Weapons of Mass Deception?

This week I'm sharing a series of stories and reflections from my time spent studying abroad in Central America. These are excerpts from my memoir in progress; stories that have shaped me, shattered my pretenses and preset beliefs, and sculpted the way I live and love and encounter God today. I hope in some small way, you can relate and be challenged to reflect more deeply on the experiences that have influenced you and your faith. Check out Monday's, Tuesday's, and Wednesday's posts to catch up. 

***

Weapons of Mass Deception? 

I scribbled down my Biblical reflection, bracing my journal and pen as we puttered along a narrow highway in Cuba halfway through my semester abroad. Throughout the semester, we were required to complete Biblical Reflection assignments, where we were given a verse or chapter of the Bible to reflect on in light of what we were learning about Jesus’ life and God’s overall concern for the poor. By then, the Bible made me especially uncomfortable—I saw it as a collection of words used to convince, cajole, compel, and condemn. 

I’d already scrawled out half the reflection against the rocking bus seat, and I hadn’t even opened my Bible yet.  I knew what I was going to find and I knew what my program wanted to hear: Jesus condemns the empire-supporting Pharisees and embraces the poor.   We got bonus points if we made the connection between the hypocritical Pharisees and our own friends and families who claimed to follow Jesus but refused to sell everything they owned and live with the poor. 

Up until then, I had never doubted the validity or divine inspiration of the Bible, but after examining Biblical passages through so many different lenses, I’d come to the conclusion that anyone could make the Bible say whatever she wanted.  I found that feminists ignore Paul’s call for womanly submission in Timothy.  Poor people cling to Jesus’ revolutionary declaration bringing good news to the poor.   Rich Christians spiritualize hunger and thirst, focusing instead on the souls that need to be won while overlooking the physical and economic needs that need to be met. 

I could make the Bible say whatever I wanted, too, or whatever my program wanted.  The Bible was no longer Absolute Truth, but a tool.  A political tool.  An emotional tool.  A justification tool. 

At best, a tool; at worst, a weapon. 

I share this story to illuminate where I am today, six years later.

Today I still find myself resisting the Bible and anyone who claims their actions are justified because “the Bible says so.” I still find myself asking questions. Analyzing and dissecting my beliefs. I still bristle at “God has blessed America” language and I still thoughtfully reflect on my own role in perpetuating political and economic systems that favor the few, the wealthy, and the powerful.

Instead of a weapon, what if the Bible was used as a starting point? Rachel Held Evans says the Bible should be a conversation starter, not a conversation ender. I like that.

In a devotional I read this morning adapted from Richard Rohr’s, A Teaching on Wondrous Encounters, I discovered an even more satisfactory way to frame the Bible:

“How can we look at the Biblical text in a manner that will convert us or change us? I am going to define the Bible in a new way for some of you. The Bible is an honest conversation with humanity about where power really is. All spiritual texts, including the Bible, are books whose primary focus lies outside of themselves, in the Holy Mystery. The Bible is to illuminate your human experience through struggling with it. It is not a substitute for human experience. It is an invitation into the struggle itself—you are supposed to be bothered by some of the texts. Human beings come to consciousness by struggle, and most especially struggle with God and sacred texts. We largely remain unconscious if we avoid all conflicts, dilemmas, paradoxes, inconsistencies, or contradictions.”

“The Bible is an honest conversation with humanity about where power really is.”

I really like that.

I don’t want to be unconscious. I don’t want to parrot rules and right phrases. I don’t want to substitute words for my own experience. As I said yesterday, I want to be more than words. I want my faith to be more than a hollow shell or a list of moral behaviors.

I want to struggle. I want to live. I want to change. I want to experience the living God. And I’m beginning to see that, maybe, just maybe, the Bible might be a good invitation into the struggle itself.

