Dear Ones,
Well, our Lenten journey has begun and I welcome all of you who have decided to travel along in our study of Mpho and Desmond Tutu's book, Made for Goodness And Why that Makes All the Difference. In the past two years I have provided a fairly detailed outline as a suggested reading of the book at hand and there is one thing I have learned in that time: in every way, wherever you are, you are creative and able to adapt to this just as you need to. I have also learned that you have some of the best questions, suggestions, and insights and I hope this year you will continue to share those as we move along. For those of you that need an outline, you might consider getting through the first chapter this week and if you can get through two more, each week over the next six, you will have finished just in time for Holy Week. But, I urge you to read it as you can, join in our discussion, and I do hope it feeds you and you enjoy it.
Bill Harper, Vicar of Grace, Bainbridge Island ( I love that he has not moved to the name "Rector" as Vicar of Grace is such a very cool title) is blogging as well, along with Associate and Canon for Multicultural Ministry, Arienne Davison. He suggested a question, "Are we made for goodness?" That is a good first question for us to take up. Is this really how we are made? Anglican Bishop Stephen Neill once said, "Being a Christian depends on a certain inner relatedness to the living Christ. Through this relatedness all other relationships of a human-to God, to himself, to other people-are transformed."
The Tutu's write, "You and I, too are fundementally good. We are tuned to the key of goodness. This is not to deny evil, it is to face evil squarely. And we can face evil squarely, because we know that evil will not have the last word." They go on to say that "goodness is our essential quality." Do you believe that? How would you explain it? Do you need to?
Blessings to you and may you experience a holy Lent.
+Greg
I grew up in an evangelical-Protestant tradition - A setting in which it is generally accepted that like all of nature, our natures, apart from the Spirit of God, are fallen. However, in that setting, at least within my experience, it is often believed that even within the life of the Christian there is a "duality" (That word would never be used.) in which Evil lurks waiting to consume the Good should the faithful no be vigilant in their faith.
This always frustrated my father something fierce. It seemed to him that so much energy of fellow Christians was squandered upon looking out for "the Old Man" that the regenerative life of Christ within those who would seek the Divine was strangled.
I think the question is a good one, and it matters. It seems that if we view the natural tendency of others is to be bad, then everything they do is run through that filter. We do this with politics. "The other" is evil, therefore their motivations for whatever is evil, and the "whatever" must be stopped lest the purposed of God be thwarted on earth. And because the other is evil, they are less than us and we can look down upon them. Though we would never say we "hate" those with whom we are in political conflict, we certainly do not like them, and that's okay because they're evil!
Having lived on both sides of the great political divide in America, I feel confident in saying that such a view is prevalent on both sides of that divide! It is ironic that fear of what we believe is evil causes us to become a mirror image of that very thing that we fear.
As Tutu writes, the question is important as well in regards to how we approach our Christian faith. If our focus is that we are "bad," then faith becomes an attempt to be "good" in order to please (a) god. Frankly, this is how I use the word "religion" - Humankind's attempt to make a god happy (I know that others use the term very differently, in a much more positive manner.). However, if we realize we are good, made for good, it seems to me that we will be looking for the good in others and forever vigilant regarding what the Spirit of God is about, and joining in that dance as opposed to heading to war, literally and figuratively.
Kevin J
St. Mark's
Posted by: Kevin J | March 12, 2011 at 03:35 PM