Sin and Mercy.

Possibly the oldest Christian prayer is simply, “Lord, have mercy.”  It is based on the appeal of a blind man in Jericho named Bartimaeus in Mark 10:47.  It has been an integral and essential part of Christian liturgy ever since.

Unfortunately, this prayer, appears to be a problem for some folks.  I am told the words are too negative.  The criticism is that begging for mercy and calling oneself a sinner only reinforce the kind of oppressive, self-flagellating religious expressions that Christianity is infamous for.  It is especially disempowering for those victimized by religious imperialism, like women.  Not only do practices like this keep people under the thumb of the authorities, but such self-hatred tends to get expressed in acts of misanthropic violence.  Finally, there seems to be an assumption that God is always ready to punish and afflict, but can be dissuaded by our pathetic pleas for mercy.  Surely we can do better than morose and depressing, chest-beating, guilt obsessed begging for God to forgive us.  So the argument goes.

First of all, modern people don’t like to talk about “sin” at all.  We see it as a guilt-trip.  Surely it is better to awaken to our original blessing, than to wallow in misery about our sins. 

The fact that sin has become a rejected category for sophisticated, modern people indicates not so much a healthy self-esteem as a deliberate reticence to face the wall-to-wall mess we have made of the planet and its people, including ourselves, over the last 500 years.  We have reduced the word “sin” to refer to somebody else’s sexuality, when actually it denotes a comprehensive breakdown of relationships.  

Talk about “sin” simply recognizes that we humans, in our egocentric condition, are functioning as if separated from God, creation, others, and even our true selves.  Calling ourselves sinners does not mean we are essentially bad people who do not deserve to live.  It means, as in the first of the 12 steps of recovery, realizing that our life is unmanageable, and that we are indeed complicit in all kinds of evil.  

This is what it means to be “woke.”  When we do awaken to our original blessing and goodness, one of the first things that happens is we understand how far our words, thoughts, and actions had drifted away from that.  Awakening means realizing that we had been, in effect, asleep, and taking responsibility for what we did when we were not as fully conscious.  

Awakening causes us at the same time to see the wreckage we have left behind us in the world, in our relationships, in our own bodies and souls, with clarity and honesty.  It is not that we are bad, but we have done bad things, usually inadvertently, unknowingly, or rationalizing that they are actually good.

Secondly, the prayer is about mercy.  Mercy is the recognition of our original blessing and goodness.  Awareness of mercy — that is, of forgiveness, compassion, peace, acceptance, wholeness, and welcome — is awakening.  

Mercy is not just something we receive and then keep for ourselves, like a commodity.  Mercy, like so many of the qualities Jesus talks about and embodies, is something in which we participate by sharing it.  To receive mercy is to give it.  If we do not become merciful, we will not receive mercy.  Mercy is a flow.  It goes through us.  We only have it only to the extent that we give it away.

Therefore, “have mercy on me, a sinner” emphatically does not mean, “don’t punish me for being such a terrible person.”  It means rather, “Let the flow of your mercy, goodness, and blessing overwhelm and transform me and my world through me.”  It means “Let me be your mercy, your compassion, and your forgiveness in the world.” 

And yes, it includes the implication that we have a way to go in realizing this, but at least we are hopefully making progress.  The sign of this progress is that we have the sense to pray for mercy.

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Bugs.

Bugs.

When I was a kid I remember going on long drives with my family.  We always had a lot of bugs get smashed on the windshield.  Sometimes we even had to stop at a gas station to squeegee them off.

That doesn’t happen anymore.

I didn’t even notice it until I was told about a study from Britain that actually uses windshield counts to measure the insect population.  In fact, apparently the number of insects on the planet is crashing.  40% of species are in serious decline.  [https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/02/why-insect-populations-are-plummeting-and-why-it-matters/]

While this may not bother many of us — indeed, some may feel it is a benefit — the fact is that insects do have a role in the global ecosystem, from pollination to feeding birds.

This caused me to pay attention to my own practice regarding bugs.  Like just about everyone in this culture, I think nothing of killing insects.  Indeed, the more I could slaughter, the better.  Especially in the house.  I might leave them alone outside, but the house is my domain and will not be infected with bugs.

But as I become, however slowly and incrementally, more woke, I am coming to appreciate and respect life.  All of life.  Over the past few months I have grown more tolerant of insects to the point that I will only rarely kill one intentionally.  If I find one in the house I seek a way to either ignore it or release it outdoors.  (Mostly the latter: ignoring insects in the house can lead to them becoming much less ignorable.)    

God creates insects In Genesis 1:20-23, on the Fifth Day.  They are called “swarming creatures.”  They are an integral and essential part of creation.  Biologists know this.  Without some pollinators humanity basically perishes.

The other day I saw an atheist cartoon.  It depicted God talking to someone, who asks whether God made mosquitoes.  When God says yes, the other person lists the devastating effect of mosquitoes on humans, including the fact that mosquitoes have, by transmitting Malaria, caused the death of more people than anything else in history, by far.  He concludes by remarking to God, “You must really hate those people.”

