Category: theology

justice with mercy

~ dwc ~ Leave a comment

Mercy must be joined by Justice & Justice must be married to Mercy.
Let’s consider, simply and briefly, what happens when they get disconnected.

Unjust Mercy & the Enabling of Injustice

Simply put, we enable injustice to continue when, in the name of ‘mercy’ we fail to critique, resist, prosecute, report, vote, petition, march, speak out, inquire about or act against an injustice. The oppressed are justified in resisting injustice, and allies are ethically bound to critique oppression. Ironically, more and better ‘standing against injustice’ is needed, even in a culture where ‘standing against injustice’ is trendy and can win you a reputation as a ‘good person’ who ‘hates injustice’. Yes allyship can be performative. But we need more allyship and better allyship.

Letting injustice go unpunished and uncritiqued in the name of ‘mercy’ is not merciful. It’s obviously not merciful to the oppressed. And less obviously, it’s not merciful to oppressors who are also harming themselves by harming others.

Merciless Justice & the Escalation of Injustice

Just as being ‘soft’ on injustice in the name of ‘mercy’ is not truly mercy; so also justice is distorted when we go beyond the truth or to abandon the facts. We do this when we go beyond critiquing an oppressor to demonising them or misrepresenting their injustice.

Performative allyship is again the culprit here. I, wanting to be seen as a ‘good person who hates injustice and protects the world from it’, take self-serving pleasure in declaring how bad ‘they’ are, leaving it obvious to everyone how righteous ‘I’ am. An oppressor can easily ignore such distortions, claiming that they are being misrepresented. Ironically, an oppressor usually feels victimized already, and such demonizing only adds to this, confirming their sense of victimhood. What’s more, when victims go beyond resistance and engage in retaliation or revenge, they unintentionally perpetuate a cycle of violence. The oppressed become oppressors. Justice becomes Injustice.

Just Mercy & the End of Injustice

Only when the persistent pursuit of justice is tempered by mercy is it truly effective. Instead of a ‘good person’ dethroning or locking up a ‘bad person’, everyone retains their human dignity. Justice means consequences – stepping down from leadership role, imprisonment, fines, reparation, whatever is ‘just’ for that situation – nothing less and nothing more. But justice must be merciful – avoiding excessively shaming labels, sticking to the facts and rightly scaling the actions committed.

When mercy is wedded to justice, everyone in the triangle (oppressor, oppressed, ally) is human. Not heinous (villain), helpless (victim) or heroic (ally), but human. And justice, after all, is for humans. It stands to reason that the actions we take to pursue it must therefore be humane.

cultural, bi-cultural, multi-cultural, trans-cultural?

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The current legislative discussions around Te Tiriri o Waitangi / The Treaty of Waitangi seem to be about culture.

For David Seymour, his concern (legitimate or not) is that one way of interpreting the Treaty would award “special rights” based on “ancestry”, which he feels violates his understanding of equal rights for all individuals. He thinks Te Tiriti sets up one government (‘kawanatanga‘) for all. One set of laws for all. Equal rights for all. This language of equality is deeply intuitive to many. The debate centres on the extent, nature and scope of that government. My own suspicion, which I hold very lightly, is that the hesitance of some Māori to sign Te Tiriti, lends weight to the view that ‘te Kawanatanga katoa o o ratou wenua’ indeed refers to total (‘katoa’) government over the land (‘whenua’). According to this understanding, Māori were clear what was being proposed, but as some of their chiefs (rangatira) had travelled widely and were wisely aware how colonisation had negatively affected other peoples, were concerned about whether or not this proposed ‘Kawana’ (a loan word for the English ‘Governor’) was going to truly protect their best interests. Sadly it turned out that land was unjustly sold and taken.

For some (or even many) Māori and their allies seeking to honour Te Tiriti, the concern is that the current system of government fails to give them the voice, influence and self-determination (‘tino rangatiratanga‘) which they (as they see it) are promised in article two of Te Tiriti. From this point of view, the structure of Parliament and system for governing the country are not ‘neutral’ but reflect British/European culture. Te Tiriti is seen as a safeguard against European cultural dominance, promising that colonisation, immigration and settling of Europeans will not overwhelm or erase Māori people, lands, and ways of being.

Since 1840, when Te Tiriti was signed, many people from other cultures (Asian, African, ‘American’) have also migrated, which adds a multi-cultural expression to the nation.

