New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Living faithfully in uncertain times
“And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young shall see visions, and your old shall dream dreams.” — Acts 2:17
The conditions under which we have been living over the last few years have been challenging to say the least. We have felt overwhelmed by the enormity of the problems we face. We have heard the spirits of many voices speaking loudly. Might there be a Pentecost moment for us now — a pouring out of a new spirit in the mist of our joys, ongoing griefs and aspirations?
Today the spirit of vulnerability, mortality, diseases, hatred, political power exploitation and exclusion have, like a fog, surrounded us. We have also heard the voices and felt the spirits of mutual interdependence, justice and human compassion rise to counter the various forms of violence and oppression that are causing many to suffer. The spirit and voice of hate and the spirit and voice of love exist mutually, but they do not have equal power.
It feels like, as a society, we are standing at a decisive dividing line, on one side of which is death and on the other side is life. Although sacred texts tell us to “choose life,” we live life marred by so much destruction of human life. We rationalize our annihilation of one another by defining our differences as reason to hate one another.
We are also becoming increasingly awakened to how hatred and injustice functions on individual, institutional, structural and systemic levels. This awareness can make us feel overwhelmed by the enormity of injustice and hatred. They can cause us to live in fear and without hope.
Some people see these negative conditions as signs that we are living in the last days. It is a period that foretells the second coming of Christ. One can live with this perspective. We can pray and hope that Christ will return, judge and redeem the world. How believing this would impact the way one lives every day is for them to decide. It is understandable why some Christians who are gripped by the amount of pain and suffering they see and maybe are experiencing would want Jesus to return and do so quickly. How and when God chooses to act in history is God’s decision. We can only control the choices we make.
The extent of strife, pain, suffering and death we have witnessed recently has caused some of us to pause and wonder: has humankind aligned itself so much with evil that humanity is heading for its own destruction? Are we helpless to do anything about it except to seek cover and protection for ourselves and those we love? I can hear the voice of humiliation, ignorance, stupidity, thirst for power and ego speaking. They are loathing voices.
Uncertainty and change are inevitable aspects of reality and life. Living faithfully in uncertain times includes accepting this fact no matter how our feeling uncertain is exacerbated. Living faithfully embraces both our insecurities and possibilities. We also live with hope and imagine the future. We challenge evil and not trivialize loving our fellow human beings. We can choose faith over fatalism. We can decide to dream.
A poem by Langston Hughes suggest what it is like to live faithfully in uncertain times:
“Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow.”
Dare we dream when how we look, and love becomes for some targets that triggers their hatred of us? I believe that there are more good people doing good things in the world than there are bad people doing harmful things in the world. I hope that good people do not become weary and less vigilant in doing good.
The psyche, souls, sense of personhood and community of many people are being profoundly shaped by social media platforms rather than by the touch of human hands and hearts. We need to continuously rise up and not allow extremist people with a superiority identity complex to diminish our capacity to further advocate celebrating our common humanity.
Our greater awareness of our mutual interdependence can increase our compassion toward one another as we strive to become a more humane society and world. Might this then be a Pentecost moment when the Spirit of God is not descending upon us as an imposition but is an invitation we can choose to accept?
Perhaps the ways that the Spirit of God — a Pentecost — a presence of God’s spirit can be heard and felt by us is in the voices and actions of those who share a sense of empathy and who protest wars, systemic oppression, and warn us about climate change and the impact of social inequality. Who express a justice joy in the fight against all forms of domestic violence and other abuses that people suffer because of their age, culture and identity?
Some of you might say, but the word of God says that the signs of God before God’s great and magnificent day of returning is a combination of God’s spirit falling upon people causing them to experience a new unity among themselves and blood, fire, smoke and darkness. And only those who called upon the name of the Lord will be saved and therefore those who don’t will be lost.
Some Biblical scholars interpret this statement of the prophet Joel quoted by Peter in Acts 2 as Joel’s foretelling of the birth, the first coming of Christ, as the Messiah and not as a prediction of the end of the world. Wisdom suggests to me that whatever is God’s will, that will be done. We live, not in fear of these being the last days but by faith that there will be a future. Faith in God encourages me to live each day with gratitude, humility and making the effort to serve the needs of others-to live lovingly.
Living faithfully in an uncertain time is the daily affirmation that faith in God is the substance of the dreams and visions hoped for and the evidence of such dreams and visions not yet seen. Until then, and during uncertain times, we hold to a faith in God whose faith in us does not let us go.
What if one is not religious? Discerning and living a life of meaning is a spiritual quest of human beings. In times of uncertainty living such a life and in relationships with others is no less important for a non-religious person as it is for one who is religious.
The fears, deceptions and hatred of our time and as once described by Howard Thurman, are subterfuges moving us away from our faith and hope. Be aware of how these decoys can make us feel that hope has betrayed us. Our faithful living is for the long run of our lives.
In uncertain times those who have faith in God helps them to be divine dreamers who seek not agreement, but to foster religious and spiritual understandings across cultures. God’s dream and work in and for us is that we remember that we image God to one another and in the world. This is the kind of living that because of our uncertainties our faith in God, in ourselves, one another and in life, as it is said in my church tradition, can help make a way out of no way. We go forward with this faith and live faithfully in these uncertain times.