Sep 24, 2017

Follower of Jesus (38)

Blessed are the merciful,

For they will be shown mercy. (11)

Matt. 5:7

The Name of God is Mercy (2)

We will continue to summarize the past posts on the beatitude of being merciful.

Week 6: intolerance seems to be a part of the human psyche. Fear of anybody or anything that is “different” is viewed with suspicion by most of the human race. The overcoming of intolerance and fears are core to being a follower of Jesus. Generally this trait lies dormant in most established cultures, as these long established cultures go back hundreds or thousands of years. In the past, the appearance of a new group from another culture in an established culture with a long history usually meant a disaster was about to happen, and wars ensued rapidly. In the Americas it became part of the soul of land, since the Americas became the refuge of so many fleeing their root culture, even though the hatred of someone new, especially with a different color skin, created great tensions and action groups, like the KKK of the last century. This mixture of cultures is a gift from God, encouraging us to grow in our understanding of various others to facilitate assimilation between cultures, encouraging us to see that indeed, we are all one.

Week 7: The seventh week continued the study of the birth of fears due to different cultures, clothing, habits, various ethnic singularities such as language and dialects. We saw that the wide spread fears of the ‘other’, as defined by one’s own ways and language, was carried over to the Americas in the form of enclaves forming in various cities or lands, such as the German farms in the Midwest, or Chinatown(s) in large cities. Each group kept themselves isolated, until the rise of universal technology destroyed much of that isolation. But the feelings of ‘mine’ or ‘ours’ did not go away, and we are seeing the result today of that deep-seated realm of fears and internal isolation that explodes in prejudices against anything that threatens their sense of who they have identified themselves as belonging, hence the recent outward rise of ‘white supremacy’ in the Americas and elsewhere revealing long established fears.

Week 8: The refugee situation has been front and center of discussion for years. The response of the America’s over the years has not been overly-generous, but reasonable in assimilating newcomers into our society. The last time a large influx of refugees was welcomed with open arms into this country was after the Vietnam war, when we felt responsible for those fleeing the war that we gave up on. At that point it was almost open-ended with all who desperately sought and achieved coming here were quickly welcomed and sent to a town where they were welcomed, usually by a group affiliated with a church. But that was a rare event in modern times. The doors were opened wide during the nineteenth century, when we were eager to fill land that had been “liberated” from the native Americans (another sad story), and cheap labor was in high demand. We stand today as separate from the rest of the non-communist world in offering only a token welcome to the refugees from a war that we have contributed so strongly. The country’s signal of mercy ebbs and flows (just look at our treatment of native Americans and the reverse treatment of displace Europeans during the nineteenth century).

Week 9: At the end of WWII world saw a new approach to try to end or at least slow the continuous devastating onslaught of global war: America rebuilt their own allies, but also rebuilt the shattered economies and cities of those they had defeated. The result was better than they had hoped, as former enemies embraced the changes and saw the advantages to themselves in doing so. Love actually worked! The command by Jesus to love your enemies does have advantageous over that of straight dominance that seemed to be part of the ancient human psyche. Of course not all sides were willing to try that approach, as it seemed too simple to achieve anything good, and it was thought it would only encourage those who wanted dominance. And those who only wanted to own all of humanity saw, rightly, that this was just the opposite: each could choose their own destiny, loosening their own feeling of power. Having mercy seems to function, if only we look at history. But today’s generational changes help people to forget, or to toss that off as a strange fact of history, ignoring the devastation of the period of history — in their minds, all was always as it is today, for they have known nothing else all their lives.

We will try to place all of this in context next week.

Meditation

Gentle Spirit, we are grateful for the glimpse of what mercy can do in our world. We humans with our short lives and even shorter memory at the very least have a moment we can look back and see mercy and forgiveness in action. The day will come when we will act in a fashion to forgive those who have been our enemies and we can learn to love, and I place my trust in Your way at this time of dangerous and reckless moves in our world. Even though it seems as if we have to relearn each lesson over and over, there has been progress over the centuries towards a more unified response. With our truly worldwide capability to communicate for the first time in human history, may we learn to see that, indeed, we are all one in You. I place my trust in Your Love being the end all some place and time in the future.