Let me come out and say that I agree with the premise that one of the purposes of marriage is procreation. But by that I do not assume as it is taught by the Catholic Church (and recently adopted by evangelicals) that sex (marriage?) therefore must be limited to being between a man and a woman who must be open to conceiving children with every sex act. Procreation has unfortunately been co-opted into a very limited (and very culturally modern) view of family that assumes simply producing children is the ultimate goal. But the procreative orientation is far bigger than that.

Marriages should be procreative because all relationships should be oriented around encouraging and welcoming new life in all its forms. Sometimes this involves the bearing of children or the adoption of children into one’s household, but it also simply involves an openness to accepting responsibility for others. Partners, friends, communities all should be procreative – they should encourage life and take responsibility for caring for others in this world. Instead of selfishly turning inward to care only for one’s personal wants and needs (as an individual, couple, or community), it is to accept that we are all responsible for the well-being or the shalom of others. To be procreative is to care for not just our own children, but to support the children in our neighborhood or church by willingly sacrificing our time to care for and serve them. It is caring for the children in our global community who lack proper nutrition, or access to clean water and health care. It is to care enough to work to stop human trafficking and sex slavery that deny many children around the world a right to a whole and healthy life.

To be in relationship is to commit to support and sustain life in such ways. Marriage, at least in the way the church has traditionally understood it, is a public covenant of that commitment. Yes, some influenced by the cultural definition that marriage is simply about feelings of love or two people trying to make each other happy, have accepted a similarly limiting definition of procreation as only being about the biological production of children. For some this restrictive stance leads them to seeing children as choices not as blessed members of the community. So when marriage is just about two people in love, then children are something that the couple must either be protected from (so therefore we must have safe-sex to prevent the unwanted dependency of children) or it is something that couples simply add on as if they were an accessory to make the family picture look complete. On the opposite extreme, this limited view produces the idea that one can impose through legislation restrictions against birth control, same-sex unions, and women’s agency. When individual choice and happiness are the guiding reasons for doing anything, morality (of any sort) can only be imposed by law and sadly gets reduced to such absurd extremes in the process.

When Mike and I got married we chose as our wedding “hymn” “They Will Know We Are Christians by Our Love.” We had a number of people question that choice since the song isn’t about romantic love (what people often assume the sole point of marriage is), but love for God and neighbor. But we knew that we were not entering into a relationship just for our sake, but to mutually strengthen each other to better serve God in this world – be that through one day caring for children or through accepting responsibility for caring for the local and global communities we are a part of. We did end up procreating by having children of our own, but even as we seem to fit this culture’s assumed normative ideas of marriage, we constantly try to work to expand what it means to be in relation with each other and our community. I don’t accept that as a mom my sole responsibility is to make my husband happy and to pour myself into my kids (which these days seems to simply just be about who can pretend to live-up to the perfection of one’s Pinterest board). Yes, loving and caring for my husband and kids is part of my responsibility, but so is loving mercy, seeking justice, and walking humbly with God. I am procreative in my so-called heteronormative marriage – but so are my single friends, my gay and lesbian friends, my childless married friends, and yes, even my children as they learn to live in communally loving and responsible ways.

I reject the absurdity of the birth control debate not just because it is hurtful, but because it misses the point. But at the same time I reject the cultural lie that my individual choices are all that matter. We are all part of a community and therefore our relationships cannot just be about meeting our personal needs, but instead must procreatively support and nurture life in all its forms. If birth control helps some people actually be more supportive of life, then let’s celebrate and fund it. Sadly birth control is often simply viewed as a matter of choice which has allowed us to view children simply as a threat to our (false sense of) independence or as an accessory to our constructed life. But banning or limiting birth control so as to impose a limited idea of procreation onto all people doesn’t solve that problem. To truly support a traditional view of the intent of procreation the place to start is instead to encourage people to think more communally, to see themselves as responsible for caring for the needs of their local, national, and global community (which might include having children), and to work to support and encourage life in whatever ways they can within those relationships. That is what good marriages – good relationships – should do. But somehow I don’t see those publicly speaking out against birth control these days deciding to call people to live communally and to support life (and children) by seeking justice for the poor and the suffering.

