The eCrozier

Throughout the summer in our Daily Office lectionary we’ve read the narrative arc of King David rising from the obscurity of a shepherd boy, the youngest of Jesse’s sons, to eventually become King of the united tribes of Israel. Even though he was anointed to be king by the Prophet Samuel as a boy, he didn’t gain prominence until, as a young man, he slew Goliath with a well-placed stone from his sling. From that act, he insinuated himself into King Saul’s inner circle, married Saul’s daughter, and slowly accumulated power. When Saul finally recognized David as an internal threat (even Saul’s paranoia had some basis in reality), David fled, organized a guerrilla army, and began a civil war that would eventually see his army victorious and Saul and his sons dead. When David became king, he had won everything. He was God’s anointed.

Not long after, David was in his palace one day and saw a young woman named Bathsheba bathing on her roof top across the way. David was smitten. He sent for her, and because he was king, he could have his way with her and he did. Soon after, she informed him she was pregnant and since her husband, Uriah, was a soldier in David’s army and off fighting for David in battle, everyone would know it wasn’t Uriah’s child when born. So, David concocted a scheme to have Uriah come home on leave, unite with his wife, and then the problem would be solved. But Uriah, when he arrived home, refused to go to his wife since none of his fellow soldiers currently in battle were able to be with their wives. David even got Uriah drunk hoping that Uriah would visit Bathsheba then, but all Uriah did was fall asleep outside the palace door.

David’s plan then grew even more sinister. He wrote a sealed letter to his general, Joab, and gave it to Uriah to give to Joab when he returned to the battle. The letter said, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die” (2 Samuel 11:15). Joab did as his king commanded and Uriah died in battle the next day. David thought his deceitful cover-up had worked, so he, after the official mourning period, took Bathsheba as his wife. Why would David do such thing? The answer the Bible gives is clear: He was king and assumed he could get away with it. It wasn’t until Nathan (his National Security Advisor) confronted him with his adulterous and murderous behavior that he confessed his sin.

David’s story, embedded in Israel’s larger history found in 1st & 2nd Samuel, continues long after his death. This week in the Daily Office we’re in the middle of 1st Kings, long after David has died, but his presence is still felt because his actions set in motion another future civil war between Solomon’s sons, and the further degradation of Israel’s morality and exceptionalism as God’s chosen people. One might have thought that Solomon and his sons, Jeroboam and Rehoboam, would’ve learned from the morality tale of David’s life, but they didn’t.

I hope all this isn’t what people mean when they talk about “biblical family values.” It’s remarkable how one man’s behavior as a leader could drag down the entire nation. To be sure, David was just one man. Yet, he was the king chosen by God.

+Scott

The Rt. Rev. Scott Anson Benhase
10th Bishop of the Diocese of Georgia

We wish our national debates were nutritious and substantive, but we have an insatiable craving for insults to the other side. As much as we know we should ignore the nasty columnist, turn off the TV loudmouth, and stop checking our Twitter feeds, we indulge our guilty urge to listen as our biases are confirmed that the other guys are not just wrong, but stupid and evil.
-Arthur Brooks’ in his book Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America From the Culture of Contempt.

I’m occasionally on the receiving end of what Mr. Brooks writes about. After all, I regularly write about what’s happening in the world and how current events relate to our moral and theological grounding in our Anglican tradition of the Christian faith. For doing so, some of my fellow Episcopalians have not stopped short of claiming I’m “not just wrong, but stupid and evil,” as Brooks writes. These emails usually begin with: “I’m appalled! How dare you!” The emails usually go downhill from there where the writer makes all sorts of assumptions about me. Their emails (and this is just my hunch) might display more about their own character than they do about mine.

