are dying with those who experienced them. Soon our world will be bereaved of the souls in which that truth resides. Soon those camps will be one more atrocity in the history books, readily replaced in our collective 'now' by other atrocities. These experiences may not belong to you and I. Yet even here, in the comfort and relative safety of our western, middle class life we experience terrible and awful truths we can scarcely withstand. Spouses leave. Loved ones die. Illness strikes. Violence is done to us. One day, however,  we too shall leave our troubles behind. I think what Jesus is saying is not that all truth is God's truth. I think he's saying that he - and the eternity of endless joy that awaits us after this weary life is over -  is the final and ultimate truth.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Tonight, as I was walking home from work, a young man approached me. He was obviously searching for something, peering into hedges and gardens. What he asked me, though, was:

Have you seen a white rabbit?

So, now... Lewis Carrol, Grace Slick or Neo. Hmmmm... no matter how you look at this, things are about to get very, very interesting around here...

Orange Jumpsuit

On Wednesday nights we celebrate birthdays, anniversarys and other accomplishments with a candle in a cupcake. Sometimes the whole dining room sings "Happy Birthday". Last night  I asked if anyone was celebrating anything this week and one young man shouted "I just got out of jail!" This seemed rather obvious as he was still wearing the orange jumpsuit. I often see young men, perhaps after being particularly mouthy to the cops, being released without getting their shoelaces back. Sometimes they show up at our door, their shoes flopping, asking if we have any laces. This is, I suppose, particularly amusing for the constabulary - and Lord knows it's the least some of these kids deserve. But I doubt very much they 'lost' all of his clothes. Which got me to thinking... exactly what was he wearing when he got arrested? And for what does one get arrested while in, you know ...a state of undress?

Frankly, I was afraid to ask.

How To Walk On Water

We have our own path, you and I. At times our lives will find us walking the same road. Perhaps we will be in the same place, at the same time, perhaps not. In my short and largely inconspicuous time on this planet I have learned this one thing: this path we so casually tread, this journey we call our life, is not a thing of concrete substance. It is not fixed in time and space, it is not subject to the laws of the universe, as if such laws we immutable. This path exists in the depths of our heart and this journey we call our lives lives in our imagination. We dream, we imagine, we pray our lives into existence. We live and walk and breathe and have our being in an eternal God of infinte power, infinite ability, infinite love. And I might be wrong - I might be totally and completely and absolutely messed up in the head on this one - but it seems entirely possible that prayer is something more than a laundry list of the things we want God to do for us, and perhaps through us, and instead may be the way in which we dream the world into being, dream an entirely new reality into existence, imagine a new world. My own failure in prayer might actually be a failure of imagination, an imagination through which I might enter in to the wonder of God's ongoing and redemptive work of creation.

This way of life and prayer might also be fraught with peril. What prevents us from devolving into a gnostic spirituality that positions me at the centre of the universe is one thing, and one thing alone - a heart that is completely yielded to God, surrendered entirely to him in love and adoration. There is no other way to silence the violence of the ego upon our spirit, upon our soul.

We are struggling a great deal at the Mission right now. There is little unity among us, there is no spiritual centre that provides a wellspring from which our ministry might flow. This is, largely, because we see ourselves as a collection 'selves', and not integeral parts of a larger whole. We fail to see our selves as inter-connected, both to one another and to God. We fail to see our selves as eternal beings, living expressions of the timeless truths of love and compassion, of grace and humility. I am guilty of this very thing - perhaps more than anyone. What this all amounts to, however, is a struggle for us on every level - financially, emotionally, physically, spiritually. Hope springs eternal, perhaps, but it springs from our imagination. Ultimately, we struggle today because we have allowed our imagination to languish and die. We failed to dream a better world, and failed to live as if it were a present truth.

Dirty Little Secret - Review

You might have heard of XXXChurch.com, an active and vital outreach to those in the pr0n industry. Craig Gross founded Fireproof Ministries and XXXChurch.com and now has written "The Dirty Little Secret - Uncovering the Truth About Porn."

Among other activities, Craig's work takes him and his team to the annual porn convention where they set up a booth and attempt to engage producers, vendors, actors and porn buyers in a dialogue that will lead them to freedom in Christ. This year they handed out 4,000 - yes, 4,000 - "Jesus Loves Porn Stars" bibles in Los Angeles. 

This is an excellent book. Craig writes with sensitivity to his audience's potential discomfort and with respect for the dignity and worth of those he encounters in the course of his ministry. He presents a forthright picture of the relentless, addiction-like quality porn possesses over those it ensares. He dismantles, with a devastatingly simple, conversational tone, the lies one must accept to become entrapped in porn. He tells us real-life stories of real-life people - otherwise 'good' people, christian people, whose lives have been damaged by the power of the lie first told in the Garden of Eden - that we would be like God. In "The Dirty Little Secret" Craig will help many of us understand the extent to which this massive industry has devastated our world, and individual lives, but never descends into sensationalism or playing the hapless victim card.

Here's the thing - porn is already in our churches. Guaranteed. There's no way of knowing how many lives, and how many families, have been wounded by it. Yet we never talk about it. This book might provide a way to begin a conversation about an enemy that's already stalking our men, our women and our youth.

Craig Gross did a really good job on "The Dirty Little Secret", and doesn't shy from  the abuse directed at his ministry by Christians who misunderstand it, and him. Zondervan may have taken a risk by publishing it. In the end, however, this book is well worth the small investment.it requires of us to read it.