As I walked around a Confederate cemetery, I wondered what other choice the young soldiers buried there could have made. The values they were raised to believe to be true were affirmed by their schools, their textbooks, their newspapers, their families, friends, their whole culture, and worst of all, their churches.
Neither Jesus nor Paul taught blind patriotism or a simple accommodation of the state’s or country’s actions. For both, the Kingdom of God is where our hearts reside and “our citizenship is in heaven.”
An image I recently saw on Facebook depicted Jesus preaching to the crowds, with the phrase boldly proclaiming: “Being ‘woke’ is literally what Jesus preached about his entire life.” Is that accurate? “Woke” wasn’t in use the way it is today when Jesus preached, but would the core of his message qualify as being “woke” as we understand it today?
From the Psalms, from the prophets, from non-canonical sources, and from Jesus we learn what God values most. What matters is justice, mercy, and faith. What counts is the steadfast love of God and actively doing something to help those in need. That is true religion.
It is one of my life’s ambitions to become like the woman who brought me and my wife a cup of cold water on a hot day in Providence, Rhode Island. I would cherish the opportunity to quench another’s thirst…either their physical need for a drink of water, their need to be drawn closer to the Divine, or their thirst for justice and righteousness.