Others accuse me of inappropriately mixing politics and the Christian faith. The two, of course, can never be separated. Our faith, if it’s grounded in the universal truth of the Gospel, must shape our political choices since those decisions have moral and human consequences. The central claim of our faith is the gift of grace and forgiveness from God imputed by Jesus and his cross, so operationalizing that claim requires us to make choices, individually and communally. So, we always should ask: “What does Jesus’ grace and forgiveness look like when applied to” and here we can fill in the blank of the latest event or context. Extending mercy and compassion to others is the way we, individually and as a society, make manifest God’s grace and forgiveness in the world. But the converse of that is dangerous. That is when our politics shape our Christian faith. When we take that route, we’ll most certainly turn practicing our faith into just another act of partisan hackery; where we hold a political position and then find a way to justify such a position somewhere in the words of Jesus. We’ll end up, as Brooks writes, looking and sounding no different than that Twitter or TV loudmouth.

Yes, we’ll sometimes disagree on how mercy and compassion should be extended to others, but Christians should never be against offering mercy and compassion. That would deny our core identity as Jesus’ disciples. As we disagree then, we should avoid ascribing motives to others. We get ourselves in trouble when we assume we know what’s motivating another person. Just because a fellow Christian disagrees with us on a matter of public policy doesn’t mean that person is in league with the Devil. They may be trying to operationalize mercy and compassion differently than we are, but that doesn’t mean they’re against mercy and compassion. Let’s show some restraint; not quickly jumping to conclusions about what’s motivating others. And let’s listen to one another. If we take the time to do that, we may just learn more deeply what’s motivating that other person. And we can hear them say it in their own words.

+Scott

What the heart desires, the will chooses, and then the mind justifies.

The above unattributed quote succinctly describes how sin so often works its way through our hearts and then into our behavior in the world. We’re moved to desire someone or something, we go after the desired someone or something, and then (and only then) do we concoct in our minds a justification or a defense for why it is we were right in choosing who or what we desired.

Our Book of Common Prayer is full of prayers that recognize this pattern in all of us. In the 5th Sunday in Lent we hear: “Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise.” The Prayer Book assumes our “unruly wills and affections” need the intervention of grace before we can love what God desires as opposed to what we desire. On the 6th Sunday of Easter, we pray: “Pour into our hearts such love towards you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire.” This Collect assumes human desires is marred by sin and require God’s love to be poured into our hearts before we can begin to love God “above all things.” These are just two examples. Read through the Collects of the Church year and you’ll see this pattern.

In 1957, in his “A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance,” psychologist Leon Festinger described a psychological phenomenon where the heart, will, and mind play this game of justification trifecta. Festinger argued the human mind doesn’t like inconsistencies. He wrote: “Cognitive dissonance can be seen as an antecedent condition which leads to activity oriented toward dissonance reduction just as hunger leads toward activity oriented toward hunger reduction.” So, just as a hungry person will seek food to alleviate hunger, Festinger argued, people who experience mental contradictions will work to rationalize them and thus reduce the dissonance. Such cognitive dissonance, then, works out this way when it comes to our moral behavior: If our heart’s desire conflicts with our moral code, then our mind will find some way to justify this dissonance away. In other words, we need a way to rationalize our choices as “moral,” even when they aren’t, in order to align them with our heart’s desire. And we’ll often go to great lengths inventing new mental or spiritual yoga moves to do so.

So, how does this work when we apply it to the problem of racism in America? (1) We support a particular person’s action because it benefits us or we generally approve of it; (2) We don’t support racists because racism is immoral; and, (3) That particular person regularly engages in racist words or behavior. Those three don’t jibe, so our mind seeks a way to justify our support of that person’s action. Voilà! The Cognitive Dissonance stew has just been served. There’s no real cure for Cognitive Dissonance other than the Christian spiritual practice of self-examination and repentance where we take a serious personal inventory and open ourselves to the possibility we may be wrong in God’s eyes. After all, our capacity to justify ourselves is, as the Bible might say, “legion.” Read Acts 10:1-11:17 to see St. Peter’s Cognitive Dissonance and how he ends by vulnerably asking, “Who was I that I could hinder God? (11:17b).

