With Liberty & Justice For All

Examining the application of "liberty and justice for all" against the intent of the divine in Christian scripture - read on KateRaeDavis.com

Gun violence prevention. Marriage. Minimum wage.

Many of the major debates going on in the US today are multiple faces of one core debate. Which do we value more: liberty or justice?

We pledge allegiance to be a nation “with liberty and justice for all.” Which is a poetic and beautiful aim, but misleading in the way it joins the two values. Liberty and justice don’t hold hands so much as they arm wrestle.

Mary Midgley in The Myths We Live By writes on the way that our post-Enlightenment world is captivated (read: held captive) by the poetic simplicity of these concepts. Such simplicity, she argues, obliterates the tension of trying to value competing ideals.

“Enlightenment concepts need our attention because they tend to be particularly simple and sweeping. Dramatic simplicity has been one of their chief attractions and is also their chronic weakness, a serious one when they need to be applied in detail. For instance, the Enlightenment’s overriding emphasis on freedom often conflicts with other equally important ideals such as justice or compassion. Complete commercial freedom, for example, or complete freedom to carry weapons, can cause serious harm and injustice. We need, then, to supplement the original dazzling insight about freedom with a more discriminating priority system.”

I should note that Midgley is English, though the issues she raises in this paragraph are particular relevant to contemporary USAmerica. Unchecked capitalism and weapon-carrying are two freedoms that USAmericans seem to value more than other developed countries.

And to the same degree that we have freedom, we suffer the consequences of freedom in the form of injustices.

To reframe our debates in terms of the values of liberty and justice:

Do we value commercial freedom for corporations, or wage justice for families?

Do we value freedom for near-unlimited access to weapons, or justice for … well, all the individuals and groups who are targeted without trial; just about any group that is feared or hated (persons of gender and sexual diversity, persons of various racial and ethnic backgrounds, persons of certain religions, persons who happen to work at certain places or attend certain schools, or just happened to be in a public space)? In the gun debate, we measure the cost of rampant freedom in the death toll.

Do we value freedom for marriage or justice for marriage? This one is interesting in that whichever we prioritize, everyone gets to get married. So whatever values are informing anti-marriage sentiment, they aren’t very American. And — more on this next — they aren’t very Christian.

In scripture, liberty and freedom are a strong theme.

The words make most of their appearances in Paul’s letters, and usually as a command to proclaim liberty to those who are captive. To Paul, liberty is for the oppressed. Liberty is not for those who are already in power. Those who live freely have little need for liberation.

Paul actually makes it a point to caution on the use of liberty for those who have it or have newly obtained it. In his letter to the church in Corinth, Paul writes “take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.” He’s talking about eating meat; a modern parallel might be how I shouldn’t allow my freedom to drink alcohol to become a stumbling block to those who are newly confronting their alcoholism. But the spirit of his words apply more broadly: the freedoms of some shouldn’t make life difficult for others who have weaknesses.

Justice and her sisters compassion and mercy are also strong themes throughout biblical texts.

Compassion is most often used as a description of God or Jesus. Mercy, too, almost always comes from God. Throughout both the First Testament writings and in the Gospels we hear the refrain “He had compassion on them.”

Who are the “them” that the Holy One has compassion on? The blind, the hungry, the weeping.

Again, it would seem that the powerful, the full, the content, the ones who have their lives together have little need for compassion.

My favorite use of ‘justice’ in scripture is Jesus’s words to those in positions of power and influence. He acknowledges that they do what is right strictly according to the law, but that they’ve “neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.” Jesus asserts that the spirit of “justice and mercy and faith” should undergird the law, should inform the carrying out of the law.

What would our world look like if we believed similarly?

What might this election season — or to dream even bigger — what might this country look like if “Christian Values” voters made justice and mercy their primary value?

If liberty is for the oppressed and justice and compassion are for those in need, citizens concerned with Christian values must ask, when considering public policy: Who do these laws favor?

And in wider society, Christians must unite as the voice asking: Who is held captive? What do we/they need to be freed from? What might we/they be freed to? Who has been treated unjustly, and what do we need to do in order to make manifest something closer to justice?

