Unity with the Trinity
Just before the meltdown, a local professor with a doctorate in psychology who happens to be an atheist told people that churches should not open because they will spread the virus.
Why is this important? Simple. A person could have a Ph.D in basketweaving and tell everyone that the way to stop the virus is to walk on your hands for a week and some people would do it because well he is an expert and they believe he will keep them safe.
In philosophy that is called appeal to improper authority. There is a word for that in religion, it is called idolatry. It is endemic in this society. People fawning all over someone who is and expert in anything all the time.
Psychologists are not epidemiologists, nor virologists. Neither am I. Like me, he obviously is able to state his opinion. So, he is not the problem.
The melt down happened and that is pure psychology. That is exactly where you need a comment from a psychologist and no one consulted him from what I saw.
That is the problem. Again, it is not him. It is how our culture has embraced the experts and turned them into gods because many believe they will keep us safe.
Matt Taibbi wrote a great book called I Can’t Breathe A Killing on Bay Street (2017; Spiegel & Grau) about the Eric Garner case in New York. The George Floyd case echoes it. He shows how what happened to Eric Garner begins with some experts coming up with an idea to stop crime. It turns into a policy that destroyed lives and led eventually to the death of Eric Garner. What was at the bottom of all these policies? Safety.
Why is all this important for our time?
Just before the meltdown, a local professor with a doctorate in psychology who happens to be an atheist told people that churches should not open because they will spread the virus.
Why is this important? Simple. A person could have a Ph.D in basketweaving and tell everyone that the way to stop the virus is to walk on your hands for a week and some people would do it because well he is an expert and they believe he will keep them safe.
In philosophy that is called appeal to improper authority. There is a word for that in religion, it is called idolatry. It is endemic in this society. People fawning all over someone who has a Ph.D. in anything all the time.
Psychologists are not epidemiologists, nor virologists. Neither am I. Like me, he obviously is able to state his opinion. So, he is not the problem.
The melt down happened and that is pure psychology. That is exactly where you need a comment from a psychologist and no one consulted him from what I saw.
That is the problem. Again, it is not him. It is how our culture has embraced the experts and turned them into gods because many believe they will keep us safe.
Matt Taibbi wrote a great book called I Can’t Breathe A Killing on Bay Street (2017; Spiegel & Grau) about the Eric Garner case in New York. The George Floyd case echoes it. He shows how what happened to Eric Garner begins with some experts coming up with an idea to stop crime. It turns into a policy that destroyed lives and led eventually to the death of Eric Garner. What was at the bottom of all these policies? Safety.
Why is all this important for our time?
Today is Trinity Sunday. We celebrate the Holy Trinity that God is one God of three persons. God’s greatest desire is that all live in unity as God is unity. So we can assume what we see right now going on outside is not God’s greatest desire.
Our whole faith is about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit calling us to be in union with them by seeking God to be the center of our lives. He calls us to deepen our union with Him until the time that as St. James says we see him face to face.
Dennis Prager in his book the Rational Bible: Exodus (2017, Regnery) explains that Moses never saw the face of God. So we have no idea what God’s face actually looks like and will not until that time. We only know that Jesus became the face of God so we would understand. However, God is so much beyond us and this God calls us to be as much in union with him as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are with themselves. This is destiny of every human being.
Many, instead, as we see in Romans 1, exchange the truth for a lie. They worship someone whom they tell us is an expert. So, he or she must be all knowing, of course. That person has the secret of life and the secret to save us from ourselves of course.
The problem with that attitude is that it does not denigrate God, it denigrates us. God desires to bestow His wisdom upon us. He calls us to union with Him and many instead say that this is Old Fashioned, we have science now, we can now be like gods. Then meltdowns like this happen and we learn the effects of believing that certain people were like gods who came to take care of us. We learn they are only human.
You cannot learn to be the fullness of what it means to be human, to be fully human and fully alive from any media outlet from any university professor, any tv reporter, any politician or for that matter any priest or bishop, archbishop or pope if you are not first seeking the wisdom of the God who is beyond us.
When you seek the wisdom from the Divine Trinity, then you will learn a deeper truth that will help you move in this life.
What failed in the death of George Floyd, Eric Garner, Ahmaud Aubrey, Trayvon Martin and so much more was not just the actions of certain individuals but the breakdown of a system that promotes a false understanding of what it means to be human. It is a system rooted in idolatry and develops a concept of humanity based on doing what is necessary to keep a certain part of the population safe, even at the risk of hurting another part of the same population. That is clear in Taibbi's book by the way.
Universities are not local branches of Mount Olympus. They are human institutions at best. The media are not oracles, they are human institutions at best. When we ascribe to them the characteristics of being like gods, we set ourselves up for manipulation, destruction and pain.
We say that they are like Gods while we bow and scrape to them. Therefore, we don’t question them.
Eventually this idolatry breaks and that is what happened this week. People saying out loud this system failed again. Remember, the mission of the police officer is to keep people safe, but many are saying the system is not keeping us safe.
There needs to be a change and it can begin by realizing that all have a calling to respond to the invitation given to us by love itself The Holy Trinity. We do that by humbly seeking that relationship with the Father through the Son under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Jesus calls us to be his witnesses not only of whom He is but whom we are. We pray so we can know him more and more and be more in union with him and with his people.
