thursday reflection for week 7

Today in Dr. Jude Tiersma Watson's lecture Children and the Kingdom: Our Mission, Watson mentioned a few quotes from Mother Teresa that are thought provoking and heart breaking. One of these quotes was, “We have forgotten that we belong to each other.” Thanks to Kant and the Enlightenment we have been obsessed with autonomy. In the process we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

I recently read an article by Stanley Hauerwas called "Should Suffering Be Eliminated," in which he argues that our fear of being needy and suffering has caused us to want to rid of suffering. However, if we rid of the suffering, he argues, we rid of who we are as human beings. To be human is to suffer. We hate suffering because it causes us to be needy, and this neediness forces us to realize that we cannot go it alone. [This reminds me of Bono singing, "You don't have to go it alone."] Hauerwaus says that suffering steals our identity. In other words, suffering steals our false sense of autonomy. Suffering shows us that we are not autonomous people making a priori decisions completely devoid of our passions and loyalties. By nature, we are social beings. As Watson said in her lecture today, to be an authentic Christian, we cannot go it alone. [Again Bono, "You don't have to go it alone."]

We must come to realize that we are dependent on one another. We must come to see that mutual dependence and vulnerability with each other is the way of the kingdom of God. This is the way of being great through servant-hood. This is the last becoming the first. This is transforming our current societal situations.

When we begin to realize that we are connected to a larger story and a larger community that goes beyond blood relations or kinship, we begin seeing the poor, oppressed, children, our nieghbors, as more that simply "those people." "Those people" connotes that the poor and oppressed are unlike ourselves and different from who we are. However, we are as needy, we suffer as much, and we need help as much as the poor and oppressed do. Mother Thersa also said that the poverty in the United States is much deeper than the poverty in other parts of the world because it is a poverty of community, a poverty of hope, and a poverty of love.

We are all broken. Thus, we are all the same people: broken, suffering, needy people created in the image of God who need redemption. This redemption ultimately comes from God, but we begin this redemption now, on earth. So, as Jesus preached and as the prophet Micah says, "We must do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before our God," (Micah 6:8) the God who is I AM, the God who is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob working in the present through us to bring redemption. Transform your autonomous tendencies. "You don't have to go it alone."