The episode is a beautiful incarnation story and has repeatedly popped into my mind as I reflect on the current Occupy Wall Street protests (yes, this is the way my mind works). There is no precise correlation, but I couldn’t help but notice similarities. In our isolated attempts at living the American dream according to the rules the system imposed upon us we know there are problems, but there is a tendency to assume that some authority will somehow eventually fix our problem for us. So we wait patiently, abiding by the rules, taking comfort in our sweet but impotent religious rituals, dying slowly as we come to mistake the rat-race for reality. A few of us might get ahead, moved to the fast lane so to speak, which we take as a sign of hope that the system is working and that one day we might actually arrive. We might talk about freedom, and love, and justice, and mercy as if they are some ideal we can strive towards – a better world we can hope to someday arrive at – but they aren’t reflected in the shape of our everyday lives. That is consumed with inching forward in our individual existence.

So when something like Occupy Wall Street comes along it challenges the status quo. And if our hope is in the fulfillment of the status quo, a challenge to that makes us fearful. What if we lose our place? What if all the time we have spent was wasted? Shouldn’t we just wait for the people in charge to figure it all out and get us all running smoothly again? What is scary to some about the Occupy movement is that instead of giving comfort in the moment or hope in the continued status quo, it is calling for liberation. Perhaps that is not the message of every voice or even of the details, but the collective message is one calling people out to a different way. It is a message that the system is broken, we are hopelessly stuck, and we need to find a way out.

There might not be a TARDIS to incarnate the Doctor into our particular moment, but for the sake of liberation perhaps we are the one we have been waiting for. Liberation is the result of the event of love. Not a vague hope in the idea of love, but the event of love entering into and utterly transforming the tragedy of the status quo. As Jurgen Moltmann wrote about this love,

It is not the interpretation of love as an ideal, a heavenly power or as a commandment, but of love as an event in a loveless, legalistic world: the event of an unconditioned and boundless love which comes to meet man, which takes hold of those who are unloved and forsaken, unrighteous or outside the law, and gives them a new identity, liberates them from the norms of social identifications and from the guardians of social norms and idolatrous images. … [But] Just as the unconditional love of Jesus for the rejected made the Pharisees his enemies and brought him to the cross, so unconditional love also means enmity and persecution in a world in which the life of man is made dependent on particular social norms, conditions and achievements. A love which takes precedence and robs these conditions of their force is folly and scandal in this world.”

The impulse toward freedom, toward liberation, is slowly awakening across the nation. The doors have been thrown open; we now have to choose if we will drive out into the light. The protests are, of course, not perfect. There are the dangers of creating new constraining status quos, of corruption, or simply the re-iteration of the same status quos with new faces at the helm. These are the typical demons that prey upon those embracing the event of liberating love – demons that the guardians of the current status quo are sure to parade about in attempts to scare the timid away from joining the movement towards freedom. But love always involves risk. Freedom from the conditions and gridlock of this world is always tied to the ongoing event of love. Love – that unconditional event that liberates for the shalom of the whole – is not an ideal but that ongoing way of life. It takes work to live into a new identity – to figure out how to live differently. The call to occupy isn’t for a quick fix (which I sincerely hope it doesn’t settle for), but it is instead the call to usher in an entire new way of being that requires us all to drastically change as we enter into the difficult work of liberating love – despite obstacles, despite opposition.

It’s hard to speak of a different way in our world today. Perhaps all I’m doing is just reflecting on a good story here. But maybe it’s a parable, or better yet, a dream. And the world is waking up and sometimes dreams do come true.

These are the Native American children who had no choice but to attend these schools and are just now finding their voice to start healing from their experiences there. For those unfamiliar with the Residential or Boarding school system required of Native Americans (because it is definitely not something taught in most history classes), these were government-funded, generally church-run schools that “were set up to eliminate parental involvement in the intellectual, cultural, and spiritual development of Aboriginal children.” If you’ve seen the film Rabbit Proof Fence you might have some clue about what these schools were like, but they existed in the US and Canada as well (and some are still functioning in the US). Native American children would be placed in these schools – often by force against their parent’s wishes – to have their culture “civilized” out of them as a means of assimilating them to white culture. Often parents would not know where their children were taken, and frequently never saw their children again. Children in these schools were forbidden to speak their own language or practice their own culture. Many of the schools used the children as forced labor for government projects. As stories of these schools have emerged, tales of molestation, rape, abuse, disappearances, murders, and medical experimentation and sterilization are common themes.