***

Have you ever felt like the Bible has been used against you as a weapon? What did you do? What do you think of the idea of the Bible as an “honest conversation with humanity about where power really is?” How do you keep from only focusing on the verses that appeal to you while throwing out all the rest?

Sound Bites of Justice: Further Thoughts on Solidarity

I spent this last weekend up in Portland representing the organization I work for, Plant With Purpose, at the Justice Conference.

There was a lot of talking. Speakers and workshops and pre-conferences and exhibitors and videos.  I spouted out my Plant With Purpose elevator speech to hundreds of justice seekers, from the starry-eyed to the cynical--boiling down the complexity of poverty and injustice and environmental restoration and transformation and the stories of farmers like Gumersindo and Hoita and staff members like Graciela and Durbel and Lazare into a thirty second, digestible sound bite.

If you’ve followed this blog for long, you know I prefer the stories, the narratives, and posts longer than the recommended 750 words and with accompanying bullet points.

Some stories warrant more than a spiel.

I’m not criticizing the conference or the talking or the rhetoric. A sound bite of justice is certainly better than a sound bite of celebrity sex scandal or scorn.

But it makes me wonder, How do we move beyond the sound bites? Beyond the rhetoric?

How do we become more than words?

In a workshop I had the privilege to sit in on, one man said of the poor, “We don’t want your pity or your expertise or even your money…we want your heart.”

It’s tough to open our hearts to new issues and causes and plights. It’s tough to open our hearts to new and unfamiliar people. People who are different than us.

So we sound bite. We distance.

We talk like heroes, but we forget to listen.

I’m probably the guiltiest.

I talk like a hero, but I forget to listen.

I love words. I love stories. I love categorizing and documenting and analyzing.

But I can become distanced from the people these words are supposed to speak on behalf of.

I once told a friend that, as a writer, I feel called to be a voice for the voiceless. Instead of the appropriate admiration I expected, he scowled and muttered, “Just make sure you’re not speaking over them. Or for people who could be speaking for themselves.”

Zing.

I write grant proposals and emails and newsletters and appeals on behalf of people halfway around the world that I have never met on a weekly basis. 

Sometimes I’m tempted to concoct a catch phrase, an idyllic picture of desperation to entice people to give to move to act. To break out of the status quo.

What if talking like a hero brings in more money than admitting that I don’t really know the whole story?

What does solidarity with the poor look like in fundraising and marketing?

What if we earn more money, but rob the poor of their dignity? What if we rob them of the opportunity to tell their own story, with their own voice, in their own words?

What’s more loving?

This is a real question I wrestle with.

At the organization I work for, we strive to tell a different story than the third world hopelessness that breeds first world hero complexes.

Our sound bites are filled with heroes. But the heroes are the farmers with whom we partner, not us.

We are merely stewards of time and resources and—I hope—of words.

My boss, Scott Sabin, wrote an incredible article for Conversations called, How Not to be a Hero. He said, “Jesus is the hero. We are not called to save the world, or Haiti, or Tanzania, or even a single village. That has already been done. We have a savior.”

Our words and our witness and our fundraising won’t save anyone; yet I believe we are called to JOIN in the work of redemption and restoration that God is already doing. We are called to serve and act and speak in love and solidarity, as one family.

So how do we become more than words? How do we not talk over the poor? How do we give voice to the voiceless?

The first step, I think, is listening.

Sound bites are ideas distilled. And ideas matter. The messaging matters.

But our listening should drive our messaging. 

The very course of my life changed when I listened to the stories of new friends who happened to live in desperate conditions, who happened to be poor—and also happened to love Christian rap and melon shakes and Dora La Exploradora.

Today I need the reminder that before I am called to be a voice for the voiceless, I am called to be a listening ear to the voiceless. To create space for their voices—both in my heart and in the world around me.

I am called to be a steward of words.

I am reminded that first and foremost, solidarity is a posture of ears wide open. Eyes wide open. Lives wide open to the suffering of others. 

How’s that for a sound bite?