Power and the “Collective Sin”

        William Barclay, renown scholar and professor of NT criticism at Glasgow Seminary in Scotland is quoted as saying,

  “Power itself is always neutral. Power becomes good or bad according to the mind and heart of the person by whom it is controlled and used.” ~ The Master’s Men, page 40.      

          It is my experience that in the post-modern era humanity has become slightly arrogant about humanity’s place in the world, as Reinhold Niebuhr expresses so directly in the first volume of the Gifford Lectures:

Men have been assailed periodically by qualms of conscious and fits of dizziness for pretending to occupy the centre of the universe. Every philosophy of life is touched with anthropocentric tendencies. Even theocentric religions believe that the Creator of the world is interested in saving man from his unique predicament.

                        ~ H. R. Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Volume I

            If personal and communal experiences have shown me anything about the nature of us humans, it is that we tend to think very highly of ourselves on occasion, myself not excluded. 

          Most recently, our great nation has been plagued with fits of ridiculousness, like the celebration of placing Proposition 8 into an actual state constitution; praising House Bill 1804 and clapping as shops and stores in the Latino areas of Oklahoma’s cities are being run into the ground and some families are scared to even send their children to school; proclaiming the Israeli state as being monstrous and waving Israeli flags with swastikas blazoned upon them; the events of the Jenna, LA school and the more recent comments about the election of our new president proving, once again, that racism and prejudice did NOT die with the Civil Rights Movement of the 60’s; using organized religion to systematically oppress and deconstruct “different” instead of systematically oppressing and deconstructing suffering; the list goes on and on.

          And there, standing in the middle of it all, are humans. Us. We. Not singular religious or social groups; not science; not belief–Us. We. 

          Not taking time to study before we vote; “haves” watching “have nots” have not; condoning state persecution of minorities…we’re using our power to dominate a seemingly powerless spiral of hate. Many of these transgressions against the human condition could be considered “individual” acts–but when these thoughts and actions affect an area beyond themselves they are no longer individual; rather, they are very much the “Collective Sin.”

          And yet, we also see people using children’s marry-go-rounds in Africa to generate water purifiers without wired electricity; groups and organizations across the planet are “going green” to save it; people are not taking sides in armed conflicts and wars and are instead siding against war and violence themselves; people are helping prisoners re-enter into society, viewing them as people and not “ex-cons…” 

 What are we to do with this power that we all have individually and share as a community? Most often, I see individual power utilized in the judgment of the “other.” It pisses me off to no end, and when I get this way I write poetry. This is from a sermon in which I denounced the idea that without “getting saved” by Jesus one goes to “hell.” I managed to keep my job after that and so I feel it is fitting to post the poem. It was inspiration for “Existence Spectrum:”

No matter if they live in poverty, or are living in relative ease

If they follow this path as ascetics, or are doing whatever they please

It matters not what what they look like, or whether they hoard or they share

It matters not what they sound like–class, age, sex and nation don’t bear

Though they follow a different path, or have gone down the same that you’ve trod

Let the loving be the task of us humans; let the judging be left up to God

         

Existence Spectrum

If I were born in India, a Hindu I would be– proud, devout and loyal and a Shiva devotee.

If I were born in poverty, most likely I’d be poor–reaching out for passing alms and hanging ’round your door.

If I were born to parents who were neglectful and unkind, I’d probably be said to be of kindred act and mind.

If I were without courage, in any shape or form, I never would have left the eye of life’s tempestuous storm.

Now, I am not a Hindu, nor caught in poverty–

I have true friends and Mom and Dad are very kind to me–

but that third eye is beautiful–it can destroy and can enrich;  sometimes my love for the unkind is truly far from rich. I often fail to say the things that perhaps I should have said, and courage fails, silence avails–conflict I often dread.

It seems we’re on a spectrum–while we’re living here, I mean. The things we know and often don’t are greater than they seem. History, Society, Religion, Politics–Culture, Class, Age, Nation, Race, And Sexual Preference.

do not hold fast to certainty, as though the the world stood still, or you will find within yourself a fast decaying will. Rather, cling to hope (for hope abounds within the darkest space)–Do not become so conf ident in Age, Class, Nation, Sex or Race.