So, reviewing, we have:

a) an indigenous culture which is promised a very real degree of ‘tino rangatiratanga’ (self-determination or ‘chiefly rule’) over their own lands, and a settler culture which is (arguably) given the right to exercise ‘kawanatanga’ (government) over the ‘wenua’ (land)
b) a Treaty that is rightly seen as ‘bi-cultural’ between the Queen of England and the United Tribes of Nu Tirani (New Zealand).
c) a modern multi-cultural reality where Te Tiriti gives migrants the right to call Aotearoa / New Zealand home.

Is there a ‘transcultural‘ layer in the mix?

One of the major active parties involved in the drafting, translation, negotiation and signing of Te Tiriti – that is the Missionaries, notably Henry Williams – were motivated by their understanding of The Gospel (Te Rongopai). Whilst Māori, as of 1840, would understandably be skeptical about what this proposed incoming ‘Kawanatanga‘ would mean for their people, the previous two decades had seen an overwhelmingly positive response to the incoming message of ‘Rongopai’. As leading Māori historian Monty Soutar argued at an event I attended in 2019, it is the height of Eurocentric condescension to argue that Māori were tricked into welcoming this foreign religion. He is well versed in the history of intelligent weighing and welcoming of the Gospel among his people. Some estimates are that up to 90% of Māori were Christian around 1840.

I take it as obvious that these 19th century agents of mission were imperfect (sometimes extremely so). They inherited, carried and expressed an assumption of cultural superiority. This is famously seen in Samuel Marsden’s estimation that Australian aboriginals were not developed enough to have the Gospel shared with them. Despite this, Māori (and Australian aboriginals too) were intelligently and wisely able to see beyond the messengers to the message, which so many of them saw as good for their people. Thus comes into focus the ability of the Gospel to be (as missiologist David Bosch describes) ‘infinitely translatable’.

Gambian missiologist Lamin Sanneh points out that, despite the very real assumptions of cultural superiority at work, the very act of translation of the Scriptures into the many languages and cultures the missionaries went was itself inherently humanising and preserving. This is a message that does not destroy culture as it is planted into it. In the first century, when a male, female, Jew, Gentile, slave or free person became a Christian, this did not meant that their male-ness or female-ness was erased or downgraded. Rather who they were was enhanced and arguably transformed. English folk become more human, more Christ-like English folk. Māori likewise arguably judged that their people would be enriched and humanized by Te Rongopai. That vision of a humanising movement was at the heart of humanitarian and Christian groups like The Clapham Sect, which had such an influence on the wording of Te Tiriti; demanding that indigenous peoples be protected.

So then, there seems to be a kind of parallel when it comes to the present debate. I can imagine that some, perhaps David Seymour, will be imagining that ‘Parliament’ or ‘the Government’ is transcultural – neutral – objective; and that it is this neutral ‘democratic’ equality that is obviously needed here. My strong suspicion is that there needs to be a fresh awareness that The Westminster system of Parliament is indeed aligned to a particular British cultural system and not ‘neutral’. What should it – what could it – look like instead to have a (bi-cultural / multi-cultural / trans-cultural) Kawanatanga where two things could be simultaneously a reality:

  1. all could share ‘democratically’ in the same universal and general rights under one Law,
  2. but in a way that properly and thoroughly preserves and protects the particular rights due to any and all peoples (starting with and never excluding iwi & hapu (tribe & sub-tribe) Māori who are explicitly protected in Article 2 of Te Tiriti)

I have no idea what this would look like, but it seems to beautifully smell like both Te Rongopai and Te Tiriti.

the human connection between anger & temptation

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The sermon on the mount is the best teaching on human living. It lays down the patterns for full and complete humanness. After the Beatitudes and opening statements, the first two issues that Jesus deals with are a) anger leading to murder, and b) lust leading to adultery. It won’t do to simply label murder and adultery as unlawful, immoral or wrong. Jesus knows we have to get to the heart of these matters and deal with our anger and lust.

The early chapters of Genesis are also profound in their statements about humanness. Every human is like Cain, who gets ‘very angry’ and is tempted into taking actions that violate the humanity of his ‘brother’. In chapter 6, we see the moral devolution of humanity is so degraded that the beautiful daughters of men were being treated like sexual property. The Creator is grieved to the point of being willing to uncreate the whole creation.

Anger and Sex are connected. We need not illustrate all the ways that this interrelation plays out through rape and pornography.

Their interrelation also shows up in another text that is likewise profoundly awake to the realities of human nature: The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, written by Bill Wilson. The Step 4 inventory (see chapter 5, ‘How it Works’) of ones own life invites an addict to reflect on a) Resentments, b) Fears, c) Sex conduct and d) Harm to others.

