Beware of piety for show

Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Pray then in this way:
Our Father in heaven,
   hallowed be your name.
   Your kingdom come.
   Your will be done,
     on earth as it is in heaven.
   Give us this day our daily bread.
   And forgive us our debts,
     as we also have forgiven our debtors.
   And do not bring us to the time of trial,
     but rescue us from the evil one.

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.   --Jesus, in Matthew 6

More policy proposals, fewer personal attacks, please!

It will not surprise those who read this blog to learn that I support the Harris-Walz ticket for President and Vice President, Sherrod Brown for re-election to the Senate from Ohio, and Democrats all down the ballot. There are so many things the Trump-controlled Republican Party stands with with which I do not agree that I have no choice. Fortunately, I agree with most of what the Democratic Party stands for so I am happy to cast my ballot for Democrats in November.

Party politics is a challenge for me because I am not a fan of simplistic slogans and empty promises, and that’s what both parties seem to thrive on. Nor do I like fear-mongering and name-calling. I try myself not to engage in them, and I appreciate it when people treat me and my convictions with respect in return.

Though I support Democrats 100% this time around, I have found their convention to be filled with more noise than substance. I’d like more specifics about things like climate change, foreign policy, budgets, and gun legislation. But I know TV’s audience is easily bored, so I am not the person to consult about what works to capture and sustain interest.

I offer a special tip of the Guardian’s cap to Tim Walz for keeping his excellent acceptance speech mercifully short. Would that all the speakers learned that lesson!

Two Trump-sponsored emails lodge in my spam filter today, both signed by Mr. Trump himself, both asking for money.

This morning Mr. Trump noted that he is to sentenced in a month, and said: “But the fight is far from over. In just one month, all hell breaks loose when I’m sentenced by a corrupt judge-DESPITE NO CRIME!” Is it merely a prediction that all hell will break loose, or is it a call to arms?

Then, this afternoon, he promised that, “Together, we will DEMOLISH THE DEEP STATE and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Demolition is violent, and produces nothing but rubble. Can Mr. Trump tell us what we will put in the place of this deep state? My experience with Mr. Trump is that he is much better at destruction than at construction when it comes to governing.

Mr. Trump’s very own words make it easy for me to vote Democratic. I am an American patriot; I believe in the rule of law.

Calm before the storm?

 

I took a short bike ride late this afternoon through the neighborhood just east of our home. It’s a neighborhood I’ve ridden through many times over the last four years, so I know it quite well.

I was struck by an eerie calm as I rode into its web of streets, a calm such as I imagine one experiences in a hurricane’s eye. It’s always fairly quiet in that serene neighborhood, but this quiet was different…no breeze, no sound, no movement…none at all.

I live just a few miles from the south shore of the lake named Eire, where we’ve been through a few days of alternating sun and showers. It’s humid, and when the sun shines, it’s very warm. Then, thick clouds move in to tease us with a few drops of rain, and it’s still very warm.

For a few moments a few hours ago,I felt as if I was in between things bigger than I, bigger than the neighborhood, bigger than life itself. Like being in the eye of a storm of cosmic proportions.

A thought passed through my mind: what if every single person on earth could enter a place of calm, even if it’s an eerie calm, as quiet as this? Am I not indeed blessed, though for reasons I will never understand?

As I rode through the meandering streets, I noticed a few new Kamala Harris and Sherrod Brown signs springing up on lawns. They were joining the Donald Trump and Bernie Moreno signs that have been there for several weeks already, and which still are in the majority. Made my Democratic heart leap!

But what storms will follow this moment of calm? Perhaps next week’s convention in Chicago, and very likely the whole cataclysm of words and promises and events that will culminate in November’s election. I was in a calm destined not to last forever, heading toward a storm that may last the rest of my life.

And the old, once-popular, now sort of hokey-sounding prayer-song seeped through my helmet into my head: “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.”

Indeed.

(As I post this, it is finally raining the kind of rain we need. May it keep at it for several hours.)

Lord, I want to be a Christian, but…

Some followers of Jesus of Nazareth want to turn our United States of America into a “Christian nation.” By that they mean a nation that explicitly orders its life by a set of Christian principles and norms as determined and enforced by certain Christians.

            As a clergy member of the American Presbyterian/Reformed branch of the Christian Church, I am troubled by any program to impose some form of Christianity upon all 330+ million Americans. Our denomination has honored the constitutional and historical separation of church and state. For most Presbyterian Americans I know, a “wall” between church and state describes how the two institutions should relate to each other.

Recently, while I was thinking about church and state, an African American spiritual came to mind: “Lord, I want to be a Christian in my heart.” And I found myself following that expression of desire with what I do not desire: “but I don’t want to live in a Christian nation.”

Questions about faith are intensely personal, especially for adolescents. They were as close to me as my beating teen-aged heart when I sang that spiritual around church camp fires decades ago. In my life-long search for answers, I found encouragement from friends who wanted to become more loving, holy, and Jesus-like Christians. Mine was a personal search carried out in a community of searchers and finders, a worldwide community called “the Church of Jesus Christ.”

