Gordon Stewart: "You're Reading from MY Book!"
Six trumpeter swan cygnets (babies) have joined their parents on the pond next to the cabin by the wetland. Their family is intact. It's as beautiful to behold as separating children is ugly. The swans are lucky. So am I.
The cabin by the wetland is a place of privilege. There are no other humans here. But the news has a way of following me to this natural sanctuary that invites a deeper silence. The world doesn't need another political honker, I tell myself. But my head hurts keeping inside me the need to cry out against cruelty, dishonesty, and bad religion in the nation's capitol.
I respond to Attorney General Sessions' twisting of the Bible (Romans 13) the way Jewish comedian Lewis Black responded to Christian televangelists who pretend to know the Jewish Bible: "You're reading from _ MY _ book! If you want to know about MY book, ask a Jew, and he will tell you! You Christians don't see one of my guys reading YOUR book (i.e. the New Testament) and telling you what it means. Do you?"
Like Lewis Black, I'm not big on televangelists who misuse the Hebrew Bible. I'm even less fond of institutional powers and authorities that use MY book, the New Testament, to justify a policy that is beyond justification.
Romans 13 commends to its first century C.E. readers a proper respect for the civil order represented by the office of the emperor. But it is respect for the office, not its occupant, and not an endorsement of illegitimate uses of the office, nor of unjust laws promulgated by the civil authorities. To presume otherwise, as Mr. Sessions does, ignores the location from which the Letter to the Romans was written and why its author was there. Paul was in jail. Paul was a prisoner of conscience.
The current U.S. Administration's abuse of Holy Scripture hurts my ears, even on the wetland. If you're going to use Romans 13, continue to read beyond what you claim supports your argument. "Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves the neighbor has fulfilled the law. ... The commandments ... are summed up in this one rule: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law" (Rom. 13: 8-10). A thoughtful reader of the letter penned from a Roman jail cell might conclude that it was Saul of Tarsus (Paul), who gave Cornel West his definition of justice: "Justice is love made public".
Love made public does not separate children from their parents. Love doesn't do it anywhere in any century. Cruelty does. Fascism does. Hypocrisy does. White privilege does. National idolatry does. Willful religious ignorance does.
Before you site MY book as your authorization for cruelty, zoom in on the scene of Jesus' rebuke of his mistaken disciples:
"When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, 'Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.' And he took them in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them" (Gospel of Mark 10:14-16).
Imagine Jesus taking the children on his knee again - the loving, crucified Jesus -in an ICE detention center on the Mexican border. Or buy yourself a ticket to the Minnesota wetland to spend a day with the trumpeter swans who do better than we at caring for children.
- Gordon C. Stewart with the trumpeter swans on the wetland beyond our boundaries, June 20, 2018.