always took care of itself over time. The miracle of healing came from the
inside; all I had to do was wait and trust. In religion, though, many prefer
magical, external, one-time transactions instead of the universal pattern of
growth and healing through loss and renewal. This universal pattern is the way
that life perpetuates itself in ever-new forms—ironically, through various kinds
of death. This pattern disappoints and scares most of us, but less so biologists
and physicists; they seem to understand the pattern better than many clergy,
who think death and resurrection is just a doctrinal statement about Jesus.
I am afraid many of us have failed to honor God’s always unfolding future and
the process of getting there, which usually includes some form of dying to the
old. In practical effect, we end up resisting and opposing the very thing we
want. The great irony is that we have often done this in the name of praying to
God, as though God would protect us from the very process that refines us!
God protects us into and through death, just as the Father did with Jesus.
When this is not made clear, Christianity ends up protecting and idealizing the
status quo—or even more, the supposedly wonderful past—at least insofar as it
preserves our privilege. Comfortable people tend to see the church as a quaint
antique shop where they can worship old things as substitutes for eternal things.
There is no such thing as a nonpolitical Christianity. To refuse to critique the
system or the status quo is to fully support it—which is a political act well
disguised. Like Pilate, many Christians choose to wash their hands in front of
the crowd and declare themselves innocent, saying with him, “It is your
concern” (Matthew 27:25). Pilate maintains his purity and Jesus pays the price.
Going somewhere good means having to go through and with the bad, and
being unable to hold ourselves above it or apart from it. There is no pedestal of
perfect purity to stand on, and striving for it is an ego game anyway. Yet the
Pilate syndrome is quite common among bona fide Christians, often taking the
form of excluding those they consider sinners.
Jesus himself strongly rejects this love of the past and one’s private perfection,
and he cleverly quotes Isaiah (29:13) to do it: “In vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as if they were doctrines” (Matthew 15:9). Many of us
seem to think that God really is “back there,” in the good ol’ days of old-time
religion when God was really God, and everybody was happy and pure. Such is
the illusion of many people attracted to religion, and it is quite popular at many
“megachurches” today. All change is private and interior, and any outer critique
of systems, one’s privilege, one’s nation, or one’s religion is out of the question.
When Jesus first announced “change your mind,” he immediately challenged his