My friend just lost his brother. But his brother didn’t die.
It was an argument. Over politics and science.
They had argued before. For years. I won’t go into which one is on the left and which one is on the right. When it comes to a severed relationship, I’m not sure that matters. I’m not sure these distinctions of left/right, liberal/conservative, anti-trump/pro-trump, anti-vax/pro-vax — none if it matters.
I’m not even sure in these cases that truth really matters (and those of you that know me know I don’t say that often).
Nothing matters more than relationships. Especially with family. My Dad always says, “Nothing matters more than La Familia.”).
He is right. After that, it’s friends.
I made this video earlier in the year. I had one goal: to help people navigate thorny relationships around politics, religion, and science.
I’ve had some great feedback. If you are looking at a precarious situation ahead, do take a listen. I don’t advocate for one side or the other.
My friend just lost his brother. And it reminded me of the video.
Can You Know God Without Jesus? Can Muslims know God? Can atheists? Jews? Are only “born again” Christians part of the Body of Christ?
Recently on Facebook, I got into this not-so-cozy little conversation on these questions. My view was met with intense resistance. By fellow Christians.
One guy called me a heretic.
But my opinion was not my own.
One’s religious views are shaped by others — in my case, two men in the very best of the Evangelical Christian tradition, and a saintly Roman Catholic woman who gave her every fiber to welcome outsiders in Jesus’ name.
So if you find my view controversial — the view that many can know God, even though they don’t identify as Christians — please understand that I didn’t invent it.
Dr. Billy Graham, one of the greatest Christian evangelists of our time, said this:
“I think everybody that that loves Christ, or knows Christ, whether they’re conscious of it or not, they’re members of the body of Christ. And that’s what God is doing today. He’s calling people for ‘eh, out of the the world for his name whether they come from the Muslim world, or the Buddhist world, or the Christian world, or the non-believing world uh they are members of the body of Christ because they’ve been called by God. They may not even know the name of Jesus but uh they know in their hearts that they need something that they don’t have and they turn to the only light that they have. And I think that they are saved and they are going to be with us in heaven.”*
And Mother Teresa, this:
“There is only one God and He is God to all; therefore it is important that everyone is seen as equal before God. I’ve always said that we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic.”
C.S. Lewis’s held the same view. His articulation of it is far longer, more literary, and more beautiful. So I won’t be so vulgar as to copy and paste it. If you’d like, read about it here in chapter 15 of Lewis’s Narnia series, The Last Battle.
I’ve been invited to join Muslims for prayers. And when I’m there kneeling and standing and kneeling and standing — practicing their way of worship — I always feel peace. I always feel calm. I always feel a deep connection with fellow journeyers.
I always feel God.
The more time I spend with Muslims, the more I realize how virtues like humility and wisdom and generosity are universal forces of good. I realize their presence on display throughout the spectrum of world religions, and even amongst the non-religious.
Some of you are reading this and thinking, Wow, Paul is really losing it.
That’s okay. I get that this view will confuse or upset many. If that’s you, I’d like to ask you three questions.
First, why does it make you so uneasy?
Second, and respectfully, what do you know that Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, and C.S. Lewis don’t?
Finally, do you think God might just big enough to be okay with people knowing him, but not his exact name?
*the video of Billy Graham’s statement can be watched here.
News of overturning of Roe v Wade brought abortion rights into question, and questions about understanding abortion debate, US abortion laws, pro choice vs pro life tension, and even the return of abortion protest. Though Trump news is on the wane, he did play a part in where we are today, and Biden abortion comments leave many in the pro choice camp hopeful.
Audacious goals. Some call them North Stars. Regardless, for centuries, men and women have committed themselves to radical visions — reform and change and revolution that seemed impossible to the masses.
The greatest exemplar was Jesus.
As one studies any movement, the people behind the movement must be considered — the organizers and idealists and troublemakers who were crazy enough to lead and join and work and believe that transformation was possible and that their persistence could bring it about.
I think of our audacious goal at For The Children, our North Star: An end to family-induced childhood trauma and eradication of the cycle of neglect, abuse, and abandonment.
I mean like, who do we think we are?
Answer? — we are no different from those organizers and idealists and troublemakers. We really aren’t.
Saint Francis and Martin Luther and Florence Nightingale and William Wilberforce and Harriet Tubman and the thousands that worked alongside them, and now…
Opal Lee.
From Thursday’s article by NPR: “At the age of 89, Lee decided her new life mission was much like that of Granger: ‘I knew I just had to spread the word about Juneteenth to everybody.’ The best way to do that, she figured, was to help get Juneteenth accepted as a national holiday.”
Eighty-nine! And today the entire world is learning a new word, Juneteenth, and the meaning behind it. (And millions get a day off work.
As followers of Jesus, we follow the most extraordinary lineage in the history of mankind. He spawned a movement, an audacious one, turning “reality” on its head — a message of the last being the first, the poor being rich, the weak being strong, the losers being winners, the outcasts being those he chose first.
An end to family-induced childhood trauma — what could be more of an audacious, and possible, goal?
Last thing. The reason I chose Judith Herman: she was one of these pioneers, audacious, working for decades to advocate for the reality of trauma, PTSD, against the powers that held to the mind-over-matter canard. But Herman was unrelenting. Trauma and Recovery might be a bit dense. But it is the single greatest work that paved the way for doctors, academics, and organizations like ours to treat and heal victims. The New York Times called the book, “One of the most important psychiatric works to be published since Freud.”
I look forward to reading with you and understanding the core of what our children face.
On that September morning, I walked the Krakow cobblestone streets in near-freezing air at 5:30 a.m. to grab a bus to Auschwitz. I had pulled an all-nighter but not by choice.
The reality of visiting that infamous “there.”
I don’t remember the ride but I arrived. The tour guide, a blonde woman in her 50s — speaking perfect English with a thick Polish accent, languid in reciting the blisteringly-morbid data to a dozen tourists who wouldn’t dare utter a word.
I had read the books, watched the documentaries, ingested every frame of Schindler’s list, countless times. But there is something about a place.
As the helpless prisoners arrived, young children, the elderly, and those with illnesses were separated. A guard would point to the left or the right. One direction meant to the “showers,” which pumped deadly Zyklon-B poison gas into the chambers.
I kept my mouth open for hours — a dropped jaw allowed me to cry and breathe, simultaneously, as my nose was plugged. There was something about the ground: the dirt, the cement, the grass, whether inside the gas chamber, along with one of the roads, in the disgusting barracks — “they walked in this ground.”
I should have remembered but I hadn’t — these camps had but one purpose: extermination. If you weren’t shot or gassed it was only so you could work…to keep the killing factory functioning.
The stories of torture, disease, filth, “surgeries” — you can google those if you’d like. I don’t have the stomach right now to repeat them.
A wave of anger — one that I had never felt before, and haven’t felt since — began to arise. The Final Solution — the command to exterminate — was announced on January 20, 1942. Why this anger? Because for nearly 20 years, millions sat silent. Christians. Pastors. Everyday citizens. Sat silent as Hitler attacked the free press, institutions of power, foreigners. Dark-skinned people (he ended up murdering millions of them) — all in the name of making German great.
But Bonhoeffer did. The Lutheran pastor was called “divisive” and “political” for standing against the hatred. He paid the ultimate price at Flossenburg.
The words of Elie Wiesel rang through my crazed mind:
“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.”
Estimates suggest that Nazis murdered 85% of the people sent to Auschwitz. Of the 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz, 1.1 million died
Wiesel again:
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed….Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.”
Today is Holocaust Remembrance day — I will never forget, either. I hope none of us do.
