Was Jesus Naive?

If we say that the Golden Rule is naive, we are saying that the man who laid it down is naive.  And that man was Jesus.

The irony is that we seem to actually believe that Jesus lived some easy life with no understanding of the dangers we face, forgetting that Jesus died as a victim of torture of the worst kind; that Jesus was the defendant in a show trial; that Jesus was himself murdered in a public, shameful, excruciating way.

We forget that the man who laid down the Golden Rule for us also laid down his life for us.

We forget that he knew suffering, he knew death, he knew shame, he knew anger and he knew temptation.

I think what we’re really doing is turning our backs on the demands of our faith in favor of its gifts, as if the two could be separated.

And where, oh where, is the disclaimer that the rule we call golden (as in something to be valued or treasured) not be observed when we are in groups (as in how we behave as a nation)?

Jesus knew what we face, the challenges of our lives.  He always has known.  Perhaps the earth journey was simply to show us that he’s always known, so we’d get it, the way a parent may share an episode from her youth with her teenager, to show the teenager that she really does understand.  Maybe.

Whether it took a trip to planet earth to redeem us or whether it was an elaborate object lesson or something else entirely, of all the things Jesus was, naive was not one of them.

What we call the golden rule was part of his father’s business – the very family business that we, his followers, have inherited.

There are other businesses.

But this one is ours.

How we are to conduct that business is very clear.

We can come up with all the reasons in the world not to follow it.

But then, we’re about somebody else’s business, aren’t we?

Wars & World Leaders: What I Want From You

When you want to kill

other human beings

I want you to look

sad and not angry

When you want to send

our children a world away

to kill and fight and die

I want you to look

remorseful not presidential

When you make and make

possible guns and nukes

and bombs and such

I want you to look

chagrined – recognizing

the already failure of your

acts that it is instead of

gleeful at anticipated success

When the children – anyone’s

children – die, I want you to

confess instead of count

as if it were a basketball score

And speaking of the children –

when you decide it’s killing time

I want – no, I demand –

that you not do it on the backs

of dead children – they are 

beyond your saving and your

anger will not bring them back

and I care about them and all

the others and I do not need

pictures of bloody corpses

of the too-young to decide

whether the living children

can be saved by this course

and I resent and tremble in

my own anger that you would

use them to make you sleep

better at night for the children

still breathing you would risk

to avenge they who need no

vengeance for they are far

past caring about such things

I want you not to stand on

their corpses – that’s what 

I want

When the temptation to the 

killing fields comes, I want

you to eschew the language

of heroes and wonder if you

would go or send your own

beloved where you would

so easily dispatch mine

Who am I to want so much

from you?  I am citizen.

There's a War a-Comin'

Can you feel it?
The winds of war are in the air
no one yet bands together
to begin the songs of hope
and opposition that are the
sure signs that war is upon us,
but upon us it is

and this time, it’s name is Syria

and the Republocrats
and the Democans
band together
for war makes common
cause of us all (well, almost)

the case is making and made
righteousness walks the land
concern for brothers we do
not know the justness of whose
cause we cannot weigh become
our pole star

and I sit and wonder why
it is so much easier
so much more necessary
urgent
claiming
to kill those who kill
than to protect those
who would be killed

is it really so simple
that all the big boys and
girls can so easily turn
fodder into money? as they
align to arm one against the
other?

do the reasons matter as we
align and realign and realign
yet again to wage yet another
blood bath in that part of the
world my own people call
the Middle where the only
centrality we can find is the
desire, the need, the rage,
to kill and kill and kill again?

I want to tell God we’re better than this.
Seems I was wrong – again.