There's No Justice in the World, and There Never Was -- An Advent Reflection
This is not a blog post I ever wanted to write. For me, social media, including my blog, has been where I retreat in order to escape the political quagmire and faux-religious zealotry that has permeated the United States national dialogue. (I am aware, however, that the rest of the world has seen an upsurge in such things over the last half a decade as well.) While I have always read the ideas of my friends and family on Facebook and elsewhere, my personal political and religious ideas have remained, for the most part, offline. This is mainly because, among both my friends group and groups of relative strangers, conversations are often riddled with misinformation, distorted facts, and thinly veiled prejudice.
I can remain silent no longer, however; I must speak out about what I have seen, read, heard, studied, and come to understand about my God and what disturbing things our government claims to do in God's name. Bearing in mind that our government should not be doing things under the name of the Judeo-Christian God to begin with (it's the First Amendment that the government shall make no laws establishing a specific religion, and moral rulings can be moral even separate from a religious belief), I am disheartened and horrified at the actions being done under "God's" name.
I will admit, I am a staunch Democrat. I do this not because I believe the original ideas of the Republican Party, or GOP, are evil (after all, until the mid-20th century, the general beliefs of the two parties were the opposite of what they are today), but because the guiding powers of the GOP have become willing participants in idolatry.
In the church calendar year, the Christian faith is currently celebrating our season of Advent. For those not raised in the Christian tradition, this is the month-long period leading up to Christmas. In the secular world, this season is already called Christmas, but in the traditional religious year, Christmas does not begin until December 25 and it runs for 12 days, up to what we call Epiphany, which is when the celebration of the Magi giving gifts to the Christ child is performed. In old days, this was termed Twelfth Night. What makes Advent so special, in addition to the lighting of candles and the placement of wreathes, is the focus of waiting for the Light to break through in a time of great darkness. As with most stories revolving around Jesus, there are a lot of Exodus themes that run throughout the Advent and birth story -- the Israelite people in the time of Moses were living in Egypt as slaves, under oppression from a great empire. In the time of Jesus' birth, the followers of YHWH were living under Roman occupation -- yet another great empire whose laws they were forced to live by and whose leaders thought them a nuisance. To the Roman government, the Israelite people that lived in the outpost cities at the far reaches of the Roman territory were rabble rousers and non-conformists. The Roman governors built roads and regulated commerce, kept trade flowing from the far-flung outposts to the main seat of power on what is now continental Europe. And it is true that in a lot of ways, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that followed YHWH benefited from Roman rule; however, Rome was not always the picture of benevolence. After all, one cannot be allowed to forget how Jesus, a peasant rabbi from Galilee, was executed: crucifixion, considered even now to be one of the most barbaric forms of capital punishment. Jesus was a man whom even Pilate, the governor of Jerusalem, said was guilty of no crime; regardless, he was given the same death as those who attempted treason, who murdered and robbed the citizens of Rome and Jerusalem. Jesus was one of hundreds of people executed on top of that hill, and I cannot help but wonder how many other people were genuinely innocent of their accused crimes. Political injustice is not new with the United States; it is a crime of all empires, and the United States is Rome by another name.
Now, most of you are probably wondering why I skipped from talking about the GOP to Rome, Jesus, and Advent. I assure you, there is a method to my madness. About two weeks ago, my family got together for Sunday lunch at Golden Corral. It was the first Sunday of Advent, and my family had led that portion of the service. As usual, there was a reading from the Old Testament Prophets and from the New Testament Gospels. While were discussing the scripture readings for the day, the talk naturally flowed into prophetic scripture in general -- what is it, how much should be read literally, and the circuitous nature of the scripture and its involvement in world history. For instance, the Old Testament prophets were always speaking at a time of outside nations that were growing into empire -- Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, and then later, you have Greece and Rome. The original prophecies were all about how to continue living as people of YHWH, even while living under nations that acknowledge different cosmic authority (and these attempts have varying success rates.) Fast forward to the time of Jesus, you have Jesus reciting and reteaching the words of these original prophets at a time when Israel is once again under the thumb of another empire. Fast forward into the epistles of the early Church leaders -- Peter, Paul, John the Elder, James the brother of Jesus, and all their students -- and you have, once again, the teachings of these old prophets addressed to new churches, some of which are comprised of members that belong to the empire. The people of YHWH are no longer automatically the ones being oppressed by the strong government, but they also have *become* the population -- the citizenry -- of that government. That's not to say it was sunshine and roses; until the days of Constantine, Christianity will go back and forth on whether it is condemned or accepted as a religious practice, depending on the emperor in power at the time.
