Omnivores, Camels, and Kingdoms

It was a funny moment when I realized that the word "omnivore" has the same prefix as those much-touted attributes of God: omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent. Whereas God knows all, is all, and can do all, humans consume all.
Jared Diamond's book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed comes to mind. I'm still in the process of reading it, but its basic premise is that a society's failure or success has always been (basically but not solely) dependent upon its use of natural resources. Duh, yes? Yet we as humans think that we can consume and consume and consume. We have named ourselves omnivores. We have not learned from history--from Easter Island, from the Anasazi, from the Mayans, from the Vikings, or from any other past society (especially not those small, (un)remarkable ones that have survived and thrived).
We blindly accumulate and consume at any cost, human, environmental, or otherwise.
And now the story of Jesus and the rich man (which has absolutely no relevance to you or me or any other person except maybe those billionaire CEOs and probably not even them because Jesus believes in the free market) comes to mind.
Jesus turns everything on its head in this story, all societal mores and dogmas. In a sickening (but typical) display of flattery, the rich man strides up to Jesus, kneels with a flourish (it is interesting and perhaps enlightening that the only other people that kneel before Jesus in Mark, or any other Gospel for that matter, are the Roman soldiers crucifying him, in a sickening display of mockery), and says, "Good teacher..." Now you must understand that this flattery is typical behavior in this culture, and the only proper response from the flattered was reciprocated flattery...which makes Jesus' reply more than a little awkward: "Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone."
Ahem...yeah, well, um...but really, "what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Just like us, the rich man has only the self-interested question of eternal life in mind. As if his numerous earthly inheritances and possessions are not enough, he craves more, desires the ultimate inheritance. To him, Jesus is not Messiah; he has not come to overthrow the oppressive power structures, to give an inheritance to those who have none, to bring a just kingdom beginning "in this present age" (Mk 10:30). He is merely another Rabbi, another Good Teacher who holds the secrets to eternal life. This is all we can bear from God, all we care or dare to hear: "what shall we do to inherit eternal life?"
And so Jesus lists off a bunch of commandments; this and that and the other, these you must obey, all of them straight from the Scriptures except for that one that is randomly and rather unorthodoxly inserted (in typical Markan style): "Do not defraud." Do not exploit, do not cheat others economically: a commandment that would have had particular significance to the corrupt class of wealthy landowners of which our rich man was a part.
"Teacher, I have kept all these things from my youth up." (The rich man fills in Jesus' blank with self-flattery.)
"One thing you lack [ironically, it is our surplus that is our lack]: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me."
But that's it, isn't it? That's the one thing we can't do. Just as the rich man walks away in grief, we rage against the idea that such a radical proposition might actually apply to us. "Surely Jesus was just speaking to THAT rich man. We aren't that rich [though the wealth of the poorest of the American middle class is surely beyond that rich man's wildest dreams]. Even if we are, we aren't owned by money; we don't serve Mammon." "Then give it up," Jesus says. "No! No, you see, you were talking to a different culture. Money is different now. Money is freedom. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Everyone has equal opportunity to attain wealth; it is their responsibility, their fault if they can't. Jesus didn't mean for EVERYONE to sell all they possess and give to the poor. That's ludicrous. He was just talking to one man, don't you see?"
But notice that the selling of possessions and the giving to the poor was a prerequisite for following Jesus. Do this, "and come, follow me." Notice that the disciples (after they get over their shock at Jesus' overturning of the persistent dogma that the rich are the blessed of God) respond by asserting, "we have left everything and followed you." Notice that in Acts 2:44-47 and 4:34-35 "all who were owners of land or houses would sell them and bring the proceeds of the sales and lay them at the apostles' feet, and they would be distributed to each as any had need" (NASB). Here in Acts we see the beginning of the birth of Jesus' kingdom (now aborted), his dream of the redistribution of wealth leading to collective shalom, of an eternal Jubilee, beginning to be realized: "Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for my sake and for the gospel's sake, but that he will receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions; and in the age to come, eternal life."
This is the point: our self-denial would lead to collective affirmation. As Gandhi so famously said, "There is enough for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed."
It is time to quit dissociating ourselves from the rich man and honestly affirm that he is us, that we are the ones that cannot believe that God would ask us to give up our possessions. Indeed, our incredulity is the greatest testimony to our oneness with the rich man.
So here I am, believing this, but with no avenue to put it into action as I attempt to pry the fingers of Mammon's iron grip off of my life.
Yet I am not so lucky (or unlucky) as the rich man to be called into a practicing community. If I could only hear the words of a flesh-and-blood Jesus wrapping around my shoulders like Elijah's mantle, I too, like Elisha, would burn all I had in a glorious Jubilee bonfire for my slaves and follow in the prophetic heritage.
But where would I go? There is no Church, no practicing community that I know of issuing a call to the Kingdom. I have no one to follow.
Oh. Well, I've pegged it, haven't I? Here again I am reminded that the forsaking of possessions is a prerequisite for following Jesus. So here is the question that I attempt so desperately to mask: can I do it? Can I burn my old life and trust God for my daily bread (for the first time in my life) until the kingdom comes? Can I bloody my hands in the building of the kingdom?
"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

