God Helping

If the Lord had not come to my help, I should soon have dwelt in the land of silence. Psalm 94

The lights are on, but nobody’s home. That’s me at the moment. Thoughts, ideas, themes, issues, problems, solutions – they’re all running through my mind at near-light-speed – so fast I can’t grab ahold of even one of those ideas, one of those images, anything at all. I want sticky tape on my hands, but they’d been sprayed with non-stick cooking spray instead.

Many of the things I’d like to talk about – write about – lie outside the carton in which this column is  usually located. That’s as it should be. I am not a political pundit or expert on societal matters. I’ve got my opinions, of course, and I can assure you they are all well thought out, cogent, and would be most persuasive if presented (at least they convince ME that I’m right), but my role is not to debate current events or pretend seven hundred words on any topic will change the opinion of any reader.

And yet. And yet.

Should I remain silent in the face of evil? Should I remain silent in the face of mass shootings that take place daily? Should I remain silent in the pool of the commingling blood of thirty thousand gun deaths in our nation each year? Yes, mass shootings get all the publicity. If it bleeds it leads, as they say. But how about the nearly twenty thousand suicides? Should I remain silent to the cries of those whose only solution to the hell they’re in is to kill themselves?

Should I remain silent to the ongoing violence suffered by people of color – at the hands of those whose job is to protect and to serve – regardless of color? It does not matter that most cops are good people doing good work most of the time for most of their communities, including communities of color. But should I remain silent when accountability appears to be the exception rather than the rule? 

Should I remain silent when the rights of half our population are brazenly taken away by the capricious decision of six people – out of 330 million? A body of nine is supposed to take care of us against the overreaching whims of executive and legislative branches of government, but who’s got our backs against those nine? Should I remain silent, or whistle my way through the graveyard?

Elie Wiesel, the Romanian-born American writer and survivor of the Nazi death camps says, “Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy … sensitivities become irrelevant.”

“Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” 

A priest was upset by some situation a few years ago and, in addressing the matter in her sermon uttered an expletive. While I have sometimes been less than pristine in my own preaching and teaching it, none-the-less, caught me off-guard. I reflected on the preacher’s choice and asked myself, “What’s worse: a bad word or the deaths of all those children? Which is the real obscenity?”

I can assure you, I don’t have all the answers. Human beings are complex creatures quite capable of taking any solution to any problem and either making them too complex to work, or giving them enough loopholes to drive an eighteen wheeler through. “In chaos there is profit,” declared the Tony Curtis character in Operation Petticoat. 

Heck, God gave Moses Ten Commandments, expanded them to 613 laws (Mitzvot) by the time the folks got to the Promised Land. Jesus tried to simplify things, cutting them to two: Love God, Love Neighbor & Self. At the very least he knew that hate doesn’t work. Getting even doesn’t work. Getting ahead doesn’t work. Being a doormat doesn’t work. Neither does silence.

Love requires that I speak out. Love requires that I listen. Humility requires we acknowledge that we can’t do it alone, but we can, God helping, do better together.

Now, back to my original question: what have I got to say about faith and life today? That’s a real puzzler here in this, our valley.

Keith Axberg writes on matters concerning life and faith. Author of: Who the Blazes is Jesus? Good News for a Vulgar World (available through Amazon in Print and e-book)