Duty Calls

I remember reading once that a cultural difference between earlier generations --  the Builders and the Boomers --and those who have come after is the loss of the concept of duty, the notion that there is an inherent moral obligation to do what is right rather than what one wants. From relationship.  For example, I had a duty towards my parents.  It did not derive from what they did or did not do for me, although that was significant.  Nor did it arise from my desire to have my own children feel dutiful to me.  The obligation arose strictly out of relationship, because they were my parents they deserved the respect and care.  When I received my I-A draft classification in 1967, I recognized a duty to my own country.  I did not flee to Canada or opt for incarceration.  I signed up, though I reserved the right to decide the path that service would follow and joined the Coast Guard.  It was my duty to serve.

Duty exists regardless of the motivation for serving it.  So, for example, I may be faithful to my wife because fidelity was inculturated in me.  I may refrain from straying because it is in the best interest of the marriage and family.  I may abstain from wandering because I fear the social and financial consequences of divorce.  I may be true to my wife because I am in a sacred sacramental relationship. But none of these things creates the duty; they only motivate me to acknowledge it.

As Christians, we also have a duty to our fellow Christians and those beyond church boundaries.  The duty arises from baptism, which makes each of us a member of a new family with a number of new brothers and sisters, and confirmation, in which we were mustered and commissioned to a mature effectuation of that family relationship, and also to help build the Kingdom of God beyond church walls.  That means loving neighbour as oneself  -- helping to create a society in which the will of God is done on earth as in heaven.  I see it as a duty growing out of deep gratitude for the many blessings we enjoy, growing out of relationship with the Divine.  We so act because it is the right thing to do, and not to garner a reward.  And, after all, Christ's kind of life -- life lived for others -- is the only life truly worth living.          

God and Wealth

In the gospels Jesus speaks more about wealth than any other topic.  He says that the love of wealth, and its accumulation, constitute the greatest danger to a person's spiritual life.   That concept stands in stark contrast to the false message of today's seed-faith evangelists who teach that wealth is a sign of God's special favour because God wants us to be rich in the things of this world.  This phony word is called prosperity theology and it is based on re-creating God in an image that benefits certain people.

The growing wealth gap in our country adversely affects the middle and lower-income Americans -- directly in suppressed wages and benefits, and indirectly through the crippling of social programs. What a difference it would make if our nation could guarantee a job with decent wages to every willing able-bodied person, generous welfare to those unable to work, daily child care, free higher education to the motivated and qualified, and for all citizens good health care plus life and exigency insurance.  The greatest obstacle to those accomplishments is inadequate taxation of the wealthiest, accompanied by our corrupt tax code that allows corporations to avoid taxes and receive corporate welfare from government, while hiding huge lots of revenues in offshore banks and paying obscene compensation to senior management in cash and stocks.

As Jesus suggests, gross wealth disparity is not good for anyone including, finally, those at the top.   The great writer Ernest Hemingway wrote, "Later on, when reality got to me, I saw the rich for what they were, a goddamn blight like a fungus that kills tomatoes.  I set the record straight in 'Snows of Kilimanjaro'.  I still feel the way Harry felt about the rich in the story, always will."  In his deathbed statement, the fabulously wealthy Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, said, "Stop pursuing wealth.  It can only make a person into a twisted human being like me."

I believe that we can, and should, continue to honour and reward entrepreneurship. I am not talking about flattening incomes.  I am talking about people giving to the common good according to the extent to which they have prospered, a biblical concept.   I believe we can do that and create a new nation of economic justice, opportunity and compassion.  It would be in the spiritual best interest of our country and, most of all, a real blessing to the wealthiest amongst us.