Anger and Fear can be understood as a natural pair, just as Sexual dysfunction and Harm can be. For example, consider Resentment and Fear. When I resent another person, I am looking down on them in judgement (perhaps sometimes justified judgement); and when I fear someone, I am looking up at them. When I process my resentments (and fears) properly, I discover that I need not look down on (or up at) others. I can look them in the eye as equals. This humane equality is a profoundly disturbing idea for someone whose identity is dependent on feeling superior to others.

The same is true for the Sex and Harm pairing. Healthy sexual relations is a mutually helpful matter of freely giving and freely receiving. Literally ‘intercourse’. Harm, by nature, including sexual harm, is the opposite of giving and receiving. Instead of giving it forces itself on someone. “You will have this whether you want it or not.” Instead of receiving it is taking. “I’ll take this whether you’re giving it or not.” It is violent and violating.

So therefore, according to Jesus, Moses and Bill, it seems to be a human reality that when we feel resentment towards someone who we feel has wronged us we sooner or later are tempted to some kind of violence or dysfunction.

This connection between anger and temptation, finally, is seen within The Lord’s Prayer, which is – not surprisingly – the humane prayer in the structural centre of the humanising Sermon on the Mount, preached by the one Christians see as the True Human. I am instructed to link my own forgiveness from my Father in heaven, with the forgiveness I am continually working at with others who have ‘transgressed against’ me. Immediately following (and linked to) this, is that I must be on guard against being led ‘into temptation’.

Whether our resentment is justified or irrational, political or personal, sharply focused or a foggy haze; we are reminded of an important moral human truth. The longer we allow anger to fester and burn the more tempted we can be to find our way into a fix, escape, or treat. This could be in the form of a verbal insult, a preachy self-righteous Facebook comment, some form of sexually energising daydream or exploration, or any other drug of choice (working late hours, over-eating, gambling, numbing myself with drink).

And so, the journey to full humanness must include humane prayers where we lay our vulnerability to anger and temptation before the Lord.

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the Evil One.

Or, we might paraphrase…

Lord, help me to so savour your mercy towards me that I too flow with mercy towards others, especially those I am likely to point the finger of superior judgement towards, whose wrongs I feel the most burned up about. The ones who threaten me and interfere with how I think the world should run. Those who make my blood boil. The ones who, like me, do not deserve mercy.
And keep me far away from letting my anger drive me into some kind of tempting and ultimately self-serving power trip. Deliver me from the fleeting and temporary soothing ego trips of violence of any kind to myself or another.

Amen.

praying to move the Mover

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In Luke 18:1-8 we get the “Parable of the Persistent Widow”. It focuses on her persistence to win justice against her adversary. All parables of Jesus have a point, but here we are told the point of this one from the start: to show disciples that we “should always pray and never give up.”

I’ve been saying for years that when we pray we shouldn’t think of God like a vending machine. The differences should be obvious. A vending machine doesn’t care about us. It doesn’t make decisions about what we need. It is created by something other than itself. It will eventually wear down and fail to work, operate, provide, give or respond.

But here I’m going to explore at least one characteristic of vending machines which bear at least some kind of likeness to God. That characteristic is that (provided they are not defective) they work. They operate. They provide. They give. They respond to our requests.

Vending machines move. You put the money in (coin, cash, card, or

Aristotle, observing that objects in the world are in motion, rightly reasoned that (pardon the redundancy) there must be a necessary being that is a) not itself in motion, but b) is itself responsible for all of the motion in the world.

Some would at this point want to jump in and point out that this leads to (or is) a ‘deistic’ view of God. A God who kicks off all the motion in the world and then sits back and does nothing else ever again. Just one big shove, and done.

Despite this being perhaps where our minds may go first, it doesn’t mean we have to imagine things like that. As in a pool or billiards table, instead of imagining God as the white cue that is hammered at the other balls and (we might imagine) immediately removed from the table after that first contact, we might also imagine God as the cue stick, or better yet as the player who is active both beyond and on the table throughout the whole game. The one calling all the shots.

Theologian C.H. Pinnock proposed that God is not just an ‘unmoved’ Mover, but rather the Most-Moved Mover. Unlike a deterministic deity with a fixed plan like clock-work, Pinnock had an ‘open’ picture of God’s sovereignty which we won’t go into here. Suffice to say that the Bible does not portray God’s sovereignty in such a way that conflicts with our experience of God ‘changing his mind’, feeling sorry that he made humans, or responding to prayers.

This brings us back to the teaching of Jesus, using the example of a pleading widow to teach us to “always pray” and “never give up.”

According to biblical theology, God has chosen to be the kind of God who wants to relate to us, and wants that relationship to be one of asking. Jesus, as a master teacher who knows human nature completely, clearly knows that we will get tired of asking and want to ‘give up’.