The horror of these schools is a reality as are the racist assumptions that lead to their formation. The children who were forced into these schools now have emotional scars that need serious healing. As in any case of abuse, to find that healing and to properly mourn what they lost through what was inflicted upon them, the victims need to tell the truth of their experiences. And in the US, the only legal way to do so is to bring a lawsuit against those that harmed them. Sadly though that opens up the victims to further abuses and pain. Those bringing this particular lawsuit are being vilified for their audacity to accuse elderly nuns of abuse. They are being accused of being greedy for money and that they are only doing this out of a hatred for the Catholic Church. As a numbers of responses have said, how dare the Native Americans mar the good name of these nuns and the Church without proof (as if the testimony of 45 Native Americans doesn’t count as proof). If this is even allowed to come to trial (which is doubtful since the allegations are so old), they will face further struggles as their story is suppressed by the loopholes of the legal system.

In reading about this recent lawsuit all I could think is that this is exactly why we need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the United States. Desmond Tutu’s book No Future Without Forgiveness, describes how it was precisely for this reason of allowing the truth to be told with the least amount of pain for the victims that South Africa set up their commission as they did. They knew that to bring all the acts of injustice to trial would not only bankrupt the nation, but that it would hide the truth as perpetrators did everything in their power to not be found guilty and punished. It would not bring healing to their nation to have the victims constantly be told that they were lying about their pain and abuse. So the Truth and Reconciliation Commission choose to promise amnesty in exchange for confessions of truth. Only by telling the truth – all of the murders, abuses, and sins – could a person be exempt from being possibly punished by the government for their crimes. While this system angered those hungry for revenge, it served the purpose of telling the truth necessary for healing. (And it’s not like perpetrators were never punished – confessing to such crimes often led to ostracism from friends, broken marriages, and even suicides as they came face to face with their depravity). But as the name states – the purpose is reconciliation not revenge.

Canada has created a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for precisely the purpose of telling the truth about the Native American residential schools. The Commission believes they have a mandate to find out the truth of what happened in those schools so as to help with the reconciliation process of all involved. The system is far from perfect, but it is a step towards allowing true healing to be possible for the survivors. Instead of making the victims out to be the bad guys as they search for healing in a system that often refuses to acknowledge their continued mistreatment, a Commission like this in the US would at least start a dialogue that is long overdue. This most recent lawsuit and the responses it has provoked serve as poignant reminders that there is a lot of truth our nation still needs to face. Pretending such things don’t exist by writing them out of our textbooks or washing our hands of any responsibility only leads to more pain – for everyone. The truth will set us free, but only if we are courageous enough to let go of our defensiveness and let it be heard.

We are creatures shaped by our world. Our culture, our community, our environment, our faith all have contributed to hewing out our present form. We can always grow and learn, interrogating our culture as we expand and diversify the influences in our lives, but we can never undo the fact that we have been shaped. Whether or not we accept or reject a God, or gods, or spiritual force that choice becomes a part of us. To pretend otherwise for the sake of maintaining a functional albeit shallow pluralism is to live in denial of who we are as people. Religion (in both its broad and specific senses) cannot be separated from politics because it is people, whole people not fragmented forcefully compartmentalized people, who are the ones doing politics.

So in not believing in the separation of church and state, I mean that I think the very idea is impossible. Church and state are not abstract entities, but are functioning communities of people who cannot help but bring their whole selves into those particular relational spheres.

