Column for Jan 20

My calendar tells me that this is the middle of a week for Christian unity. By some measures, we have made strides in this, especially the number of older, established churches who read from a common set of readings, the lectionary, on Sundays. At times, the culture has a sense that Christians may well be unified in being priggish, or bigoted, or always hopelessly behind the curve, living in the first bush era and considering ourselves current.

On the other hand, it seems a most quixotic quest. American Christians, without the force of government behind conformity, continue to sprout new aspects of the faith with the spread of a dandelion gone to seed. Christian get so polarized that one would think that even within denominations, they belong to utterly different religions.

In the face of inevitable conflict, it seems that our first impulse is to jettison our home church and search for a new home. Maybe it is, in part, a cultural response to the divorce rate in our marriages.

Our eldest daughter marries in the late spring. I’m thinking about writing her a letter of both memory and advice along the lines of the great essayist Scott Russell Sanders. (He recently retired from Indiana University, where she was graduated). In Hunting for Hope, he writes on fidelity, on being faithful. Along with it close relative, loyalty, it is a virtue being run over by our rampant cult of the self and its preferences. He writes; “I don’t mean habit…trudging along in a rut. I mean actively choosing, over and over, to stay on a path, to abide in a relationship, to answer a call.”

I think of the Hebrew word, “hesed.” It is often translated as steadfast love, or loyalty. It has the sense of an unwavering commitment, of wholehearted devotion. We far too rarely feel as if we receive such commitment, and we certainly rarely offer it. Instead, we raise our preferences to the level of principle. If we do not get our way, we look for the nearest exit. Some of us have a difficult time even imagining a cause greater than our own self-interest or involvement. Sanders reminds us that fidelity requires restraint, restraint of the id, our childish demands for more, to always win, to not equate desire or wants with needs, to realize that the end does not justify any and all means toward its fulfillment.

In other words fidelity and loyalty make relationships and community more stable. Of course, contention and conflict will occur, but they do not automatically turn to stomping out when reconciliation or tolerant understandings can be brought to bear as the first option. Years ago, James Carville wrote a little book, Stickin’ to get the sense of friendship as having some adhesive expectations, not always threatening to pull apart. The approach fits adherence to a cause as well. Mall culture encourages us to flit from one shiny entrance to another. Some heroes are able to resist that and pursue, doggedly a commitment, nurturing a garden, teaching children, raising money for medical research. the late Vaclav Havel stood his ground for freedom when Czechoslovakia was under the Soviet boot heel. Eventually, he would become president of the country when the Iron curtain rusted into splinters. Being able to do that required ”transcending individual experience and being anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.” Religious people have just such an anchor, as long as it doesn’t get displaced by the siren call of egotistical self. To be part of something beyond ours own self-interest adds depth to life. It is “not good for us to be all alone,” but connected to the fabric of human community.