The days are noticeably getting shorter. The birds and animals that run by human clocks are starting their days later in my yard. And although we don’t feel the briskness of a fall morning, we know that fall is coming, and, we hope, with some rain.
As we approach the fall election season, we’re hearing voices becoming more shrill, more hateful, deeply upsetting when we hear politicians calling on God’s name as part of a world view that excludes much of humanity. Our politics should be grounded in our faith, for sure, but there’s a difference between that and the language we now hear from many running or political office.
As Steven Carter, a law professor, wrote, there’s a difference between looking at politics through the lens of faith and looking at faith through the lens of politics. We are seeing society being coopted by many who are doing the latter, using God to justify racist and Xenophobic attitudes. It is a new kind of Phariseeism, hateful and destructive.
Prayer for the Day
Inclining our ear to the Word of God, we open our hearts,
For we know the heart of God’s Word is based on love;
Listening to the Spirit that calls us to care for each other,
We know we must respond as a people open to the world.
May we hearken to your call, O God, and shake off the bonds
That would isolate us one from another.
In the name of the One who calls us to love,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
Algorithms and mediums that reward shallowness, rage and spectacle inevitably shape how we, as a culture and as individuals, discuss faith. And the ways we habitually hear God discussed inevitably shape who we understand God to be.
- Rev. Tish Harrison Warren, Anglican priest
Unless Americans demand from their party’s politicians something more than zero-sum politics, that is what we will get on religious freedom issues for the foreseeable future.”
- Michael Wear, from Reclaiming Hope
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy, and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.
Jesus in Matthew 23: 23-24