That said, there are of course drastically different ways of how this gets lives out. On the extremes are those that choose to reject either religion or politics. There are the religious people who while admitting to our identity as religious people, feel that religion is too offensive to ever force upon others even in the form of dialogue and so they advocate for remaining silent on anything having to do with religion. I understand the desire to care for the sensibilities of others, but if I didn’t believe in my faith enough to think that it should make a difference in the world then why bother with believing at all? At the opposite extreme are the religious folks who think culture and politics are too corrupt for religious people to participate in and so they advocate for complete withdraw from such things. They desire all people to be religious like they are religious, but cannot be bothered to work for the transformation of the world because then they might become tainted with the ways of this world. Like Jonah they just want to condemn the world never expecting that there is any real chance that the world can ever change.

But I’m not a fan of the extremes. I think God is at work in the world at all levels in all places. I cannot hide behind or withdraw into my localized tribe if I truly believe that God loves the world enough to reconcile all things to Godself. My beliefs shape my identity and therefore how I exist in the world – including how I am involved in culture and politics. But in doing such things the big question becomes whether I am letting my faith shape me and my actions or if I am using my faith to advance my selfish ends. When I involve myself wholly in politics and culture is my goal to let God use me to transform the world or to fight to control the things I personally care about. In other words, am I imposing my faith on others to gain power and prestige for myself at the expense of others, or am I accepting my place in the body of Christ and humbly loving and respecting the other members in the body.

To me that is the major difference between Dominionism and the Kingdom of God. Advocates of Dominionism are pushing their religious views for the sake of working for the supremacy of a very small group of people – often at the expense of all others. Although ostensibly Christian, it rejects the notion of love of neighbor and the call to in humility consider others better than ourselves in exchange for the opportunity to have one’s own philosophy be the one in control. It is this sort of self-serving imposition of religion that has sparked the need for people to attempt to separate church and state. When one religious view strives to dominate and silence all others, making it dangerous for outsiders to be their true selves, we are no longer functioning as one body with many parts. It is not God that is given dominion, but the name of God that is invoked as justification of individuals graspings of power.

Despite the presence of such manipulative uses of religion, I still think God is at work in the world and that I am called to serve God’s Kingdom. Doing so means letting my faith guide my interactions with culture and in politics as I believe that God cares about and can be served through all manifestations of human community. I believe in God’s Kingdom coming on earth as in heaven, just as I have to believe that all of humanity is created in God’s image and therefore to be treated with dignity and love. That core of my faith has to guide my every action in the world – from how I treat my kids to how I shop to how I involve myself in politics – if I am to say that it is truly my faith and not my selfish ambitions that is directing me. So even as I follow the way of Jesus and affirm that God reigns over all, to be working for the Kingdom of God means that I cannot exclude, oppress, or marginalize those who appear different than me. I am connected to them and am commissioned to work for their good – not because I have rejected religion but because I embrace my holistic identity as a religious person.

As the nation starts to cringe at a resurgence of the imposing of self-seeking religion upon others, it can be tempting to retreat into a renewed call for the separation of church and state. But to do so not only denies our identities as religious beings, asking us to attempt to suppress central aspects of who we are, but it fails to examine the motivating factors behind religious interactions with the Other. While I fully understand the fear religion elicits in some, as a religious person I also cannot trivialize my beliefs by restricting them to just the isolated private sphere of my life. I will not mock my faith in that way. But even as I live a public faith, I will try to let my life serve as a reminder that the Christian scriptures do not call us to destroy the identity of those who are different than us but to love them as we work for a better world, God’s Kingdom come, for all.

While many from the left were outraged by the idea of associating these arch-conservatives, who stand against many of the things historical feminists have supported, with feminism, others supported the idea. Naomi Wolf, who seems to have a love/hate relationship with feminism, wrote that the problem some have with calling those women feminists is that we don’t understand the history of feminism. She argues (rightly in my opinion) that feminism has only become associated with leftist agendas since the 1960’s, but was, in its origins, more balanced and open to conservative values. But then she explains her reasoning why -