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So since you're thinking it, and I'm thinking it, and the Powers that Be are most definitely thinking it, I'll go ahead and say it: I'm crazy, an absolute lunatic. This isn't what the Gospel is about. Not at all.
Here's what I have slammed up against in conversation: "How could everyone else, all those centuries of Christians, just be wrong?" My response: "I don't know. That scares me. So, please, prove me wrong." But--but--if this isn't what the Gospel is about--if it isn't about a revolution, if it isn't about radical self-denial and collective affirmation, if it isn't about nonviolent direct action in the face of the Powers, if it isn't about giving up all that you have and all that you have been, losing it and finding yourself, if it isn't about wrestling with the nameless god of justice, if it isn't about the Kingdom invading this world through a reckless and limitless love, if it isn't about resolutely resisting with furious and indignant love until the Powers have no choice but to crucify you, and if it isn't about the futility of death and the politics of fear when the grave has been conquered--then what the hell is it about? Going to church on Sundays? Being good and nice? Tithing? Singing uninspired songs? Feeling really good about yourself because God loves you? Telling everyone how bad they are but how much God loves them anyways (for some undefined reason) and how very badly they need Jesus to save their immaterial souls from all those nagging personal, internal infidelities? Is it about social control? Power? Imperialism? Arrogance? Hypocrisy? Violence? Blindness?
Uh, so I'm bitter. Angry. Probably a little unfair. But honestly--how does an imperial Christianity coherently read the gospels and not feel the slightest twinge of cognitive dissonance. How do we read things like, "Sell all you have and give it to the poor," or "Love your enemies," or the Beatitudes, or (skipping to Paul), "We do not wage war as the world wages war," and not feel challenged? If we actually take time to study the culture at the time of Jesus and the consequent significance of his actions that would otherwise be missed, how do we not cross the bridge to our culture and see what we must do?
I sit for hours and ponder how we got this way. How have we gotten so far from our roots in the Messianic and prophetic tradition? How did the Church get to the point where Constantine could hook it like a fish and use it for his purposes? I've read about this, so I have some answers in my mind, sure, but I'm still baffled. What use does an empire have for a blatantly anti-imperialistic gospel? (At this point I think about how funny it is that Mark co-opts the word "gospel," originally meaning a declaration of a Roman military victory, and labels his book as precisely that at its beginning (a necessarily covert action for someone living Jesus' values under Roman rule). And this is exactly what the story looks like at face value: the victory of Rome once again over a social dissident, a victory epitomized by the ever-victorious cross. But then we look deeper, and if we have eyes to see...) How has Christianity since then become the religion of both the British and American empires? How has a story about the dignity and unity of all human beings become the script for dehumanizing actions from British colonial rule to the genocide of indigenous Americans to Hiroshima and Nagasaki? It's unbelievable, mind-boggling, how blind we are, how we have not "eyes to see nor ears to hear" the simple and blatant truth of the gospel. Instead of selling our possessions, we consume more and more and more (and more) and say (with the straightest of faces), "You want to see how much God loves me? Look in my living room and my garage." Instead of loving our enemies, we send our children off to kill them and teach them to pray prayers such as, "God, help us to love our enemies, and make our aim straight and our shots sure." It is unbelievable, baffling, and I am furious because these lies are my inheritance and I have gorged myself on them.
...but, through the clattering clangor, I hear a song, and it sounds like an African American spiritual, like the rousing voices of the oppressed singing, "I ain't gonna study war no more." It sings to me about these slaves and the men who arrogantly (and in the name of the god who has none) claimed to own them. It asks me, "How does someone who is told to own nothing come to believe he can own a human being?" It is angry then, as I am, as it tell me how these slave-"owners" gave their "possessions" Bibles as a form of social control, hoping it would teach them obedience and show them their place.
And then the voice crescendos into an ironic joy as it tells me how these Bibles were their salvation, how the words within taught the oppressed that they are good and loved and worthy of liberation, how it introduced them to the freedom-fighting Messiah that is still overturning tables in our temples of oppression.
And now I know, in an uncertain and shaky sort of knowing, that no matter how bad our intentions in proclamation, the Gospel is still the Gospel for those with good ears.
And there is hope there, poking its petals up through rocky desperation.
A small hope.