The only one who is fully able to hold the tension of “liberty and justice for all” is God.

Especially when we read “for all” conditionally. When people say these words, they rarely mean it. They seem to mean “liberty and justice for all 4% of the world’s population.” But the words were penned with the intent of a global all.

It is God who grants freedom, who leads the people of Israel out of Egypt. It is God in Jesus who shows what true freedom to love looks like. And it is God who will be able to deliver justice without preference or blindness, God who has compassion on us.

Liberty and justice are ultimately the prerogatives of God, and anything we do in their name will undoubtedly fall short of the ideal.

But I don’t see that as any reason for us to stop holding their marriage as our aim.

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In the comments…

Do you tend toward liberty or justice? What has formed and informed that preference?

Who do you see as captives in contemporary USAmerica? Who is treated unjustly?

October 13, 2015January 12, 2016

Integrative Project Presentation

To Play with a Child Named Sorrow - post on Literate Theology / Kate Rae Davis

This Spring, I handed in my final master’s work, called an Integrative Project, titled “To Play with a Child Named Sorrow: Engaging Sin, Grief, and the Self-in-Relation through Myth and Fairy Tale.” I spent 15 months to write and then whittle down to 70 pages, and then whittled further until I had a 10minute presentation. The abstract is below; click through here to see the presentation.

Western theology’s understanding of sin on pride has focused on pride, which has furthered the oppression of women. In the last 50 years, feminist theology has made great strides in explaining how pride (“masculine sin” developed by male theologians) oppresses and has named “feminine sin” (which I term echoism) as diffuseness, a lack of a sense of self, a defining of one’s self by relationship. However, theology has failed to discuss the ways in which these sins interact with one another and how we interpersonally move from sin to grace. In “The Myth of Echo & Narcissus,” we see the ways in which pride harmfully emphasizes the self and how echoism harmfully emphasizes relationship. In “The Tale of the Handless Maiden,” we come to see the transforming process of grief, which frees us to love. This is not simply a balance between pride and echoism; this process is a transformation of human character that comes through an active process of receiving God in the midst of grief. The burden is not on humanity to find a way to manage or balance our sins. Rather, as the tale shows us, characterological change frees us from the constraints of sin (with emphasis on either self or relation) and frees us to love as selves-in-relation.

See the 10-minute presentation here: https://vimeo.com/138362284

"Echo and Narcissus" by John William Waterhouse — “Echo and Narcissus” by John William Waterhouse

May 18, 2015

Correcting Our Spectral Overlap

This sermon was written for St Paul’s Episcopal Church in Seattle, Washington for the Seventh Sunday in Easter. The gospel text was John 17:6-19.

There are glasses available now that correct color blindness. People with green-red color deficiency– the most common form of colorblindness– experience the world in relatively muted tones because of what is called spectral overlap. For these people, the light spectrum that gives us green and the light spectrum that gives us red overlap, and as a result green and red overlap — have you ever blended red and green watercolors? It turns into a kind of dull, dusty gray-brown. For color blind people, to varying extents…that’s their world.

So the problem here, for the person with color deficiency, is not with the eye — the eye and optic neuron is essentially healthy, the systems function normally. The problem is the way the light is received.

So these glasses — these entirely normal-looking sunglasses — the lenses essentially put a space between the spectrums, they pull apart the overlapping spectrums, helping the eye to see that green and red are distinct colors. And by sorting out red and green as distinct colors, that dusty grayness is removed; reds are more red, greens are more green, blues are more blue — the entire color spectrum opens up once these two spectrums are seen as distinct. All by putting on a pair of glasses.

A close friend of mine, a woman who was like a mother to me, had a gift of turning a gray world into a colorful world. She was able to pull apart the aspects of a given situation that were the result of the world’s powers being at work–a result of hateful beliefs and attitudes, the ways systems privilege certain people, the ways despair and depression take hold, creepingly. She had the insight to be able to sort out those powers of the world’s system in my life from what God was doing in my life.