The core of feminism is individual choice and freedom, and it is these strains that are being sounded now more by the Tea Party movement than by the left. But, apart from these sound bites, there is a powerful constituency of right-wing women in Britain and Western Europe, as well as in America, who do not see their values reflected in collectivist social-policy prescriptions or gender quotas. They prefer what they see as the rugged individualism of free-market forces, a level capitalist playing field, and a weak state that does not impinge on their personal choices.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that there are many forms of feminism. And I’ll even admit that this rugged individualist strain made up of (as Sarah Palin described it) “gun-toting self-reliant women” is, in its own way, a form a feminism. But I am highly uncomfortable with people who, like Wolf, reduce feminism to simply being about “individual choice and freedom” (and I’m not the only one). This reduction is something I encounter in the church-world all the time. Feminist or liberation theology is labeled as merely being about individual rights, and since Jesus didn’t come talking about rights but about how we can live communally and eucharistically together as the body, such theologies must be dismissed as simply cultural and therefore unbiblical. Granted, such a dismissal usually allows for the powers that be to continue to assert their own individual preferences and ideas over those of everyone else in the guise of being biblical, but the conversation has already been shut down.

It’s like the people who mock or complain about so-called political correctness. They view having to be aware and sensitive to the feelings and situations of other people as infringing upon their rights (like their right to make fun of other people). It’s not about loving and respecting others, but about losing their right to oppress. Complaining about other people doing the very thing they’re already doing ensures that meaningful conversations that might lead to change never occur.

But, contrary to what those who fear their loss of power might assert, individual freedoms and rights has never been what feminism has been about for me. My affinity to feminism (or postcolonialism or liberationist thought) has always been based on that call to live faithfully as the body of Christ. Loving others as Christ loved us means loosing the bonds of oppression and setting captives free. It means treating people, all people, as image-bearers of God. If that means advocating for rights for some, and for the elite to relinquish some of their power in order to put an end to oppression, then so be it. If that means giving up personal comfort and choices so that I can respect, instead of mar, the image of God in others, then so be that as well. Rights for the marginalized are simply a by-product of the privileged finally attempting to live self-sacrificially as part of the body of Christ. Conversations about feminism or postcolonialism help me become aware of who the people are who need love and what ways I can make myself a living sacrifice in order to do so.

Holding so tight to privilege that one rejects discussions about helping others, or disdains collectivist social-policies that mirror the sort of eucharistic life Christ expects of us, is more in line with rugged individualism than the feminism I have known. Associating feminism with that selfish, individualist, and blatantly unchristian way of living that the far right preaches these days, hurts. Just as I often have to say in response of some far-right Christians’ attempts to harm the poor, destroy God’s creation, and keep people captive, that that sort of Christianity has little to do with the message of Jesus I find in the Bible, I guess I now have to start saying to the rugged individualist feminists that I am not that sort of feminist. Palin and Bachmann can have their “it’s all about me and my privilege” feminism, but, as a Christian, that has nothing to do with me.

While I understand the need for discussion whether the release of these cables might endanger some people, I am uneasy condemning them simply because they reveal the embarrassing sins of the United States. In our country we have forgotten that social sin does indeed exist. Governments are not above morality and justice, but sadly often have the power and wealth to hide their sins from the judging eyes of the world. When all the people see is the façade the government constructs for themselves (while being sold the message that unquestioning patriotism is the highest virtue), it is easy for governments to avoid responsibility and accountability for their actions.
I don’t believe innocence is bliss. If my government is committing injustices or betraying the ideals of our nation, then the people who they supposedly report to should know about it. We are the only ones who can hold governments responsible – if we abdicate that role or if it is denied to us then government sin can abound.

But no one likes being called out on their sins. When John the Baptist called out Herod on his sinful ways, he was beheaded to shut him up. Intimidation and fear are the governments’ tools for keeping truth suppressed so they can continue to avoid responsibility. Amazon already gave into the pressure to be silenced, Julian Assange (WikiLeak’s founder) is currently in hiding, and the public is being told that revealing the truth is an act of terrorism. We are made to feel guilty for knowing the truth instead of the government owning up to those truths and taking responsibility for them.

Government is complex, I get that. But that doesn’t mean that it is exempt from morality. Perhaps WikiLeaks is the martyr that will wake us up to the need to hold our government to those basic standards of morality.