For were you born outside your norm a Hindu you might be, with different kinds of parents and in abject poverty.

For me I am a Christian, and suppose that Jesus saves, though not through supernatural miracles–as a teacher, yea, a sage.

I have a house, a wife, two cars and for one second don’t pretend! I know in middle-class America we’re on a world-wide higher end.

But I might have been a Hindu, or been struck by poverty–I might have been greater, maybe less, and different friends would have met me.

But I’m not, I wasn’t and they didn’t…and there’s the point.

Existence is a spectrum, and I’ve fallen somewhere on it. Somewhere equidistant from the other end is a Hindu, or a poor person, or an old woman, carrying her groceries up rotting stairs to the porch her husband built.

From a Trappist Monk Engaged in Inter-religious Thought

This is a prayer written by Thomas Merton, a Trappist Monk following the Rules of St. Benedict, in the Abbey of our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky. He was a brilliant social activist and sought inter-religious dialougue, conversing with such figures as the Dalai Lama, Tich Nhat Hahn and D.T. Suzuki (information obtained from Wikepedia.com, your free on-line encyclopedia!)

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end,  nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I’m actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.  I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.  And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.  therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

Cool. I’ll probably say this every day now.

On the Title, and a First Reflection

            The title for my blog post originally read, “Since You Asked…” After some thought, and because you did not actually ask, I changed the name to, “As it Happens..” To satisfy the urge for my posts to be prompted by conversation and questioning, I will simply imagine you asking me a question and all will be right with the world (as contained within this page.)

            Today, and in case you have forgotten, you are asking, “Adam, did an elderly and sage-like woman (whom you have discovered knows a little too much about Egypt for a common parishioner) walk into your study, hand you three books and leave?”)

            Thank you for asking and, as it happens, an elderly and sage-like woman (whom I had discovered knew a little too much about Egypt for a common parishioner) did walk into my study, hand me three books and leave! To begin with, I am quite sure you are wondering two things at this point:

1) Adam, how did you find out that this woman knew a little too much about Egypt for a common parishioner?

2) And what, exactly, were these three books?

Thank you, again, for asking, and as it happens I have been leading a Bible study on the parables of Jesus that this elderly and sage-like woman has been attending. One session led me to discus the Gospel of Thomas,

:::TIME OUT FOR CLARIFICATION :::

The Gospel of Thomas is a collection of 114 sayings of Jesus. It was found, along with 51 other tractates that made up the Coptic Gnostic Library, in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945. This version is supposed to have been written somewhere between 50 CE and 60 CE. Three other fragments were found at Oxyrhyncus, Egypt, in 1900, but they were in Greek and were dated much later–about 200 CE.

and this woman was finishing all of my sentences – a thing that was bothering, yet surprising me. The last thing she said was this: ”We have known about this for a long time–longer than the people who discovered this.“  I wasn’t sure what to think about this statement until this same woman came into my study the next day with three books, handed them to me and left. Finally, here they are:

1) The Secret Doctrines of Jesus, Rosicrucian Library Volume IV, H. Spencer Lewis, F.R.C., Ph.D.

2) The Koran

3) The Book of Mormon

            Now, the Koran and Book of Mormon I already owned and had looked at–no big surprises there, other than the fact that she brought me a Koran and Book of Mormon. The third book, The Secret Doctrines of Jesus, I had not heard of, and I resigned this unfamiliarity to the realization that they were, after all, a secret. So, after getting over the hurt of no one ever telling me the secret before (afterall, any time Jesus told someone not to tell something, 9 times out of 10 they told everyone), and being the researcher and scholar that I am, I typed ‘rosicrucian’ into my Google searchbar.

            To make a long story a bit shorter using a simple math equation, these three books + an uncanny knowledge of Ancient Egypt + what I found to be her occupation (a volunteer in Ancient Artifacts at the OU Museum) + (The Secret Doctrines of  Jesus)(The Koran)(the Book of Mormon) = AMORC.

::: TIME OUT FOR CLARIFICATION :::

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMORC

             So, now you know that if an elderly and sage-like woman with Egyptology on the brain walks into your office, hands you The Secret Doctrines of Jesus, The Koran and the Book of Mormon and walks out, she probably belongs to the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucia.

Until Next Time,

Adam