God created all people and you and I have a command to love God and our neighbor as Christ loves us. That is not a nice notion; that is a radical notion because it requires us not to do what some system tells us is correct, but what Christ calls us to do in the name of love and obedience to him. Often that bucks the system in and out of the Church by the way. That is because we all have the same calling. There are no special people who have a super human status while the rest are just humans. Nor are there any sub humans. God calls each human being equally.
Let us take this time to recommit ourselves to our mission as baptized Christians, to seek Christ and to eliminate from our lives the idolatry that has hurt us, our neighbor, our church and every person affected by the policies in place that dehumanize until they blow up as they did this past week. Remember, safety is at the bottom of what dehumanizes us, Jesus reminds us that what is at the bottom of what leads us to union with the Holy Trinity is risk that begins with carrying our cross.
May I ask that we all begin to pray to be open to being confronted with those attitudes and actions that undermine our ability to testify to the truth that we are all invited to embrace. Reflect this week on what risk you would take to seek your destiny to be in union with the Holy Trinity. What you would do to ensure as many people around you go with you. I am not referring to protests or violence. I am talking about sacrifice for those around us for whom Jesus died and to whom the trinity invites us to unity. God is not only one God in three persons but he invites all of humanity to participate in his unity.
Our whole faith is about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit calling us to be in union with them by seeking God to be the center of our lives. He calls us to deepen our union with Him until the time that as St. James says we see him face to face.
Dennis Prager in his book the Rational Bible: Exodus (2017, Regnery) explains that Moses never saw the face of God. So we have no idea what God’s face actually looks like and will not until that time. We only know that Jesus became the face of God so we would understand. However, God is so much beyond us and this God calls us to be as much in union with him as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are with themselves. This is destiny of every human being
Many, instead, as we see in Romans 1, exchange the truth for a lie. They worship someone whom they tell us is an expert. So, he or she must be all knowing, of course. That person has the secret of life and the secret to save us from ourselves of course.
The problem with that attitude is that it does not denigrate God, it denigrates us. God desires to bestow His wisdom upon us. He calls us to union with Him and many instead say that this is Old Fashioned, we have science now, we can now be like gods. Then meltdowns like this happen and we learn the effects of believing that certain people were like gods who came to take care of us. We learn they are only human.
You cannot learn to be the fullness of what it means to be human, to be fully human and fully alive from any media outlet from any university professor, any tv reporter, any politician or for that matter any priest or bishop, archbishop or pope if you are not first seeking the wisdom of the God who is beyond us.
When you seek the wisdom from the Divine Trinity, then you will learn a deeper truth that will help you move in this life.
What failed in the death of George Floyd, Eric Garner, Ahmaud Aubrey, Trayvon Martin and so much more was not just the actions of certain individuals but the breakdown of a system that promotes a false understanding of what it means to be human. It is a system rooted in idolatry and develops a concept of humanity based on doing what is necessary to keep a certain part of the population safe, even at the risk of hurting another part of the same population. That is clear in Taibbi book by the way.
Universities are not local branches of Mount Olympus. They are human institutions at best. The media are not oracles, they are human institutions at best. When we ascribe to them the characteristics of being like gods, we set ourselves up for manipulation, destruction and pain.
We say that they are like Gods while we bow and scrape to them. Therefore, we don’t question them.
Eventually this idolatry breaks and that is what happened this week. People saying out loud this system failed again. Remember, the mission of the police officer is to keep people safe, but many are saying the system is not keeping us safe.
There needs to be a change and it can begin by realizing that all have a calling to respond to the invitation given to us by love itself The Holy Trinity. We do that by humbly seeking that relationship with the Father through the Son under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Jesus calls us to be his witnesses not only of whom He is but whom we are. We pray so we can know him more and more and be more in union with him and with his people.
God created all people and you and I have a command to love God and our neighbor as Christ loves us. That is not a nice notion; that is a radical notion because it requires us not to do what some system tells us is correct, but what Christ calls us to do in the name of love and obedience to him. Often that bucks the system in and out of the Church by the way. That is because we all have the same calling. There are no special people who have a super human status while the rest are just humans. Nor are there any sub humans. God calls each human being equally.
Let us take this time to recommit ourselves to our mission as baptized Christians, to seek Christ and to eliminate from our lives the idolatry that has hurt us, our neighbor, our church and every person affected by the policies in place that dehumanize until they blow up as they did this past week. Remember, safety is at the bottom of what dehumanizes us, Jesus reminds us that what is at the bottom of what leads us to union with the Holy Trinity is risk that begins with carrying our cross.
May I ask that we all begin to pray to be open to being confronted with those attitudes and actions that undermine our ability to testify to the truth that we are all invited to embrace. Reflect this week on what risk you would take to seek your destiny to be in union with the Holy Trinity. What you would do to ensure as many people around you go with you. I am not referring to protests or violence. I am talking about sacrifice for those around us for whom Jesus died and to whom the trinity invites us to unity. God is not only one God in three persons but he invites all of humanity to participate in his unity.