But bearing in mind this talk of empire, I want you to think about the Book of Revelation. Traditionally, Advent is a time of waiting and preparing for what was an apocalyptic event. When I say apoalypticl, I mean it in the original sense of the term: a world-changing, paradigm shifting moment in recorded history. Has a single individual's birth ever been as important? Whether you believe Jesus is the Son of God or not, the importance of the event itself is inarguable. After Jesus' birth, there are other apocalyptic events: Jesus' Resurrection, the birth of the Church at Pentecost, Saul's conversion, and the visions of John the Elder on the island of Patmos that we now call the Book of Revelation. Now, I will state from the off that I do not take the words of this book literally; as with the epistles of the early Church leaders and with the words of the major and minor prophets, the prophecies of Revelation have both already happened and are being lived out currently and will be lived out again in the future. And the reason why it has a historical circuitry is because of what I've been talking about this whole time: EMPIRE. The Book of Revelation was a letter to various branches of the early Church living under the Roman empire at a time when that empire was in danger of falling apart. As any person who has an awareness of the modern world can see, the Roman Empire no longer exists. What Revelation taught its readers and listeners was how to continue to be the Church when the future of your earthly world is uncertain; this is not necessarily on the scale of earthly annihilation, but when your political system is crumbling and the gods of your national leaders have revealed themselves to be false. For the United States, that day appears to be coming sooner rather than later. We have become Rome, complete with our leaders and the religious leaders beneath them declaring those people to be a physical manifestation of a god. I might sound like an alarmist, but you should be alarmed. Even the benevolent Caesars thought their rule and the rule of God were one and the same, but if they were truly God, they tended to meet a sticky end all the same. And unlike Jesus there were no stories afterward of the Caesars rising from the dead. As the Pharaohs who ruled empires before them, their graves still have bodies within that can be viewed today. Any man who would become Caesar could then claim to become a god and claim that Rome would never fall. But every Caesar died, which means a god died, and Rome did fall, due to both its own inward hubris and divisiveness and because of outside influence.
Sound familiar?
It is impossible to celebrate Advent and ignore the consequence of what the arrival of Christmas truly means. It is not just a spiritual awakening to be celebrated for twelve days. It is the breakdown of earthly authority that masquerades as divine power; it is the celebration of the importance of the lowliest of humanity over the decadence of monarchy (an embracing of all the things the current GOP would have us believe is the evil of our society); it is reading the Revelation's letters to the churches not as letters to individual autonomous congregations but as a Church version of the traditional prophetical indictments against the nations and learning to correct the injustices of our past and current world; it is using the privileges of our empire to help bring about the peace we so earnestly pray for, acknowledging that God often answers prayers through cooperation with God's creation and not by divine mandate; Advent is about searching out the Light even when the world seems its darkest.
Human authority will never be perfect. I do not expect it to be and when I vote, I don't vote for a candidate that is 100% in line with my vision. I have yet to find one because that would mean that I myself am running for office; my conscience is my own and, as Harper Lee wisely wrote, the only part of my life that is not subject to majority rule. Right now, the GOP has control of the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court; they are the majority. If they practiced what they preached, then the GOP, as the "moral" and "family values" party, should be living into the ideas of Advent I listed above. In truth, they are doing the direct opposite. They are living as empire and setting up Trump as their Caesar to be worshiped. (I'm working hard not to make Herod Antipas jokes, but it's difficult, but I really see him more as the Herod type...possibly as Antiochas IV Ephiphanes. Neither of them are good role models, but both were idiots with obscene amounts of power, so can you really blame my brain for making the jump?)
Now, in the coming weeks, we are going to be hearing a lot about impeachment. Even more so than we already have heard and read in recent months. Just this morning the majority leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, said that he would be colluding with Trump to make sure an impeachment trial goes nowhere. In addition to all the ties that can be made to certain actions within the Roman Senate at various times in the history of the Roman Empire, you also have blatant abuse of power from the majority leadership and flagrant injustice within the highest legislature in the United States. This subverts both the will of the people and the power entrusted to our elected body as codified through our Constitution, which those in power are now blatantly refusing to uphold. In addition to the sin of idolatry, they are also breaking oaths made on the second most venerated object, the very item they placed their hand on when they were sworn into office: the Constitution of the United States. Forget calling itself the "moral" or "family values" party of the United States. If you cannot even uphold the document that gives you authority, I believe you should be stripped of said authority immediately because you obviously don't even believe in what gives you the power to stand there. Any elected official's allegiance is to his/her/their constituency and the United States as a whole, not to their own whims or the President. And religious leaders, if you want to claim the moral high ground, you really need to back another candidate because Trump has broken all of the personal values and vows you should be promoting; the only Church he is familiar with is the Church of Trump and I don't think God has ever stepped foot in there because Trump would never think to invite God in unless God had decked God's self in gold and promised dirt on Joe Biden.
Now, this will be my last post on the matter (unless Trump or those in power say something else in direct violation of scripture and try to pass it off as the Word of God.) I know there are people who identify as Republican for a variety of reasons -- vehement pro-Lifers, those who want more conservative spending, people who define marriage as between man and woman, people who want to focus on domestic issues and step back from the world stage for awhile, and some who are part of the GOP because their family has been for generations. Whatever your reasoning though, I urge you this Advent season to really think about what it means to be the seat of power in the empire. Because if you identify as part of the GOP, then that's exactly what you are, and there is a responsibility that comes with that. For Israel, God held them accountable when they did not check their religious and political leaders, and allowed injustice to run rampant, and eventually the monarchies of Israel and Judah both fell and both nations lost what little sovereignty they had. The story stays the same for all earthly empires: any power that goes unchecked eventually eats itself and it collapses. Next time you watch the news, pay close attention because the truth of prophecies are that when it comes to fulfillment, they are always: "already, and not yet." The apocalyptic moment promised by Advent has happened before, and it will happen again, and the question for us is the same as when Jesus was born. Will you even notice when it happens, and how will you respond when it does?