Please pass the salt ...

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Indonesia has revised its criminal code so that sex outside of marriage will be prosecutable and subject to one year of imprisonment. Same sex marriages do not exist. Do the math.

In Iran, protests continue since the death while under arrest of a woman who didn’t wear her head covering properly. CBC’s The Fifth Estate recently interviewed an Iranian-born, anti-regime activist who said that she first became aware of her imprisonment to convention as a girl when she saw how her brother was free to swim in the river and she wasn’t.

We can view humanity and our place in it through Ten Commandments eyes, or through the lens of The Sermon on the Mount, through Sharia Law or through the benefits of democracy, or however you understand what Jesus said in Matthew 5 about selfless love fulfilling, and exceeding by far, the moral requirements of compulsive obedience to law.

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers,[i] what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5: 43-48, NIV)

There’s a principle here that seems to evade orthodox Mullahs in Iran, fundamentalist preachers in the church as it did the pharisees and teachers of the law in Jesus’ time. And the principle, seems to me, contains at least these parts: 1) the world is chaotic, not orderly; a set of rules to cover every possible situation is not possible, 2) a morality that is “God-like” has to support the goal of everybody’s survival in the first place, everybody’s well being in the second, 3) the objectives in point two demand that rain (blessings) be splurged freely on everyone, not primarily  on select groups or individuals, 4) laws and rules have proven to be inadequate to the task; only a heart that acts out the God-like-ness of Matthew 5 can even grasp—let alone practice—God-like generosity of both spirit and means.

One can hardly be blamed for despairing that such a morality could ever be reached by mere mortals. Even those who have had the word before them for generation after generation are prone to revert to the legalism of an unregenerated mindset. How else could Christian, Jewish and Muslim religions have become so hopelessly splintered, each partition responding to turning the very scriptures into a catalogue of legalistic requirements? How else could the question of “how to bless our gay children” turn into a courtroom-like trial about law breaking?

I’m obviously not talking about the setting of rules that serve to protect us all from chaos, tyranny and unnecessary danger: speed limits, anti-fraud law, licensing of professions, etc. Neither am I harbouring the delusion that humanity will become beneficiaries of the kingdom of love anytime soon. After the Sermon on the Mount (or plain), after walking with the Prince of Peace for three years or so, Peter’s response to Jesus’ arrest was to haul out a sword and attack a soldier. Welcome to the “real world.”

Nor do I expect that in the world of fundamentalist, legalistic religion, the turn-around is any closer than it was in Jesus’ time. Thing is, neither salt nor yeast make good bread on their own, but that’s what we’re called to be to that bread that is human survival and well being. To be a regenerated individual and family, a regenerated church community actually doing its best to practice Matthew 5: 43-48 brings with it a refreshing wind, a Pentecost, if you like. We should at least teach our children



the Sermon on the Mount’s order of fulfillment: It’s not, “Agree with me and I’ll be nice to you,” it’s more like, “I’ll be nice to you whether you agree with me or not.”

That’s how a flat-tasting world gets seasoned, begins to taste good.

 

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