I never considered that my search for my heart’s desire could be addressed by political powers or forces. I never felt the slightest inclination to ask the help of any branch of government at any level to help me figure out who I was, religiously or otherwise.

I still want to be a Christian, a faithful follower of Jesus. But I can only honestly pursue this desire in a religiously neutral and free nation where I can make my religious choices and carry out my religious commitments independent of, and at times in tension with, state influence.

I would not want our free nation to become a Christian nation—even if its Christianity were the sort of Christianity I espouse. Even if it were dominated by Christians governing according to the Beatitudes (Matthew 5) instead of according to the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20), I would not want it.

I oppose posting the Beatitudes in public schools with as much vigor as I oppose displaying the Commandments in them. Whether a religion of law or a religion of blessedness, it should not be promoted even indirectly, and certainly not in public educations’ classrooms. No particular religious faith should be supported in any way by the state or by the state’s tax dollars.

Remember how horrified we were when the mullahs took control of Iran? Those who want some so-called Christian equivalent to prevail in the USA will become our home-grown mullahs, wielding political power to make everyone conform to their lifestyles and values. They will visit oppression, hatred, recrimination, and punishment upon those who do not meet their standards.

Of course, there is a relationship between ethics and justice derived from religious convictions and political activity. We can bring our religious passion for the good to the public square for consideration by the people. But the people decide, via our system of government, what is best for us all as a nation. Such decision-making should not be forced upon us by the political power of religious organizations or by presumed revelations of divine will.

We Americans are not perfect, but the best of us have wanted us to be a welcoming homeland for all, without regard to religious persuasion or lack thereof. To abandon that ideal is to tear at the heart of who we are.

The nose knows...

 

We are all diminished when candidates for public office lie to us, though I do get a little joy out of seeing candidates I don’t much like fail the truth test.

I like it not at all when candidates I support fail that test.

Be careful, Democrats: people are listening to you again. Don’t blow it with stupid words and claims. Let the other side win the Pinocchio race.

How we delight in noisy political assemblies!

I hate, I despise your festivals,

   and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.

Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,

   I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
   I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
   I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters,
   and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
                                                               (God, in Amos 5:21-24)

Olympians!

We watched two of the four finalists in the Cleveland International Piano Competition play concertos with the Cleveland Orchestra, and now we are watching the Olympics from Paris. Who cannot be awed--simply awed--by the incredible achievements of the these young people! It is hard to over-estimate all it took to bring them to their pinnacles of success in their respective fields. Artists all!

Can we coexist? What if we tried to?

 

A gasoline engine and an electric motor exist together under the hood of our hybrid Honda. You could say they draw from each others' strengths and make up for each others' weaknesses. 

It's a far from perfect analogy, but what if religions understood themselves and their relationships with one another in sort of the same way?

It might make for a smoother running, smoother riding world. It would be a blessing.

My reaction to “Two American Families”

 

We watched Frontline’s “Two American Families" recently. It traces two average—I guess you’d say lower-middle class—families from the 1980s to 2024.

When their good-paying manufacturing jobs disappeared in the ‘80s, they began working a long succession of jobs for far less wages than they’d received before, and far less security. The kind of part-time, no benefits jobs that many of the people who serve the public hold. It was a constant struggle for them to raise families, but both continued to work wherever and whenever they could. Somehow, sparks of hope and optimism seemed to keep alive in them, though it was tough. Now, approaching retirement ago, they know they will have to keep on working as long as they are able.

Theirs is a life I can hardly understand. I think they might be called “the working poor.” I don’t know how the jobs of the working poor are counted in employment stats, but I suspect many of the jobs that are so counted are the kinds they have held. Jobs, yes; but not jobs that provide adequately what people need to live in reasonable security.

Toward the end, three clips from Presidential Inaugural Addresses were shown—Obama, Trump, and Biden (I believe) all promising economies that would improve the lives of everyone. Yet the lives of these two American families had made no discernible steps forward.

Neither political party seems willing or able to make America work for the working men and women those families represent. Tax cuts to the wealthy do not trickle down to them. Putting the blame on immigrants his little basis in facts and stokes ethnic resentment. Taking their votes for granted generation after generation is using them, not helping them.

We could blame them for not getting the education they need for today’s economy. And there is something to be said for that. But it must be extraordinarily difficult to go to school while working as they must to keep food on the table and pay the mortgage and medical bills and all the rest. My educational opportunities came so easily to me that it would be hypocritical of me to tell them they, in their circumstances, can do the same as I did.

Maybe our politicians fail to address this kind of problem because America as a whole does not want it to be addressed. Maybe we who are more secure know deep down inside us that one reason for our comfortable positions in life is that the working poor make goods and services cheap for us, and we like that. We don’t demand change that would cost us something, so we don’t get it.

All I know is that people such as that documentary followed for forty years deserve better in this United States of America. They are honest, they are hard-working, and they are faithful to one another and to their family responsibilities. Who will do what needs to be done to give them a real chance to thrive? That’s what the electorate should be demanding to know as this fall’s election campaigns heat up.