Discern The Spirits
“Those who have served through the ages and have drawn inspiration from the Book of Isaiah, when the Lord says: ‘Whom shall I send? Who shall go for us?’ The American military has been answering for a long time. ‘Here I am, Lord. Send me. Here I am, send me.’ Each one of these women and men of our armed forces are the heirs of that tradition of sacrifice, of volunteering to go into harm’s way to risk everything, not for glory, not for profit, but to defend what we love and the people we love.” President Joe Biden
Our attachments to the cultures into which we happen to be born are sometimes so powerful that we find it hard to view the crowd or coalition with which we identify most strongly as but one human instrumentality among others. It’s hard to see past the given sacrosanct. The prophetic, poetic vision of Beloved Community, meanwhile, relativizes every claim on our identity and invites us into a deeper history and a higher realism, confronting us with a demystifying, holy continuum that our divisions of church or state, sacred or secular, and religion or politics often obscure. If we draw on its texts, the account of Moses’ engagement of Pharaoh on behalf of the God who hears the cry of every mixed multitude under oppression, for instance, can begin to look a lot like an early refutation of what would eventually be called the divine right of kings. And Jesus’ witness before Pontius Pilate to a kingdom not of this world can begin to undo the boasts of any empire or party that claims superiority or unquestionable merit worthy of global dominance. That goes for Joe Biden’s recent attempt to conflate the United States military with those who hear and respond to the prophetic call of Isaiah as well as the decree of a man in a red tie before the Republican National Convention that nominated him as their candidate for President: “I alone can fix it.”
It has long been the habit of potentates to claim as much, and no consigning of religion to the private sphere protects a citizenry from the mad euphoria that demands a worshipful allegiance to the proclaimed interests of the cult of state. But a culture that allows itself to be demystified by the prophetic witness of Beloved Community will learn to doubt its own euphoria; be haunted by the prophetic imagery of arrogant, oppressive nations at whom the Lord in heaven laughs; and note that humans stoked into a frenzy of what they take to be righteous indignation (whether by waves of resentment, white supremacy, or nationalism) often have an unfortunate habit of disappearing people. So long as people of good conscience take up this prophetic witness, gathering up the good that remains and attempting truthfulness one human exchange at a time, I spy hope. Such gestures are not, after all, without precedent.
As we think these matters through, we do well to consider a confession (affirmed by some Christian denominations in North America) that was composed as an appeal to Christian congregations in Germany in May of 1934. Repudiating the claim that any power apart from Christ should be considered a source of divine revelation (whether an elected official, the triumph of any national will, or a Führer Principle), the Barmen Declaration called on German churches to “try the spirits whether they are of God” and to reject all “alien principles” or “figures and truths” that would presume to place themselves alongside (or above) the lordship of Christ. Written primarily by Karl Barth and Hans Asmussen, the document rejects the false doctrine of “other lords” and checks the totalitarian impulse of the state when it presumes absolutely or coercively to define life, liberty, and order for the human community.
Many Americans are often already so immersed in what they take to be biblical language that distinguishing between the sayings of Benjamin Franklin and the wisdom of the book of Proverbs is sometimes a difficult task. Similarly, we are often prone to confuse the reign of God with our sense of patriotism and forget—again and again--that the two are not synonymous. To carefully examine what we find ourselves falling for and weirdly mobilized by--holding it up to careful scrutiny with a determined awareness of our own tendency to confuse matters—is neither an unpatriotic act nor an intellectualization of what ought to be straightforward and simple. Instead, it might be better viewed as a response to the apostle Paul’s admonition to “test the spirits” (as echoed in the Barmen Declaration) and the costly, patriotic practice of eternal vigilance against our tendency to hypnotize ourselves into unawareness.
Whether they assume the forms of marketeering, electioneering, or simply achieving and balancing the desired optics within our military-industrial-entertainment-incarceration complex, the words and images that come our way are fraught with meaning. Joan Didion has noted that elections are won with “a series of fables about American experience” carefully calibrated to smooth over whatever revelations might impede its momentum. Civil religion, in this sense, is a rolling enterprise. We in the viewing audience are sometimes prone to measure content by how it makes us feel, instead of examining exactly what’s being proposed, what the incoming transmission is doing to us, whether or not the narratives we’re receiving are demonstrably true. This is the discipline of Beloved Community. If we exercise no circumspection in regard to the language to which we pay heed and then find ourselves deploying, we run the risk of being swayed by whatever false doctrines prove most emotionally intoxicating from one day to the next and whatever interpretation of current events achieves the highest ratings.
A few days following the inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United States, the Council of Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church issued a statement which, if we have ears to hear, is as essential to our own time as the Barmen Declaration. Citing the campaign promises that were quickly becoming the pursuit of policies (the 1,900 mile wall, the Muslim ban, and the assault on the possibility of affordable health care for all Americans), the statement invites “people who are committed to justice and righteousness, equality and truth” to join members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the effort “to thwart what are clearly demonic acts.”
