Mother Emanuel this week reminded me of this lesson, in the link, that I used to teach in European history.
Christianity, it seems to me, is sustained by humility and forgiveness, and those two are streams fed by deeper waters still. The AME congregants I saw this week, just like the Amish in the Reformation lesson, drink from those waters. By contrast, I see so much barrenness in so much of modern American Christianity.
What I see instead of humlity and forgiveness are arrogance and sanctimony. I see hypocrisy. I see the comfort the weak and ostensibly victimized find in divinely-justified hatred. I see a passion for retribution, a weakness for corruption, and a smug anti-intellectuallism. What a sad waste, since we already have a Congress for these kinds of things.
How life-affirming and how liberating real Christianity can be! Mother Emanuel reminded me of that–as does Pope Francis– and so this week a Charleston church in deepest grief gently humbled me down to Jesus’ level, down to where I would always aspire to live were my own life not so narrowed by pride.
A Work in Progress 