Through our conversations, it is as though she gifted me with color-correcting glasses. When the world feels too gray, I hear her voice and I can adopt her frames to sort out the world’s narratives and God’s narrative, both at play in my life.

I imagine the disciples felt as I feel when I heard that this friend was dying, when Jesus started speaking openly, bluntly, about his impending death. I imagine their fear of having to navigate the world’s ways and see God’s action in the midst of their situations. Their disorientation, like we’re losing a navigational point that told us who we are. I imagine them wondering: Who will name the world’s powers for what they are? Who will help us see God’s movements? Does the death of Jesus mean that the world’s powers will win out in the end? And under all of this, tied to all of these questions, is the Big Question: how can the world continue on without his love to hold it all together?

It is into this situation, this fear, that Jesus prays. “Father, the world’s systems and powers, the dominant culture of the world has hated my followers because they do not fit in the ways of the world, just as I do not fit in the ways of the world.” He reminds us that he has given us God’s care and protection as he pursue God’s truth.

He continues, “Sanctify them in your truth.” Sanctify means “to separate for purposes of God,” separate the purposes of God from the powers of the world, of the dominant culture. Our sight has the tendency to conflate the two spectrums, the world’s ways and God’s ways, Jesus reminds us that we are to be sanctified, to be able to see the two ways at work, as separate things. Jesus reminds us that he has given us new eyes to see. He reminds us that he has been the space that separates the spectrum of the world’s ways and the spectrum of God’s ways, he has pulled apart the world’s images of success/the world’s systems and ways —- from God’s movements and workings. Jesus prays that we remain able to see them, that we be sanctified.

And he continues: “Sanctify them … as you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”

Jesus sends us, as he was sent. He sends us in the same manner and for the same purposes that he was sent. Our work in the world must look to Christ as the model. We read, earlier in this same gospel, about God’s sending Jesus in the oft-quoted John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” And the next verse continues the thought: “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved.”

Jesus was sent into the world because of love, for the purpose of loving. In this prayer, Jesus sends his followers as he was sent — because of love, for the purpose of love. Love alone is the church’s reason for being in the world. When Jesus dies and the disciples feel so uprooted that they wonder, how can the world continue to exist without his love?, the answer is: we put on Jesus’s sight to correct our sight toward love. We adopt the way of seeing the world’s ways and God’s ways compassionately in a way that leads us to love.

He sends us as he was sent — not to condemn the world, but to lovingly interact with it, in order that the world’s ways might be saved.

A thai poet wrote that “paradise is not another world. Paradise is the ruins of this world gazed upon compassionately.” St Teresa of Avila wrote that “Christ has no body now on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out to the world; yours are the hands with which God is to bless people now.” Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion looks out to the ruins of this world and sees it as paradise.

I saw a video of a man putting on these glasses for the first time. It’s his birthday; the glasses are his birthday gift, wrapped in bright red tissue paper. His wife has put out a container holding variety of colorful flowers in the front yard; she’s narrating from behind the camera. Their kids are in bright winter coats. Other than that, it’s really quite a bleak day. The sky is entirely overcast; they live in an apartment park filled with gray-brown townhomes. There is no grass; they’re stand on light gray sidewalk between dark gray pavement and their own gray-brown home.

The man, head-to-toe black denim, hair slicked back — he’s remarkably nonchalant, like he doesn’t want to appear uncool for a minute. Or maybe like he doesn’t want to hope too much. He unwraps the gift, pushing the tissue paper into the hands of his school-age daughter. Opens the box. Coolly, skeptically, he examines the seemingly ordinary shades.

When he finally puts them on, the moment that follows is …. Well, the kids are kind of oblivious that anything significant is happening. They’re playing with the tissue paper, running around.

But their father, the man in the glasses — the moment he puts them on, he stops talking. He stops smiling. He doesn’t know which direction to look. His wife says to him: look at your kids eyes. He glances down at his daughter in front of him, stares for just a second, and turns away, needs to go sit down.

