Weekly Meditations

Society does not work without faith. Think of it, imagine if we all lost faith in the value of money, or consider how Black communities lost faith in our health systems because of the Tuskegee syphilis studies. Also, the recent actions of the Supreme Court and the conduct of our nation's police and government agencies, including ICE, have given citizens reason to lose faith in our justice system.

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When we lose faith in our institutions, we have no reason to participate in those systems. Why should we? Dr. King said it well: those who capitulate to injustice support injustice. This is the case for America's religious institutions. Why should we have faith in them when we can see how they are used to promote the unjust concentration of corrupt wealth and power, at the expense of women, children, the LGBTQIA+ community, and minority peoples? We consistently see the hypocrisy of American Christians who do not care about feeding the hungry or providing sanctuary for refugees. How could anyone trust such a Christian?

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In Mark 12, Jesus chastised the Temple priests for taking the last coins of a poor widow. Yet American Christians rip salvation away from their neighbors, then gaslight us into believing they are holy; furthermore, American Christians force their own distorted values upon the lives of our fellow Americans through cruel and invasive legislation such as the reading of select biblical verses in schools, the banning of same sex marriages, and the restrictions of reproductive freedoms. American Christians demonstrate a deep lack of concern for the well-being of others and a profound overcommitment to their own self-comfort. As Din Djarin, the Mandalorian, would say, “This is Not the Way.”

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How, then, can we, in more progressive expressions of American Christianity, build faith with our neighbors when their trust has been so deeply violated? Where is the fertile ground to plant a mustard seed when so much of America's soil has been ripped up, polluted, and exploited by a Christian theology of wealth and power?

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In Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23, Jesus reminds us that we are not just the seed, but also the soil. One cannot sustain the other without collaboration and trust. Faith is not just for God alone; we also need to BUILD faith with our neighbors.

How is it that the good faith built by loving and courageous Christians, such as Christian abolitionists, Fredrik Douglas, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sojourner Truth, and Robert Gould Shaw, Christian anti-fascists like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christian civil rights leaders, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and John Lewis, and modern Christians including Cornel West, and Rachel Held Evans, has been drowned out by the bombastic self aggrandizing hatred of the American Fundamentalist Christian Nationalist?

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The roots of faith have been ripped from the soul of America's faithful, and the seeds of faith are slow to grow in a nation shown we cannot trust any of our institutions. Faith is needed for society to function, and faith cannot grow when society is unconcerned with the common good.

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I do not believe we need religion to rebuild faith, but we as a people do need to make a conscious, structured effort to practice moral love in civic life if we want to remineralize the faith-producing soil of our nation.

Rev.Dev