Long Way Here

I do not believe King Jesus will say, “You hoped too much in me and trusted me too much.”

I do not believe he will say, “You were too gracious with my grace, too truthful with my truth, too merciful with my mercy, too compassionate with my compassion, too welcoming with my hospitality, too loving with my love.”

I do not believe he will say, “You believed in new possibilities too recklessly.”

I do not believe King Jesus will say any of that to us.

Recently a Christian (not in WCC) met with me to ask what I think about refugees, knowing WCC’s work. He expressed his feelings of distress with neighbors seeking refuge in our nation. He was not distressed with the conditions these neighbors are living in, but with the “burden” and “strain” they will place on our nation’s economy by the resources they require. He used language of dislike and at times, disdain. So I asked him candidly if he felt that refugees are an enemy to the American way of life. He didn’t answer it explicitly, but instead talked about the threat they bring to “American stability.”

Beloved, refugees are never your enemies. The institutions, systems and people who create them are. In the Christian tradition refugees are our neighbors. More specifically, refugees are the Christ.

(See Matthew 25:31ff, Romans 13:8-10, and so on and so on)

Reflecting on Christian history while waiting for my doctor, it occurs to me that when Constantine and Lactantius issued the Edict of Milan, Christianity became a utility (a tool or mechanism) to establish the Roman concept of civilized order. Roman religion supported identities of dominance (superiority) based upon gender and class (aristocracy). In the Roman Empire, Christianity, for two hundred years, had proven to be a religion that challenged identities of dominance and long embraced a politic (a governed way of life) that compelled them to work toward an ethic where all in the Empire were welcomed and included, regardless of gender and class. This was particularly compelling for Lactantius. He writes about how this can be used to bring unity and order to Roman civilization (even though soon after he begins a low-key persecution of Christians despite the Edict before his co-emperor Constantine overthrows him).

What neither Constantine or Lactantius seemed to imagine is that Christianity’s politic of welcome and inclusion didn’t challenge identities of dominance just within Rome, but throughout all of humanity. They didn’t understand Pentecost.

In the Christian faith, no Empire, nationality, or specific ethnicity could be held as superior to another, if it wanted to remain a faithful expression of the Christ of Christianity. The first two centuries of Christianity consistently struggled and wrestled with itself in an effort to be faithful to the Christ’s law of Love. Therefore, Christianity was not going to easily become the utility of any social or political system. Christianity already has a social and political system complete with its own “edict” issued by its King, Jesus the Lord.

The tragic outcome history reveals is that many became adherents to Lactantius and Constantine’s Roman-centric Christianity (aka Christianity married to and organized around the empire’s political ideals and aspirations). These adherents laid down the Law of Love for the laws of Rome. After Constantine’s death these christians held onto this coercive expression of faith that empowered them to forcibly convert others or inflict violence upon them if they refused. Christianity became conquest and was re-planted in the soil that nurtured identities of dominance.

Today’s USA politicians and many of their constituents—everyday folk—want to use Christianity as a mechanism for “uniting our Nation,” much like Constantine and Lactantius (indeed many world governments want to do this). But true Christianity will not be the USA’s religion or some mechanism for establishing USA ideology or democracy. True Christianity stands on its own as a different politic governed by a Law of Love—self-giving and self-emptying—and that is the power that challenges all identities of dominance and superiority, whether it be gender-based, class-based, ethnic-based, race-based, or nationality-based. And one day when USA follows the way of Rome and becomes a footnote in the pages of history, varied expressions of true Christianity will still stand. As I see it the task for us today is to know true Christianity from false Christianity. Historical sketches like this can help us know the difference.

Christians in the USA would do well to know the history of our faith.

After twelve years of training neighbors and organizations on trauma-informed and trauma-responsive care, I have found there are two critical elements that must be present: compassion and empathy. If we do not work to cultivate these two qualities as character virtues, then all of the knowledge and practices trauma studies teach us will be useless.

Compassion has its roots in the Old Saxon word for “care” is kara. The Latin of kara is “compassio”—to suffer with. Compassion means to lament or mourn or share in another person’s pain—it’s entering into suffering, not taking it away. More provocatively, it is to be moved in the inward parts, in the visceral organs or bowels. Compassion is gut-level sympathy we call empathy.

Empathy is a cognitive response that requires a person to engage their imagination, to see with the eyes of the mind and heart another person’s struggle in order to foster compassion and shared sense of suffering.

Without compassion and empathy we will no longer see trauma as an explanation, but view it instead as an “excuse.” We will subconsciously put ourselves in the seat of judgment, rather than de-center ourselves. When times get hard we will choose the default impulse to facilitate a program over presence and bend toward “fixing,” or other behavioral modification tactics. In our subconscious the neighbor will lose their person-centered identity and self-directed agency. In the end, everyone gets hurt.

Compassion and empathy are critical to care.