Wherever you go, there you are...

...that's what my disenchanted enchantress says.
And it would appear to be true.
Here we are, having moved a million miles away from any human or geographical attachment, running like mad away from ourselves, dreaming half-hearted dreams of rebirth and metamorphosis, and when we arrive breathlessly at our destination...there we are, waiting, staring ourselves down with blank eyes and empty hearts.
Appropriately or not, the raving voices of a fairy-tale mob scream-singing, "Kill the beast!" are now throbbing through my head.
But, ah, here is where the fallacy of the efficacy of killing our enemies becomes most apparent--all meticulously built fences and tenuously drawn borders exposed as meaningless fantasies: the enemy is myself, as it always has been, and love is the only scalpel sharp enough to cut through death, releasing life--through evil, releasing good.
Here the most profound question posed to humanity becomes excruciatingly clear: Can we love our enemies? Perhaps the answer is simply, "Not until we learn to love ourselves."
Is it possible for me to embrace the blank-eyed creepo that follows me everywhere I go, to love him out of his contempt, to woo him out of his cynicism, to imagine him out of his boredom, to reassure him out of his anxiety?
Eh, maybe.

In more concrete terms:
Today is the beginning of my eighth week in Denver, and personal transformation is slightly more elusive than I had hoped. There was no welcoming committee waiting in a polite line outside my apartment when I arrived, shaking my hand one by one and assuring me that Denver was quite glad to have me. There was no leader-less entourage sipping tea at the coffee shop down the block, waiting for me to stroll up in a display of almost unbearable charisma and lead them away into the city on a series of life- and world-altering adventures. Alas, I must admit that I still have not a single soul in Denver I could walk up to, place my hand on his shoulder, and say affectionately, "Friend..."
This is a lonely city for a SAD individual for whom every smile is lined with singularly sharp shanks. (This is precisely like the brain chemistry of the abused and abandoned boys I work with--neurons, synapses, and hormones twisted (or simply unformed) by years of neglect and trauma. Their brains no longer allow them to live adaptive lives. Their homeostasis is terror, and the slightest escalation is perhaps beyond what I have experienced or can imagine. While I might lay blame on them for their violence and borderline sociopathy, I am reminded that their brains lay un- or malformed. They are literally incapable, at the most basic level, of handling social relationships. And I am told that it will take just as long to unravel this knotted snarl of nerve endings as it took to tangle it in the first place. Yes, this is precisely what I fear it is like with me.) I have my new beginning in this new place, but I fear that all I have accomplished in this relocation is to cut myself off from the few support systems I had in the first place. I am uprooted--albeit from a place where I was not flourishing in the least--and now I begin to tenuously weave my roots into this new soil in the hopes that it is kinder than what I have known.

