{"id":1004,"date":"2024-02-27T03:58:20","date_gmt":"2024-02-27T03:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/?p=1004"},"modified":"2024-02-28T04:38:24","modified_gmt":"2024-02-28T04:38:24","slug":"giving-up-american-heresies-for-lent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/?p=1004","title":{"rendered":"Giving Up American Heresies for Lent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Palm-3-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-947\" src=\"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Palm-3-224x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"224\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Palm-3-224x300.jpg 224w, http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Palm-3-765x1024.jpg 765w, http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Palm-3-768x1028.jpg 768w, http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Palm-3-1147x1536.jpg 1147w, http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Palm-3-1530x2048.jpg 1530w, http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Palm-3-scaled.jpg 1912w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 224px) 100vw, 224px\" \/><\/a>In the tradition of giving something up for Lent, I have determined to give up American heresies. Not all of this is uniquely American; much of this has long roots elsewhere and some are ancient. However, old roots transplanted into a new environment can give rise to something both old and uniquely modern. Just what do I mean by \u201cAmerican Heresies\u201d? Here are the key ones:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Jesus came to earth to die on the cross to make restitution to God the Father for each person\u2019s individual sins. If you (that is,<em> you<\/em> in the solely singular sense \u2013 <strong>not<\/strong> the plural) accept His payment, your sins are forgiven, and you will go to heaven when you die. If not, you will go to hell to pay for your sins in eternal suffering.<\/li>\n<li>Jesus taught and showed people how to create the Kingdom of God on earth through a theocratic government. We need to get the right people in positions of power who will act as God\u2019s proxies and direct everyone else in doing what God commands through them.<\/li>\n<li>The ultimate goal of Christian life is to get to heaven, that purely spiritual afterlife. That\u2019s where all the truly good things are. This line of thinking leads to one of two conclusions: Believers should suffer and sacrifice here on earth to have rewards when they get to heaven. \u2013 OR \u2013 Truly faithful believers are rewarded now on earth as a downpayment for even greater rewards and glory in heaven.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All of this heretical. At best, these heresies take some small piece of the Christian tradition \u2026 mix it with a hefty dose of American individualism, capitalism, and politics as religion \u2026 and what is authentic within the ancient practices and teachings of the Christian faith gets shifted and warped into something almost unrecognizable. Any and all of this heretical mess may be called <em>Christian<\/em> these days \u2013 but it has little to do with what Jesus, who was called the Christ, taught and lived. Jesus did not die and rise again for any of the ideas on that list.<\/p>\n<p>True \u2013 the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus from Nazareth was to address the problems of sin, wrong-doing, and brokenness in the world \u2026 what we might, for lack of any better word, call sin. But this concept in this very little word is far bigger than one person\u2019s individual misdeeds. We really don\u2019t need this accumulation of elaborations from an ancient story of a garden paradise with magical fruit trees and a talking snake luring the first humans to do what they were told not to \u2026 which has been called the first sin \u2026 and then this sin was passed along hereditary lines to all humans after them \u2013 we do not need all this just to tell us that world we live in is not as it could \u2013 or should \u2013 be. Signs of the brokenness are all around us; we have to work in order to <strong>not<\/strong> see them. What that ancient story tells us is that God\u2019s beautiful dream for what creation could be was broken. The original goodness of the creation is still there, but all the brokenness can make it really hard to see that original goodness\u2026 and we are too caught up in both to tell which is which sometimes.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/vernal-pool_455640_2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-978\" src=\"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/vernal-pool_455640_2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"223\" \/><\/a>If that\u2019s not clear, here\u2019s another way to look at it: Sin is in the world the same way mud is in a swamp. If you\u2019re going through a swamp, you\u2019re going to get muddy \u2026 and if you\u2019re in this world, you\u2019re going to get messed up by sin \u2013 no matter what you do or don\u2019t do. Trudging through the swamp with a group of people, mud gets splattered everywhere, even if no one does it on purpose \u2026 pick up a foot, bits of mud move with it and away from it \u2026 set a foot down, mud gets splooshed up all around. There\u2019s no way to control where it goes. Sometimes we get mud on each other by accident; sometimes it might happen on purpose \u2026 and then the offended throws some mud back at the offender \u2026 and when it really starts flying, the bystanders get hit, too.<\/p>\n<p>Sin is part of the fabric of the world; there\u2019s no escaping it. Even if we try to control or our own behavior and do no harm to others as best we can manage, we still do harm by accident \u2026 we still do harm because we cannot foresee all the consequences that ripple out from our actions or inactions. We are caught up in social structures and systems that often depend on some humans being used, de-valued, or excluded so that others can succeed, have more, and prosper. It\u2019s just how the world works, and we do have to live in this world as it is because it is the only world we have.\u00a0 We can participate in these systems unwillingly because there isn\u2019t any other option or we can quite willingly participate in them and do our part to keep these things going \u2026 to make sure it continues to work for us and for other people just like us.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/LCR-Cross-3-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-946 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/LCR-Cross-3-224x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"224\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/LCR-Cross-3-224x300.jpg 224w, http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/LCR-Cross-3-765x1024.jpg 765w, http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/LCR-Cross-3-768x1028.jpg 768w, http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/LCR-Cross-3-1147x1536.jpg 1147w, http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/LCR-Cross-3-1530x2048.jpg 1530w, http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/LCR-Cross-3-scaled.jpg 1912w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 224px) 100vw, 224px\" \/><\/a>It is this endemic quality of sin that Jesus came to address. Sin is destructive; it kills all kinds of things. And since Jesus came to break the power of sin, well, sin had to kill Jesus because that\u2019s what sin does. Jesus was not condemned to death for his innocence. He was condemned to death for teachings about God that were deemed blasphemous and heretical by the religious authorities of his time. He attracted the support of the wrong sorts of people and posed a threat to the uneasy peace between the religious leaders and the governing authorities. Although the religious authorities condemned his heretical blasphemy, when they took Jesus to the governing authorities for execution, the charge shifted to treason \u2026 advocating the overthrow of the occupying government \u2026 claiming to be a rival ruler to Caesar. And the accusers were not entirely wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Jesus did advocate for a different governance, a different way of life in which God \u2013 not Caesar \u2013 would be the supreme ruler. Jesus called for a revolution of sorts \u2013 just not the violent way it\u2019s usually imagined. Rather than trying to overpower a system built on some having power over others \u2026 rather than trying to change who had the power over whom, Jesus went under the whole system and let it do its worst, let it crush him. The only way out is to not participate \u2026 which is to say die to the ways of the world that is.