Another Ancestor

Genealogical research is a lot of fun.    It is also hard work and can be a sobering experience when one encounters the panoply of characters in our human story.  Yet, for every person of dubious repute, there always seems to be another person of real virtue.  In my family that is particularly true regarding persons who have stood up for religious liberty and paid a price for that.  My earliest such ancestor was Alisdair McIain McDonald, who was the Twelfth Chief of Clan Glencoe, a clan of Catholic (Roman and Anglican) Christians in the Northwestern Highlands of Scotland in the early seventeenth century.  He was murdered in his bed in a surprise attack by lowland Presbyterians, who also killed all the other men (except his sons, who escaped) and burnt down the homes, leaving the women and children to freeze to death in the particularly virulent February snowstorm that day.

This week I discovered a later remarkable ancestor, Mary Seymour Stuart Barrett Dyer.  Mary was born in Greater London in 1611, the year the first and complete King James Bible was promulgated. She spent some time in the Court of King Charles, later married and bore a son before she and her husband William immigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the New World.  Later, on a return journey to England, she converted to the Quaker religion.  That meant that she would come afoul of Governor John Winthrop (an ancestor of my wife!) and the constitution of Massachusetts which made Puritanism the state religion and outlawed all other faiths.  When Mary birthed a stillborn child, Winthrop examined the foetus, declaring that it showed evidence of demonic possession. Finally, on 1 June 1660 she was hanged on Boston Common for apostasy, for having abandoned Puritan religion.  She and three other executed Quakers were denominated "the Boston Martyrs."

Mary's statue in Boston bears her words, "My life not availeth me in comparison to the liberty of the truth."  I salute in spirit Alisdair, Mary and all those of every faith who have suffered at the hands of ignorance and intolerance, and still do.

Faith and Culture

I participate in a monthly discussion group consisting of Christians of all stripes.  Our conversations focus on our commonalities and distinctions, the things that tend to unite us and the things that keep us separated.  In a recent discussion on the issue of marriage equality, a conservative Roman stated the opinion that people have turned their back on the teachings of the Church and of the Bible, just to follow a secular culture.  In response, a progressive Evangelical pointed out that, at the time of the Civil War, the Church and the Bible were both wrong on slavery, but the Spirit led the culture to the conviction that owning people had to stop.  The culture, this participant said, dragged the Church into compliance with new revelation through the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  He maintained that the same kind of progressive revelation has led our modern culture to embrace justice for gay people based on the new scientific understanding of sexual orientation, yet church response is uneven.

Progressive revelation works against the idolatrous tendency to attribute infallibility to someone's reading of Scripture or to some body of religious teaching, or to a particular hierarch or Council, or to the Church generally.  In that way, religious faith can be kept fresh, faithful but relevant in every age.

Christ the King

Sunday is the Feast of Christ the King, the last Sunday in the liturgical year.  Unlike most festivals, this celebration is recent and was first celebrated in 1926 at a time when many false saviours like Mussolini and Stalin were appearing round the world.  The feast was launched in the encyclical Quas Primas by Pope Pius XI which I took the time to read today.  His emphasis on the primacy of divine rule in the lives of everyday Christians seems to me a challenge to give our highest priority to living the teachings and actions of the Master in our daily lives.  As Jesus said, few enter that narrow gate.

The Roman pontiff notes some negative trends that commitment to the Reign of Christ could help to reverse.  Amongst other, he mentions, "the seeds of discord, sown far and wide; those bitter rivalries and enmities between nations, which so hinder the cause of peace; that insatiable greed which is so often hidden under a pretence of public spirit and patriotism...blind and immoderate selfishness making men seek nothing but their own comfort and advantage, and measure everything by these; no peace in the home because men have forgotten or neglect their duty, with the unity and stability of the family undermined."  This, the Pope notes, "is society, in a word, shaken to its foundations and on the way to ruin."

The Kingdom of God is the world as it would look if the will of God were done here as in heaven.  It is a matter of allegiance and, for too many, religion is not allowed to get in the way of their politics. The Gospel goes begging.  Kingdom living requires a radical re-orientation and re-prioritization of our lives.  It is hard to do.  But we need to do it for Christ's sake, for the sake of our own souls, and for the sake of the world.