But, after eight weeks, I begin to feel like an exile of old, an indignantly indigenous wild-man dragged to the paved streets of Babylon. Which is fairly ludicrous, since I came here happily of my own accord, with those quite hopeful dreams of rebirth and metamorphosis. Not to mention the fact that there is rather little wild about me--sure, I grew up in a bastard country town, but I spent most of my childhood playing adventure games on my computer and wondering why other kids wandered outside. Still, I feel a fragment of wildness slitting through the hardness of my heart, paining me and causing me to hope. I hope to, like Daniel, dream revolutionary trees and humbly resist the violent ways of urban empire. I hope to cling to a wild, nameless god with a furious keening for all the upside-down madness of justice. And I try to have courage and continue to hope as I remember Daniel’s pit--the pit of all prophets, most of whom find no salvation. It is here that I begin to feel the frailty of my spirit, that I understand my bondage to the violent politics of fear.
I am isolated here, from wilderness, from community. How, in such a place as this, does one know the god who will not be named? I am bound by rationality, by the dis-enchanted philosophy of a global empire whose cravings have not been sated in the least. There is no room in this tight proof for the madness of children and the indigent. No room for wonder or mystery. This is the cage I have mindlessly crafted for my spirit. Who can argue with the towering rationality of skyscrapers--the homes of and altars to our one, true God: Mammon.

Yes, now I am talking about something else, but precisely the same thing.
Because this is the problem, isn't it? Sure, my brain is twisted and malformed. Sure, I'm lonely and rather depressed. Sure, I am simultaneously ravingly desperate and coldly jaded. But these are only symptoms. The problem, to oversimplify it, is the way we (as racing humans) have fled full-speed from a world of small, autonomous communities who are bound by respect and uttermost dependence to each other and (just as importantly) to a place. We have fled to cities as old as Cain's, to altars to our own (illusion of) independence.
Which leaves me here, a madman in a civilization of sanity (hoping that the Truth is just the opposite), feeling alone and disconnected (how else could one feel in a culture built entirely on a disconnect from everything alive and real?), lost in my dreams of an older and better way, refusing (for better or worse) to come to grips with the "world" my fellow humans have created and accept as unquestionably necessary.
I can't stop thinking about it, can't stop talking about it: I feel betrayed. I've been told everything is like this when it is precisely like that. It seems it is this way with everything. My spirituality, for example. I have been told my whole life that Jesus was a kind, tame man who came to save our intangible souls. But, as some person or another once said, "Who would kill Mr. Rogers?" Nobody kills a nice guy for offering them eternal life. Nobody kills a heretic because they are just so very upset that someone would say something so very untrue, tsk, tsk, tsk. No: you murder heretics and blasphemers because they are a threat to your social power. When a man comes along with a vision of a kingdom that doesn't include the power structures that benefit you so beautifully, it's time for an execution. Let's not even go into the fact that Rome also needed to have a reason to give this very nice and good man a political execution. I imagine the fact that he was rumored to be the Messiah, the King of the Jews, the one who has come to overthrow all oppression (including the colonial oppression which is the very lifeblood of your existence) would be a good enough reason. Likewise, I've been told to take up my cross (read: spiritual burden) with no reference to what a horrifying proposition this would be for a 1st century Jew who understood that the cross was an instrument of torture, irreplaceable in the politics of fear, used solely for social dissidents to make a very clear statement that Rome would suffer no revolution. To tell this person to take up his cross is to say, very plainly, "Resist this oppressive social order at any cost, even your own life." I could go on and on, and I do, in my mind, day after day, running through the inconsistent madnesses of an imperial Christianity which seems wholly ignorant of a concept so simple and so central as what it would mean for Jesus of Nazareth to be the Messiah.
So, yes, I feel rather betrayed, as if the Church has planted one big ol' sloppy Judas kiss right on my cheek.
But yet I can't turn my back, can't walk away, can't give up on the hope that...well, that everything might change.
I feel utterly lost, a member of an empire, an oppressor in my own right, unable to trust anyone because everyone has lied to me about the way things are, unable to do anything because everything I do is tainted in some way or another--completely and truly lost with no point of reference to which way is up, down, left, or right.
I fear that the god I passionately served for a good fifteen years is a false idol, an illusion created to justify the way things are.
I fear that the god I am seeking and finding is just as false, an illusion created to justify the way I want things to be.
I feel paralyzed, as though I am standing blindfolded on the razor's edge precipice of a meaningless mountain, about to tumble regardless of which way I lean. I stand completely still as the razor slices slowly through my feet.
I have never been more aware of my need for salvation, never more unsure of which way to turn.
"How does one approach this when all our past loves have let us down?"
I'm just a furious false prophet longing to be true.
And I fear (for your sake and mine) that I have not even begun to articulate what I mean.