Does anyone know what the early Christians were known as before they split from their Jewish cousins? They were known as followers of the way, those who followed Jesus. I am not claiming that all religions are the same or that there is a one-to-one correlation between them, although when I was a spiritual counselor in South Dakota, when I did fifth steps for our First Nation brother and sisters, they would often talk about the red road, which meant they were trying to get their life back on track and renew their relationships with all their living relatives, two-legged and four-legged alike. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told us that being a disciple is a hard thing to accomplish and the road, "straight is the path and narrow the way."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in his book, "The Cost of Discipleship" about this young man who went away grieving because although he wanted to follow Jesus, he couldn't because Jesus asked him first to give away all of his possessions. The Rev. Dr. Bonhoeffer said it wasn't the amount of goods or riches that this rich young man had that kept him from following Jesus, but it was simply that he couldn't put Jesus first in his heart and in his life. The "Cost of Discipleship" was published in 1937 so it was being written when Adolf Hitler was consolidating his power in Germany and preparing the country for purification and war with the 'blessing' of the national and nationalistic Lutheran church. Bonhoeffer talked about 'cheap grace' the kind that doesn't ask anything of you except to go along with whatever the church, society, and the government tell you to believe and do. He bore witness to the evil which can come from putting our own needs of comfort and safety ahead of following Christ.
On Friday, I took a class up at Cook County Higher Education on Safe Together, Empowering Peaceful Responses, Rural MN Community Safety Project. The leaders of Nonviolent Peace Force talked about two different type of paradigms that usually govern humanity's need for safety. The first was a mechanistic paradigm in which is a closed system where something for one person means less for another, where the ends justify the means, and to solve a problem you must isolate it from that which is around it. Safety is expelling the problem/person/people from the system. Does this sound familiar?
God's Kingdom or the Kingdom of God often doesn't land right in our day of wokeness and living in a democracy. However, when John the Baptist and Jesus used this phrase, it wasn't talking about heaven above or heaven as the afterlife, they were talking about the way and the road here on earth. It was opposing the Roman Empire itself, it was opposing any king back then, government committing genocide in history, or democracy today that sees the world in a mechanistic paradigm.
The ecological paradigm is an open system where it believes there is enough for everyone, that the means and the ends have to ling up, and you can't solve a problem without looking at the whole system, not just isolating it. The way to attain safety is working with the problem in its or their relationship with those around it and restoring the good.
For too long, Western civilization, with the backing of the Church, has not even seen the world as an us against them, but just an us and the rest doesn't matter. With Hurricane Helene, we have another example of how we can't ignore or deny that there is a relationship between humanities' actions and the world in which we live. The good news is that God created the world in which there can be an ecological paradigm where both humanity and nature and animals, birds, fish, and the things that crawl can thrive. The good news is that in our religion of Christianity, and just about any religion, there is the basis and the actions that can bring about this balance. It will take time and it will cost us in many ways, just as now we are paying the cost for believing we are outside of nature's ways. But, however, nonetheless, we do have an opportunity to create a better life, a better way, and a better road to the future and for the future if we follow the paradigm, the kingdom, the kindom of the one who tells us to consider the lilies, that God knows and counts every sparrow, and all are welcome.
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