It’s hard to ignore the children. As voiceless as children are in our world, when we hear stories of injustice being inflicted on children it is hard not to be moved. There is something about hearing the stories of six year old girls being kidnapped and forced to be sex slaves or young boys trafficked to work in cocoa fields that push us beyond the confines of our political opinions to offer help to the hurting. Politics can often obscure human rights issues as it did in our country with the early labor movement. It took revealing the horrors of child labor to get those opposed to reform to enter the conversation. For even when we can ignore or even support injustice against adults, most decent human beings innately know that it is wrong to harm a child (or fail to stop the harming of a child). We hear stories of such and the mama bear instinct kicks in – a child’s life is too precious for us to allow it to be terrorized.

From the Bible passages that remind us that true religion is to care for orphans and widows to Jesus’ command to welcome the little children, there is a strong biblical mandate for caring for the least of these. While loving our neighbor (no matter our politics) should be at the heart of what it means to follow Jesus, it often takes hearing the stories of the children who suffer and need our care to mobilize the majority of people to extend mercy and justice.

That is why I am grateful for Melissa Del Bosque’s fantastic article this week in The Texas Observer, Children of the Exodus: What becomes of kids who are deported without their families? The article tackles the polarizing topic of immigration, but does so through telling the often tragic and heartbreaking stories of the children caught in the political mire.

She situates her story in a Mexican Immigration office where children who have been apprehended and deported by U.S. Border patrol have been delivered. These are kids desperate to join their parents in the United States after the death of their caretaker grandparents, the babies and young kids whose mothers died of exposure in the harsh desert crossing, and the kids the drug cartels have kidnapped and use as drug smugglers. Their stories are complex, as complex as the tales of adult immigrants, but they strike us more poignantly because they are children. And these children are suffering.

On paper, the officials say that all children who are deported back to Mexico can only be claimed by a relative with proof of relation. Yet documents are often forged and there is little to no follow up of the children once they are released into the hands of “a relative.” Officials who desired to remain anonymous out of fear reveal that often (with the police’s knowledge and aid) the children end up in the hands of the drug cartels to be trafficked or used for smuggling drugs. But beyond that well known “secret,” even the government admits that not all the children are claimed and are left to fend for themselves. As the article states, “In 2008, a Mexican congressional committee reported 90,000 children had been sent back by U.S. authorities to border cities … At least 13,500 were never claimed.” For when parents live in the U.S. or die in the crossing there is no family to come claim these children. But when governments of either country don’t want to be bothered with these kids, there are vultures waiting to snatch up weak and innocent.

What these children experience – injustice, trafficking, kidnapping, separation from family – has to be part of the story that gets told as part of the immigration debate. We can argue the legality of the immigrant’s decision or from our place of plenty question what parent would ever leave a child to go try to make a better life for that child until we are blue in the face, but meanwhile the children suffer. If our debate doesn’t make room for caring for these children, then we truly have lost our way as a nation.

I appreciated how the author called for immigration reform at the end of the article with the needs of these children in mind. She first suggests ways that both the U.S. and Mexico could actually follow the laws already in place to protect children by doing things like setting up a simple database to monitor these kids and not let them slip through the cracks. She also called for U.S. immigration reform that helps reunite families not punish them for trying to do whatever they can to help each other. And finally, most importantly, she asserted that until the underlying problems like poverty are dealt with these children will continue to be caught in the middle facing this pain. For when people are pawns in lofty government economic programs, they will continue to be pushed to seek out a better life in order for their family to survive. Justice is needed here on all levels. And maybe with the telling of the story of these children even the hardest of hearts will be opened to loving the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner sojourning in our land.

But that of course begs the question of the validity of using Twitter as news source. Just follow the hashtag for a few minutes and anyone can see that there is a lot of confusion about what is really happening. One person can say something and it gets re-tweeted hundreds of times regardless of whether or not it is true. And while we have all witnessed the ability of other open-source projects like Wikipedia to self-regulate, this Twitter revolution is too intense and caught up in the moment to do so well, if at all. So other media outlets are left trying to sort fact from fiction and have found themselves then attacked when they question some of the more emotional aspects of what is going on. Like – Was there really election fraud? How many protesters are actually involved? Were the election results really leaked? For those caught up in the momentum of the moment, those questions challenge the very thing they are fighting for.