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, that wasn\u2019t the end of the story. Even in the forty days of Lent there is no denying this solemn season will end \u2026 songs of joy and gladness will return \u2026 Jesus rose from the grave as the first fruit of God\u2019s Reign and Realm, God\u2019s dream for the world.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_883\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Bdote-2-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-883\" class=\"wp-image-883 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Bdote-2-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-883\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>The confluence of the Minnesota &amp; Mississippi Rivers, where the native Dakota people believe the world began<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<p>Rather than just skip to the familiar ending, though, Lent is an opportunity to pause and notice a couple things: Jesus became incarnate (took on a human physical body) and was born into <em>this world<\/em>. Jesus lived, taught, and died in <strong><em>this world<\/em><\/strong>. Jesus rose from the dead in <strong>this world<\/strong>. So whatever God was up to in the person and work of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Savior, the man from Nazareth in Galilee \u2026\u00a0 whatever it was, <strong><u>it was about this world<\/u><\/strong> \u2013 not some other plane of existence.<\/p>\n<p>Salvation, as described throughout scripture, is communal \u2013 not individual. We are given images of human beings walking in a garden with God, which is to say community \u2026 the Holy Mountain of the Lord, where predator and prey feed together without harm and the vulnerable ones play happily with the could-be dangerous ones and no one hurts or destroys anyone or anything \u2026 the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, where the river of the water of life flows from God\u2019s throne throughout the city and the tree of life bears its fruit every season to nourish the uncountable inhabitants from every tribe and nation and people. Salvation is a communal experience \u2013 not an individual accomplishment.<\/p>\n<p>A rabbi (whose name I\u2019ve regrettably forgotten) wrote of having to wrestle with the existence of Christianity during his rabbinical studies. He eventually reached the conclusion that what Jesus did was establish a way of Judaism for Gentiles. I can live with that. The point of Jewish life is to join in the work of <em>Tikkun Olam<\/em>, the healing of the world \u2026 repairing the brokenness \u2026 working toward God\u2019s original dream for creation. The point of joining Jesus is his dying and in his rising is to participate in this new creation, this new thing God is doing in this world, joining the effort to reclaim God\u2019s dream.<\/p>\n<p>This will not \u2013 indeed, it cannot \u2013 happen by force. We cannot achieve God\u2019s dream by replacing one hierarchical, repressive system with a different one. It just does not work. Christian Church history is replete with the horrific things that happen when the Church tries to leverage civic governance for the purposes of the institution and its leadership. The mission and purposes of the Church have not always been aligned with the mission and purposes of God. And if ever a theocratic state might have been able to bring in the Reign and Realm of God by human efforts, Jean Calvin\u2019s Geneva of the mid-1500s was probably the best chance. \u00a0<em>(If you\u2019re not familiar with the history, suffice it to say it did not go well.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/cropped-HidFalls-12-Med-rotated-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-991\" src=\"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/cropped-HidFalls-12-Med-rotated-1-300x293.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"293\" srcset=\"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/cropped-HidFalls-12-Med-rotated-1-300x293.jpg 300w, http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/cropped-HidFalls-12-Med-rotated-1-1024x998.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/cropped-HidFalls-12-Med-rotated-1-768x749.jpg 768w, http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/cropped-HidFalls-12-Med-rotated-1-700x683.jpg 700w, http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/cropped-HidFalls-12-Med-rotated-1.jpg 1082w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>This Reign and Realm of God is the new life, the rebirth into life from above, the life of God\u2019s dream for all creation, the resurrection life. This is what Christians are called to live out \u2026 to demonstrate \u2026 to make real in this world as they live out what Jesus taught, demonstrated, and enacted. And the only way to enter is through death \u2026 joining Jesus in his dying \u2026 dying to the ways of the world as it is \u2026 dying so that new life, the resurrection life, the very life of Christ can rise up in us and empower us to start living the alternate ways of God\u2019s Reign and Realm \u2013 starting here, starting now. As the ancients noted, all the way to heaven is heaven.<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, the major modern American heresies intersect noticeably with the three temptations of Jesus in the wilderness, the gospel story for the First Sunday in Lent. In the variations of that story, the newly baptized Jesus is out in the wilderness for 40 days to be tested by the accuser. The accuser offers Jesus a series of temptations to take a different way than they way of the cross. Jesus refuses them all.\u00a0 Would that modern American would-be followers would do the same!<\/p>\n<p>Surprised or even shocked by this? Stay tuned \u2013 I\u2019ll unpack them more over the remaining weeks of Lent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the tradition of giving something up for Lent, I have determined to give up American heresies. Not all of this is uniquely American; much of this has long roots elsewhere and some are ancient. However, old roots transplanted into a new environment can give rise to something both old &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events-topics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1004"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1008,"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004\/revisions\/1008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}