From what I could tell, this communal gesture was not widely publicized by any major news organization or amplified on hardly anyone’s social media feed, but for the record, it quietly but resolutely vindicates a tradition, Christianity specifically, as a living possibility to be taken up by people of conscience at any time, and Beloved Community as a general work available to everyone despite what happens in national elections. The discernment of some acts as visibly and plainly demonic and others as based in common-sense righteousness (the general welfare of most people) is a discipline that is always there and never quite complete.
As Karl Barth noted, applying the gospel of Jesus and the prophets to our vision of the world’s unfolding before us will involve a yes and a no. Yes to the hope of a new day coming and the watchfulness required to see it. No to the suggestion, sometimes only dimly hinted at even to ourselves, that our own good intentions or pure hearts will hasten its coming or that we are knowers (rather than learners) of the good purposes of God. In the interest of such watchfulness, let us consider the concluding words of President George W. Bush’s remarks delivered on Ellis Island on the first anniversary of September 11: “Be confident. Our country is strong. And our cause is even larger than our country. Ours is the cause of human dignity; freedom guided by conscience and guarded by peace. This ideal of America is the hope of all mankind. That hope drew millions to this harbor. That hope still lights our way. And the light shines in the darkness. And the darkness will not overcome it.”
Like the language of the Declaration of Independence, the stated vocation of the country (“the cause of human dignity”) can be interpreted to include the have-nots within America and without. Thus interpreted, the enormity of the challenge (a challenge, incidentally, which would probably be recognized as foundational to America’s civil religion, Amnesty International, the American Red Cross, the witness of the Roman Catholic Church, and that of the United Nations) will be impossible to overestimate. With the stakes this high, it’s always important, in the interest of vigilance, spirit testing, and an aliveness to our capacity for self-deception in Beloved Community, to have in mind a confession or acknowledgement of frequent moral lapses, on the part of the United States government, in living up to this vocation.
This isn’t to say that any president, commemorating a day of national tragedy, should be expected to use the opportunity to confess the nation’s shortcomings. But the discerning viewer will want to keep in mind the need for confession and historical mindfulness (an obligation of citizenship) even in mourning. Admittedly, focus groups are likely to suggest that public officials can’t get elected or remain in office without maintaining an air of insouciance regarding the less righteous moments in America’s history, and career politicians have long learned how beautiful on television is the face of the one who brings good news, announcing peace and proclaiming news of happiness.
But most of us aren’t running for office and need not have our consciences dictated by someone else’s talking points. Keeping matters clear in our own minds and noting the possibility that some honest hearers of these words about America’s ideals might think of global warming, tortured detainees, or drone-strike victims, we can affirm these phrases for their worth without getting carried away. Yes to the cause as stated. No to the suggestion that anyone not yet convinced that we’re living up to it is somehow against us.
Unless we hold unwaveringly to the yes and the no of a righteous witness like Beloved Community in our listening and watching, we fall prey to a kind of confidence game that is believed to be, for better or worse, a key part of maintaining consumer confidence and holding on to power. This is where the pragmatic purposes of realpolitik, when successfully achieved, inevitably appeal to what are usually described as religious sensibilities. The cause (human dignity) is described as America’s “ideal,” which, in turn, is “the hope of all mankind.” “That hope still lights our way,” asserts George W. Bush. We hope that human dignity is a priority in the lives of most Americans, and yet some, viewing our culture industry, trade policies, and unilateral actions, might be forgiven for thinking otherwise. And then there is the biblical reference: “The light shines in the darkness. And the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5).
Many Americans were likely pleased to hear the Bible quoted at all. For the demographic who would come to feel somehow vindicated whenever “Merry Christmas” trumps “Happy Holidays,” they might also be happy to hear, in one of President Bush’s State of the Union addresses, an altered recitation of a popular hymn: “There’s power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people.” But language that connects American motivations with the divine Logos or Americans’ presumed goodness with the blood of the Lamb who was slain should probably give us pause. We have to examine ourselves closely whenever we try to claim (or imply) continuity with the prophetic imagination. What do we mean? Are we thinking, speaking, and acting truthfully? Are we bearing false witness in an effort to accrue cred or coin through association? We have to ask. Not, I hasten to add, in order to go around policing theological correctness, but to attempt to embody a vigilance that is, in one sense, a moral responsibility and, I tend to think, essential in discerning and preventing demonic acts undertaken with an implied association with God or Christ or freedom itself. Generalization, we might say, is antichrist’s air supply. Specificity cuts it off.
Discern the spirits.
Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.”
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”
And he said, “Go and say to this people:
‘Keep listening, but do not comprehend;
keep looking but do not understand.’
Make the mind of this people dull,
and stop their ears,
and shut their eyes,
so that they may not look with their eyes,
and listen with their ears,
and comprehend with their minds,
and turn and be healed.”
Isaiah 6:6-10
The sight of the skipping child in the above photo has me wanting to change my life today.