+Scott

One hundred years ago this month, 38 people were killed in what became known as the Chicago Race Riot of 1919. The riot was years in the making; a result of the combustible combination of racism and demagoguery by white leaders in Chicago. For years, African-Americans in what became known as the Great Black Migration had been moving from southern states (escaping the Jim Crow south) to Chicago in order to make a better living for their families. Many of these African-Americans took the low wage jobs being offered. Nicholas Lemann tells this story of mass migration in his excellent book, The Promised Land (1991). Working-class white people in Chicago were told to see this migration differently. They were warned to view it as a threat to their own livelihoods because employers could hire African-Americans at a lower wage. Rather than address the choices employers were making, they hyped up the “Negro Invasion.”

The riot began after a young black man who was swimming with his friends in Lake Michigan drifted near a beach “reserved” for white people. A white man, spotting this young African-American, and having been “warned” of the “Negro Invasion,” threw rocks at him. The young man was knocked out and drowned in the lake. Word spread fast in the African-American community about the murdered young man and a powder keg of repressed resentment exploded. African-Americans who were tired of being on the receiving end of violence regrettably resorted to violence themselves. White people responded in kind, which surprised no one. In addition to the 38 killed, hundreds were injured during the riot that followed.

The language used by the demagogues one hundred years ago in Chicago said it all. Chicago was experiencing a “Negro Invasion.” They accompanied this inflammatory language with other descriptors (e.g., “they’re going to rape our women and take our jobs”) to frighten and arouse the white residents of Chicago. It’s the exact same language used today by our President and others to describe immigrants from Latin America and other non-white countries. There’s an old saying: “It’s funny how history repeats itself.” But there’s nothing funny about this repetition. It’s sadistic and mean, and it places the blame on the shoulders of the wrong people just like 100 years ago in Chicago. It’s classic demagoguery.

So, we’ve been here before. 1919, not uncoincidentally, was also one of the peak years in the U.S. for lynchings. Do we really want to repeat that brutality today? We allowed demagogues then to lead us in all manner of despicable behaviors in this country. Those of us who are white look back from the perspective of today and ask: “How could white people just like us have done such things?” Will white people 100 years from now look back and ask how we tolerated in this generation the violence toward and scapegoating of people with a different skin color as ourselves? Or, will we choose a different course this time? The playbook of demagogues is always the same: Exploit people’s insecurities whatever they are and then tell those same fearful people who they need to blame and punish. History shows us that violence and murder always follow. We must reject such demagoguery if we’re to have hope for a just future as a people.

+Scott

What are we becoming as a people? Our unbridled political partisanship is making us unable to see where politics must end and basic human decency must begin. I refer first to the case of Scott Warren who was charged with a crime last year for providing food, water, and beds to undocumented immigrants near his Arizona home. All he did was respond to two men who asked for food, water, and a place to rest. He gave them all three. He never hid the men or encouraged them to break any law. For that he was arrested and charged with a crime. The jury (thankfully) was unable to reach a verdict on whether he was a criminal. When we criminalize compassion, we’ve reached a level of moral indifference that ought to alarm all of us. To be sure, we should debate immigration policy. There are people who make strong points on the many sides of this complex issue. But criminalizing compassion? Bless our hearts.