So in watching this unfold, I have to wonder how much truth does matter when it comes to something like revolution. If the truth is that Ahmadinejad won fair and square and that there were only a small group of protesters, does that truth matter if the lies that were spread ended up being the catalyst that spark change on a massive scale? It seems to me that in situations like these, the details matter less than the cause. If the viral spread of information on Twitter – albeit unsubstantiated possible misinformation – ends up pushing people beyond the tipping point in the fight for freedom, can we really call that information bad?

These are just the thoughts that run through my head as I watch this whole thing unfold. I don't know where it will lead, or if it is truly a revolution of any sort. But at the same time I can't help but wonder how differently other fights for freedom like Tiananmen Square or even the Holocaust would have gone if the passionate yet unsubstantiated spread of information through Twitter had been around then. Would enough people knowing about them and getting angry have stopped them? Or for that matter why isn't there the same passion and endless Twitter campaigns for other freedom issues like human trafficking?

If you're networked online at all I am sure at some point in recent weeks you have been tagged with the Facebook "25 Things" list. And I'm sure you've also heard your fair share of people complaining about it. Now I understand the "I just don't have time to participate" complaints, but then there are those that are slightly more disturbing. Some asked why anyone would bother reading such spam from their imaginary playgroup. Others asked why they should care about boring random facts about their "friends." Finding out the details of others' lives and sharing the details of their own just seemed like too much of a waste of time. I found it interesting that people were willing to network with others, but not interested in actually getting to know them. But sometimes it is hard to get beyond our self. We want people to know us (love us, respect us…), but we aren't willing to deal with the spam of their thoughts, struggles, and mundane life details.

It reminded me of what former Vice-President Dick Cheney said in an interview this past week -

“When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,” Cheney said.

Protecting the country’s security is “a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business,” he said. “These are evil people. And we’re not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.”

Ignoring Facebook friends and promoting terrorism might seem like a strange connection, but hear me out. Both attitudes are based on the same self-centered attitude. It is our status and our sphere that we are trying to protect. With Facebook we can simple decide to keep the Other as Other – view their input as spam to be ignored, their lives inconsequential to our existence. On the national scale that "me and mine" focus moves beyond simple brushing others aside to a stance that encourages the destruction of that which is different. Either way the idea of loving our neighbor (or enemy) is ignored in favor of protecting our own interests.

As Cheney pointed out, following the Christian principles of turning the other cheek and respecting the image of God in others cannot be adhered to if we place our own interests first. He of course sees that as a good thing and continues to call for the preemptive destruction of those different than himself. I agree with Cheney that national self-centeredness and Christian principles by nature contradict each other, but I prefer to go with the Christian principle side. Instead of our self-centeredness insisting that others love and respect us while we either ignore or destroy them, we can perhaps start to respond with that very love and respect. Not in a passive way that destroys our own self, but with strong active engagement that preserves the image of God in both ourself and the Other.

And even if we aren't quite ready to obey Christ and love the terrorist, we can maybe reach out and actually connect with Facebook friends.

But that hope received some push back today. From the cynics who disliked Obama from the get go to the anabaptists who reject all government involvement for good or for ill. While these critiques have some merit, I believe they often miss the point. Most of us have no delusions that Obama the man represents that hope. Our trust is not in him, he has no power to save us. Yes, we like him (with good reason), but what we are celebrating is much bigger than a man.

It is a hope inspired by the winds of change. Change like no longer having the rhetoric coming from our country's leaders be that of power, oppression, and domination but instead that of mercy, love, and justice. Of course we don't trust in rhetoric, but it is what forms the zeigeist of the nation. Language does shape us and leads us in paths of action. If we immerse ourselves in the language of hatred and fear then that will become who we are. So to find ourselves in the midst of language encouraging service, justice, peace, love, and mercy, then yes I think there is cause for celebration.  Cause for rejoicing in a vision of being that does represent the values of the Kingdom. It isn't the kingdom itself nor is Obama in any sense a savior, but anything that encourages the values of the kingdom is yes, in fact, good.

And that inspires hope.