Kingdom Perspectives – A Weighty Matter

In Uncategorized by Roger Staub

“Up With People” was a raucous, vigorous musical stage show Jeanie and I attended with some college friends around 1967.  Barely out of our teens, I’m not sure we understood the message fully, but it was a new endeavor trying to bridge racial, ethnic, and cultural barriers through music, and stir a rather young audience to positive social and political involvement.

I had little self-awareness of my very narrow cultural perspective.  That would require some time and exposure.  In principle, we both celebrated the diversity and inclusiveness the musical touted, but it was much later that we realized how difficult it could be to actually live out the ideals presented in it.

That was, of course, fifty years ago.  Our culture has undergone titanic changes in those five decades.  The civil rights movement, and the corresponding legislation was a significant part of it.  Immigration, legal and otherwise, has shaped the culture radically.  Within the next decade white Americans will be a minority.  And the post-war boom in the US has changed the priorities and values of many citizens, including the Christian population.  We’re pretty self-satisfied sometimes.

Today, many Americans are having to rub shoulders with folks who are not like them.  They not only look different in many cases, but they think differently, reason somewhat differently, and interact with others based on perspectives and traditions quite foreign to many of us.  Consequently, you hear many citizens pining for ‘the good old days’ when such discomforts were very rare, particularly in rural mid-America.

In my home growing up we had the classic painting of Jesus (lighted) hanging in our living room.  Certainly, everyone must know a first century Jew wouldn’t look like that.  But isn’t that how we are; tending to create things in our own image; making them more compatible with our preferences, prejudices and comfort zones?

One of the most obvious things about the messages Jesus delivered was that they were largely directed to individuals; every listener could plug his or her name into the stories and examples He used.  It was personalized rather than being directed to the tribe of Judah or the nation.  Jesus engaged individual people, and even though He framed His message for ‘the lost sheep of the house of Israel,’ many Romans, Greeks, and Samaritans reached out to Him in faith and were never disappointed!

Obviously, the future will present you and me with an increasingly diverse cultural, ethnic, and political mix.  Some Christian people hold to long standing biases and preconceptions about certain groups or ethnicities, even those who are Christian themselves.  How are we going to see people who are part of this amazing mixture of color and culture in a godly light?

Somehow Jeanie, from childhood, had a very open-spirited attitude to folks who were different, and she loved being exposed to new traditions and lifestyles.  Me, not so much!  However, with her encouragement, and many remarkable providences and God-ordained encounters and relationships, I gradually overcame many inherited distrusts and misapprehensions.

In my 20’s I also began reading C.S. Lewis.  One of his essays, “The Weight of Glory,” profoundly seized my heart.  It deals with the amazing implications of an eternity with Christ, and actually having a share in His ‘glory.’  I urge you to find and read it!  One section focuses on the wider aspect of our influence on everyone we meet.  It came to mind as I was writing and so I’m including an excerpt here.  I hope this little passage impacts you as it did me:

“It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor.

The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.

All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. And if he is your Christian neighbor he is most holy, for in him also Christ — the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.”

The point is, as ambassadors for Christ, our commerce is with people, all people.  That sometimes puts us at cross-purposes with many of our relatives, friends, or colleagues who tend to put many, if not most people in categories.  You know . . . . white, black, brown, intelligent, stupid, ignorant, educated, Republican, Democrat, Christian, heathen, or some other category based on their nationality, religion, politics, or even their appearance.

Of course, we all tend to prefer certain people that are like us, or who approve us, or have treated us kindly.  That’s normal.  Nevertheless, being baptized into Christ puts us on a different footing with everyone, as Professor Lewis’ essay clearly states.  That means life for us is full of . . .  well, continual adjustments!

Kindness and civility are finding it difficult to get much ‘air time’ in public discourse these days.  In the name of honesty and transparency folks are venting their disdain for people of differing viewpoints as though they were sinister or demonic.  What troubles me is that Christian people often take the same license when talking to, or about, folks who differ from them on issues like abortion, gay marriage, or other ‘hot button’ topics.  It is vastly more important to value their humanity than to ‘set them straight’ on some matter of thought or behavior.

‘The Truth,’ we must remember, is Jesus Christ!  That truth stands higher than any other perceived value.  So, while we may confront people with biblical perspectives about many issues, we should exercise great care to respect that soul for whom Christ died.  In short, we’re called to think and act ‘redemptively’ toward everyone.

As Professor Lewis warned, this is indeed a heavy weight, ‘and the backs of the proud will be broken.’