And a minute later, composed, he gets up, smooths out his hair, paces, and then he comes to the flowers his wife set out, and this man just crumples in the parking lot. His new sight fills him with such love for the world — the same world that he had nonchalantly moved through before, but now rightly perceived — he’s filled with such love that he is overwhelmed and seems to become, at least for a few moments, an entirely different man. His tough exterior is undone as he weeps at the beauty of a gray day in a gray parking lot surrounded by gray homes.

The world hasn’t changed, but his perception of it has been corrected; the spectrums with which he sees have been pulled apart, and he can see the world as it is, and he is changed.

Jesus sends us into the world — not to condemn it, but to lovingly interact with it in order to save it. He sends us to see it with eyes so new and grateful that the color of another’s eyes brings tears to our own, that the brightness of a flower against gray sky brings us to our knees.

(For those interested, here is more information on the glasses, how they work; and the video of the man’s first time with the glasses.)

September 23, 2014June 30, 2016

Justice & Compassion

When my sister got to ride in the front seat twice in a row, or swiped my Halloween candy, or stayed out later than I without punishment, I would go to the Powers that Be — that is, a parent– and lament: “It’s not fair!”

And the response, predictably, repeatedly: Life isn’t fair.

In the face of this “Life isn’t fair” mantra, we often speak of the God of justice. The God who will set all things right. The God who punishes the wicked and restores — even rewards — the righteous.

In the lectionary, we read the end of the Jonah story and the parable of the workers in the vineyard together. What these readings share is this question of justice: reward and punishment; good and evil. The Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard is to answer Peter’s question of how good deeds will be rewarded — specifically, of how his good deed of having “left everything” to become a disciple of Jesus, will be rewarded.

Perhaps a bit of context is helpful here. Peter is a Jew living in the Roman empire, where shrines to Roman gods could often be found with three words inscribed above them: Do ut des, which translates to something like, “I give in order that you will give.” The concept of an exchange was inherent in the act of a Roman sacrifice. People were accustomed to bargaining with God. Their prayers might begin, “O God, I’ll offer you this sacrifice if you please make me rich and powerful” or “Lord, save me from this situation and I’ll dedicate my life to you,” or perhaps, “I will worship You, God, and in exchange you take all my problems away.”

So when Peter asks how his sacrifices will be rewarded, he is entering into a bargain, rooted in a familiar mindset. Jesus gives Peter a very satisfying answer, a promise of eternal life and image of glory. To which you can see Peter nodding, yes, of course, this is the answer he expects. … But then Jesus says that the same promise stands for all who follow him. I imagine a sour moment for one who had left everything. Surely his sacrifice of family and home, surely his intimate closeness to Jesus must mean something extra is in store for him?

The teacher chooses this moment to tell the parable of the workers in the vineyard, of the landowner who hires more workers throughout the day but pays them equally at the end of the day. The parable ends with provocative questions: “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”

The questions offend us. The parable offends us. It offends our sense of justice, order, and fairness. This is not the way a just God should operate.

There is no good answer to the question, of course. Is the landowner allowed to do what he chooses with what belongs to him, or are we envious because he is generous? Peter’s options are either to admit his envious heart and lack of compassion, or he says no, the landowner does not get to choose what to do with his belongings — which, of course, means that Peter then forfeits his own right to do what he chooses with his belongings; and such a confession would mean that Peter forfeits his right to feel “better than” for having left everything.

The vineyard owner is allowed to do what he chooses with his wealth, and he claims the right to pay his workers not on the basis of their merits but on the basis of his own compassion. Compassion overrules justice. Compassion, indeed, looks unjust. It is not fair.

Because justice has never been the thing. Even Jonah — after Nineveh repents and turns to God — Jonah laments that God is not a God of justice. The Ninevites do not get what they deserve, but compassion overrules justice. And Jonah laments: I knew you would do this, I knew you were a God of mercy and compassion and that you wouldn’t smite them, and that’s why I ran away from prophesying to them.

The texts confront me. Who are the ones I begrudge, who are the people from whom I withhold generosity?

What would it take for me to stop being like Jonah–a person who would die for his own righteous anger–and become a person who would die to imitate a God of compassion, generosity, and mercy?

Where have I allowed justice to overrule compassion?