A call to reconsider values in your life
Did you ever write or perhaps receive a letter, email, or call from a close friend, asking a favor that caused you to reconsider something significant in your life?
In the New Testament book of Philemon, Paul the apostle writes his dear friend Philemon, imploring him to receive back Onesimus, Philemon’s runaway slave, not as a slave but as a Christian receives a brother. This was a big favor! Slaveholders could do what they liked to slaves, including killing them. Paul was asking Philemon instead to treat his slave like a dear friend. This is soul work, self-examination of one’s values in light of faith values and cultural ways of life.
Extending personal forgiveness for a wrong is tough enough. The letter to Philemon is also written to the church in his house. Paul was mobilizing Church opinion in Colosse and Laodicaea in his favor. The decision (Greek
anapempein) about Onesimus, would be a community decision about the relationship of faith to slavery, and would have ramifications far beyond the fate of Onesimus.
Paul states the outcome in a later letter to the church at Galatia; baptism into Christ means “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28). Reconciliation in Christ introduces a new relationship between human beings, a relationship in which all external differences are abolished (class, race, sex, religion). It calls us also to do corporate soul work, addressing the pressing issues of church, society and life.
Fast forward to today and we see a plethora of similar modern-day letters to our churches asking them to do soul work and address the things that tear us apart: racism, sexism, environmentalism, our idolization of money.
■ Lenny Duncan; “Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the U.S.” ■ Rev. David Anderson; “Gracism.” ■ Michael Dyson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Katie Geneva Cannon, Mitzi Smith; they name white privilege, the dominant culture’s values of power, status and privilege as the issues of our time. They call the church to self-examination and self-awareness, to Jesus’ values of grace, equality and community.
These books remind us Jesus shifted the locus of accountability from the poor, the widow, the slave, the unemployed, the oppressed folk in his society, to the dominant societal groups: the religious leaders, the landholders, the employers, the political powers. Accountability lies with the haves because they have control of the resources: material, cultural, educational, societal.
What do we want our future to look like, in the church and in the world? If we want vibrant communities of faith and healthy societies, we need a willingness to look at ourselves, to become more self-aware of the part we play in holding down others, and to work at self-change and societal change is necessary.
Friends, in the spirit of Paul, I write you this letter asking that you might do some soul work. Would you reconsider significant relationships and values in your life? Here are some questions to aid your work:
■ Who do you not invite to your dinner table, faith table, business table? Why?
■ Do the values you try to live by more resemble the 10 Commandments or the Beatitudes? Why?
■ Does the word “white privilege” make you angry? Why or why not?
■ What word(s) do you hope would describe you, your home, your faith community, our world?
■ What are you willing to do to move in that direction?
■ Are you a means of grace?
■ Do you have tough conversations with those you love? Do you have respectful, thoughtful conversations with those you dislike? Why or why not?
■ Do you seek to get to know people who do not look or talk like you? Do you gather with others to reach out to people in need or to address community and world concerns?
■ Do you pause to reflect each day on the life you have been given? Do you think it would make a difference to you and to the world?
Jungian analyst Robert Johnson shared that people often asked famous psychiatrist Carl Jung, “Will we make it?” referring to the cataclysm of our time. He always replied, “If enough people will do their inner work.” This soul work is the one thing that will pull us through any emergency.
The Rev. Dr. Christine L. Nelson is the retired director of seminary advancement of Moravian College and Moravian Theological Seminary, Bethlehem, and can be reached at chris1970.cn@gmail.com.