This moral issue is also marked by the growing number of unaccompanied minors that the Customs & Board Patrol is holding in detention under sub-human conditions. While the problem has reached crisis proportions, it’s hardly new. Four administrations (two Democrat and two Republican – how’s that for bipartisanship?) have failed miserably to address this while it was a smaller problem. Now it’s become a major crisis. In 1997, The Flores Decision set basic humane standards to care for migrant children in government custody. This legal decision came about because such humane standards weren’t being kept then. And while it’s an historic bipartisan embarrassment, it’s become a crisis under the current administration’s stewardship because they’ve ignored the facts and blamed everyone but themselves. As a veteran advocate for migrant children put it: “In my 22 years of doing visits with children in detention, I have never heard of this level of inhumanity.” Is this some sort of deterrence policy? Does the administration think that if we make the conditions so inhumane that it’ll somehow deter children from crossing the border undocumented? I’d like to know who thought that line of reasoning up? “If we just make things awful enough for them here, then the children will stay in Mexico.” I’d expect such moral reasoning from the Marquis de Sade, but isn’t this country supposed to have higher moral standards than a sadistic sociopath?

This is where certain folk reading this will retreat to their political tribes, blame the other side, and then engage in self-absolution. Sorry, that doesn’t hold any moral water. We can’t absolve ourselves of our moral duty to care for these children. And we can’t justify our government’s behavior by saying the children are just getting what they deserve. Really? How do these children “deserve” such appalling treatment? That’s ascribing a level of agency to them that’s ludicrous. Children are dying in government custody. They’re needlessly suffering deprivation and psychological harm. We have a moral responsibility to end this now.

This shouldn’t be about anybody, especially children, “getting what’s coming to them,” or, in moral theological terms, their so-called “just deserts.” In fact, in some ways, this isn’t even about these children. This is about us and who we are as human beings. So, I ask again: What are we becoming as a people?

+Scott

I just finished reading Jason Micheli’s Living in Sin: Making Marriage Work Between I Do and Death. If I were still preparing couples for marriage as a parish priest, then I’d make sure those couples read this book well before they stood in the church and made their vows. It’s also a hilarious read for those who desire to examine their lives. It’s brutally honest, as in: “Every married person knows they suck because every married person knows the person to whom they’re married knows just how much they suck. In marrying another, we meet, maybe for the first time, the worst version of ourselves.”

Don’t read this book unless you’re able to deal with truth like that. Or better yet, read this book so maybe you can start dealing with the truth you’ve been in denial about. Micheli goes on: “seeing others as our spouses see us, as bound and unfree, is the easiest way to find patience and empathy for others. It’s when you mistakenly think people are free that you get pissed off at them. When you see people as active agents of everything in their lives, choosing the crap decisions they make, you can confuse what they do for who they are.”

Micheli is on to something really important here and it’s not just about marriage. All of us go through life assuming other people are different than we are, that is, completely able to plan, calculate, and pull off all sorts schemes without a hitch. That’s why when another person does something that hurts us, we so often assume it was premeditated just to mess up our lives. So, by ascribing a high level of agency to them, we imagine their intent was directed right at us. Now, occasionally that’s true, but more often than not, from my experience at least, the person in question was just as clueless as I’d be as to why they did what they did. Most often, they didn’t think, plan, and calculate. They just did what they did without thinking about how it might be received by others. That’s why our actions so often result in sinful behavior. If that doesn’t sound familiar to you, then I say with all forceful gentleness: You’re not paying attention to your own life.

Marriage to another simply puts all our personal issues “on steroids.” It hyperactivates all our worst qualities for our beloved to see and, unfortunately at times, endure. Marriage then, maybe more than any other relationship, can help us learn what God intends in the grace poured out by Jesus. We receive undeserved mercy and we also learn to give undeserved mercy. It’s a learning process because “an eye for an eye” is what comes natural to us. Mercy (which is grace incarnated) isn’t natural. It has to be cultivated in us. That’s why Micheli contends that when a couple says, “I do” in their vows, they aren’t saying “I can,” in spite of what they think they’re intending. Because they can’t keep those vows without the imputation of God’s grace in their lives. Without grace, they’ll be locked in the never-ending cycle of scorekeeping for the latest wrong the other has clumsily perpetrated.

Or to put it the way Micheli so rawly writes: “The love that can make marriage work between “I do” and death, in other words, is the love with which Christ loved us—a love that died for us while we yet sucked.”

+Scott