From the point of view of an atheist, that is a radically anthropocentric perspective in which everything is valued by its relationship to humans, or more precisely, me today, God does look like an evil monster for creating mosquitoes.  

At a recent church picnic someone asked me why a good God would create such a pernicious life form as mosquitoes.  My response at the time was to ask, “Perhaps you’d rather live on a planet with an atmosphere made of ammonia or sulfuric acid?  With crushing gravity or baking heat or sub-zero temperatures?  You live in the most beautiful and abundant place in the universe!  Deal with the bugs already!”

The acquisition of the Holy Spirit gives us an increasingly heavenly — which is to say broad, inclusive, and universal — perspective.  We realize that it’s not all about me or even us.  The humans are not the be-all-and-end-all of creation.  The presence of mosquitoes should help us get a grip on this and develop some humility and respect.  This is not our house, it’s the Creator’s.  And if the Creator has determined that mosquitoes have a place in it, who are we to whine about it?

Now I do not underestimate the deadly nuisance that some bugs can be.  I have had Lyme disease.  I have been in places where I had to wear netting to prevent being eaten by Black Flies.  I have had to have my home “bombed” to get rid of cockroaches.  I understand the problems caused by fleas and ticks, and so on.  

But we are seeing that humans have been far, far more destructive to the garden than mosquitoes ever were or will be.  They may have killed a lot of us.  But no species has ever gone extinct because of mosquitoes.  Our ravaging, predatory exploitation of this planet is on a scale beyond the entomological imagination.  

The existence of mosquitoes tells us that God cares much more about the well-being of this whole place and everything in it than God cares about one particularly noxious and destructive species, no matter how smart they think they are.

Anyway, trying not to kill insects has opened my eyes to the value of all life.  

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Waking Up Hurts.

The reason why so few people wake up is that it is so profoundly painful.  The reason it is so painful is that to wake up means accepting responsibility for so much of the world’s pain.  Maybe this is why suffering is such an essential aspect of enlightenment.  Tears are often considered a gift, even a necessary sign of one’s enlightenment.  These tears prove the depth of our awakening, that it is not merely imaginary or mental but felt in our bodies.

I am using “awakening” and “enlightenment” to talk about what Christianity means by resurrection.  Resurrection is uprising.  It is the emergence of the True Self — Christ — and the letting go and falling away of the false self — ego.  

The false self does not fall away without suffering.  It is embedded within and attached to the True Self, extending its tentacles through it.  It does not detach easily.  Which is why contemplatives equate the process of detachment from it with death.  The false self has to “die,” which feels like actual death to the person who is totally identified with it.

The false self dies when we realize the damage we have done under its influence.  This damage is to ourselves, to others, and to creation.  The false self dies when we take responsibility for this damage and feel the pain it has caused.  It dies because it deserves death as a matter of justice.  It “dies” because it was never really alive or even real.  The false self is an invention and projection of our ego based first on fear, and then on anger and shame.  What dies is our addiction to it, which is to say, our pathological identification with it.  That is to say, our presumption that the false self is who we are.

This only happens when we reject the three temptations: money, fame, and power.  And that only happens when we feel the pain of those we have harmed in our obsessive drive to acquire for ourselves money, fame, and power.   We don’t wake up until we feel the damage.

There is an old M*A*S*H episode where a bomber pilot ends up in the unit, and meets a little Korean girl badly hurt by aerial bombing.  At first he tries to avoid responsibility by asking whose planes did the bombing.  Hawkeye’s answer is basically that we don’t know and what difference does it make?  The bomber’s subsequent discomfort is the beginning of his awakening.  He’s not happy about it.  No one wakes up happy, at first.

In the 12-step system, the addict must make a fearless inventory of the harm they have done to others, and then seek to personally make amends to those harmed.  This is what healing means.  This is how healing happens.  It is astonishingly painful and humiliating, even sometimes personally dangerous, to admit such wrongdoing.  But it is the only way to real healing.

None of us wants to face or admit the harm we have done.  This is true with individuals, as well as with larger organizations and institutions.  It is true of nations and whole civilizations.    

But acknowledgement of harm and making amends for that harm is the only way to cut away the false self and allow the True Self to emerge.  Acknowledgement of harm is repentance; making amends is discipleship.  The former is a change of direction; the latter is actually to move in that direction by acting differently.

If the church is missionally ineffective it is because it does not understand that discipleship is making amends.  It is repairing the world… based on the recognition that we are the ones who wrecked the world in the first place.  To proceed without this recognition is to blame victims for their own pain and make yourself — your false self — the savior.  The false self only acts out of self-interest.  It only acts out of what it stands to gain.  When the church is not making amends it is only seeking to gain members, money, or influence for itself.  It takes the superior position of a generous benefactor, forgetting that it needs and must seek forgiveness in humility.  

Ultimately, waking up is a joy.  Once the false self has fallen away, what emerges is the True Self.  The false self was collapsed in on itself, lost in a funhouse of self-reference, self-obsession, self-righteousness, and self-gratification.  The True Self is connected outward.  It is one with everything.  It gives thanks in all circumstances.  It knows that everything is working together for good.  It prays constantly.  It lives forever participating in the true life of all.        

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