Relationships, faith, and Everything in between

I'm fascinated by all the relationships I am in or have been a part of in my life so far. "Cast my memory back there, Lord; sometime I'm overcome thinking about..." (Van Morrison) I mean, how many people do we get to know in one lifetime?

I suppose everyone has a different number; and real extroverted people might strive for 1,000,000; and a true introverted person might want 6. I don't know, but no matter what number, we're all in this together one way or another.

And there's so many different kinds of relationships. There's intimate relationships; there's business relationships; there's family relationships; there's casual or intentional; there's good one and bad ones. So many different, different kinds.

Have you ever had one of those experiences that are a "6 Degrees of Separation" type thing? I remember once my wife and I checked into a hotel room in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and when we first got to the room, the phone was ringing. My wife picked up the phone, nodded yes a few times, and then hung up the receiver. "We have to go back to the front desk," she said, "they want to give us another room."

On arriving at the front desk, they did indeed give us another room, for free, and for up to three days if we wanted it. (We were only traveling through.) This hotel gave pastors a free room for up to three days, and they wanted Chris and I to use it. We did, and as I was getting the key from the front desk clerk, I asked how they knew I was a pastor? I never register as a pastor; nor, do I dress in khaki.

The clerk looked and me and said I looked familiar when he was checking me in, but it wasn't until we were on our way up to our room that he remembered how he knew me. I had done his cousin's wedding at our church the previous summer, and that's how he knew I was a pastor. Small world...

...But many, many relationships. And that's the point of Christian faith. Faith is the "regal relationship" (Joseph Sittler) that we have with God, and through our relationship with God we are in relationship with all the rest of the universe. I love keeping track of relationships in this world, and I'm excited to see what relationships there might be in the next. I am grateful for my faith.

Love, not justice

As a kid I ran to the convenience store comic book rack always looking for the next issue of my favorite comic. The comic was from Marvel and called “Daredevil.” My brother’s taste in comics was based on the art and color, so we had a lot of “Thor,” The Hulk,” and “Spiderman” comics too. But for me, I was fascinated by the back story of Daredevil, and I liked the red suit.

Daredevil is a blind man who is a lawyer by day, and fights crime—actually he seeks “justice” by night. Although, like most kids I suppose, I read comic books for all the wrong reasons, and over the years I’ve realized that I have internalized some of that Daredevil ethic into my own life. Daredevil always started with idea that law, and the systems we have around those laws, would provide justice. But, of course, those systems are manipulated by criminals, or those seeking to do harm, and therefore justice is often denied. At that point, since the law has been rendered powerless, you become a masked crime-fighter and wreck all sorts of havoc on those for whom the law does not punish for their criminal and abusive behavior. It was standard vigilantism with a patina of “we tried to play by the rules but that didn’t work.”

What I learned as I started reading other books, and most of those didn’t have pictures, is that systems, and the laws around those systems, are often manipulated by one side or the other for their own advantage. The poor system is just trying to maintain some sense of order, but people keep going around it, or ignoring it, or gerrymandering its boundaries so that it no longer provides any sense of confidence that the center of the system can hold. It’s like we are standing in mid-air trying to go in all directions at once. It’s a very disconcerting place to be.

This is what led me to religion, and specifically Jesus of Nazareth on the cross, and how God responds to such events. What do you do when you’ve been betrayed? When the very systems you thought would protect you instead crucify you? What do you do when the ideas, thoughts, people, even yourself that you thought you could always count on, no longer can be counted upon to help? What do you do?

You just love.  There is nothing else in that situation. That’s the difference between Jesus of Nazareth and Daredevil. When the system failed Jesus he did not become some super-hero trying to bring about justice. He accepted his failure to receive justice in the system, and continued to love, even those who betrayed him. As Daredevil discovers it is not easy to accept failure within a system of justice, and even harder to love. It’s easier to put on a mask and start lashing out in pain, in frustration, and a sense of “fairness.” 

But that’s not what Jesus did. He loved. He died…but he loved. And I’ve always wondered if love, not justice, is what made the difference?