The short parable ends with Jesus concluding that God, who we should understand is very unlike the ruler who “doesn’t fear God or care what people think” is the kind of God who will, in his own time and own way, “bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night.”

I don’t naturally want to cry out to God day and night. Not for anything. I find the deistic view easier. God has determined it all. Down to the last detail. No need to give him instructions. Just trust and wait until the end, when it will all get sorted out.

But no. This parable shows God to be the kind of God who wants us to be – at least a bit – impatient and persistent with him. He wants us to “keep bothering” him, like the widow did to the unjust judge. God wants us to ask for at least a little of the ultimate future in the immediate present.

This will take practice, and getting over our pride which doesn’t want to look like a fool asking God for stuff all the time and it seeming (at least some of the time) to make precisely no difference.

If we go to the Psalms, the prayer book of the Bible, the prayer book that shaped Jesus’ prayers, we immediately see this kind of view as they call persistently on God for all things, all the time, in all kinds of ways.

In prayer, I have the shameless audacity to be trying to move the Most Moved Mover.

the birds helped me to pray

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Today the birds helped me to pray.

My slowness to rise after my short six hour slumber was gently challenged by the relentlessly positive chorus of glad chirping from the other side of our bedroom window.

(The contrast between this happy throng and the pair of brutally barking dogs a few weeks earlier could not be overstated.)

They helped me pray my regular daily ‘Our Father’ at my dedicated place and prayer kneeler.

Our Father, who art in Heaven,

Yes, you are beyond this world, and also in it. You’re in the throat of those glorious birds.

Hallowed by Thy Name…

Yes, may we honour your name as freely and ornately as these simple creatures are.

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.

Yes, the celebratory proclamations of these winged friends is an earthly echo of angelic praise in the heavenly realm beyond our sensory comprehension.

Give us this day our daily bread.

Yes, you “feed the ravens when they call to you.” Feed us too, and may we not fight over the crumbs as these little friends are sometimes known to.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Yes, these animals are not worried about anything. Childlike, they watch, explore, hop, flutter and gladly receive nourishment. They do not hold grudges, despair over the sad state of things. May I not miss such simple gratitude in the midst of all my serious political philosophy.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the Evil One.

Yes, it is only when I think of myself as more important, larger then others that my Ego is warped and wooed into wrongdoing, harming others, exaggerating how wrongly I’ve been treated. How dare they not recognise my greatness. The birds just do not care about such things. They are not so easily tempted.

For Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

Amen, help me live like a bird today. A happy citizen of your domain. A glad participant in your power. A humble reflection of your glory.

three postures about prayer

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It seems to me that there are three different postures one could take towards the activity of prayer.

One is an essentially negative posture. This posture rejects all prayer as useless and ineffective. This posture would fit most comfortably within a naturalistic worldview. “No being that hears prayer is either true or real. Ergo, prayer is pointless.” Interestingly, this posture also fits one particular type of theistic worldview: deism. Deism accepts a ‘first cause’ or ultimate being as true and real, but does not believe that this ‘god’ interacts with or intervenes within our world. Thus, again, prayer is wasted effort both the Naturalist and the Deist.

This negative posture has the appeal of being clean cut, tidy and simple. “I just don’t waste any time on that stuff.” But for me, naturalism and deism have always seemed closed minded, based on ultimate negative assumptions, and thus intellectually and spiritually unsatisfying. It also does not (indeed by definition it cannot) take seriously even one of countless stories of answered prayer. It is the quintessential example of a sweeping judgment. “Nope, it’s all B.S.”

Another (yes, at the other extreme) posture is essentially positive. This posture accepts basically prayer ‘works’ all the time. One might think that this posture is the ‘Christian’ or ‘religious’ one, but it really doesn’t sit comfortably at all within a worldview shaped by the Bible. This posture, unlike the Bible, cannot cope well with death, suffering, struggle, doubt, questions, and pain.

This positive posture is well-meaning, hopeful and at times inspirational, but can be harmful in setting up people for disappointment with life, with others, or themselves.

The posture that we will have if we are shaped by the Bible will be an essentially relational one. This posture sees prayer, not as a mechanism, but an act of relationship. And relationships are dynamic and living. Not easy or comfortable. The Bible contains a breathtaking spectrum of relational speech toward God. On the one hand, you have prayer that is so gushing and sappy it sounds almost romantic. On the other hand, you have prayer that sounds so hostile and critical toward God that it sounds atheistic to our ears. But to address God at all is to acknowledge the Great Reality behind, over, under, and active within our reality. In this sense, a relational posture can transcend the positive-negative distinction.

The Bible also transcends a hard natural/supernatural distinction. The same God who raises the dead is the same God who made the world regulated by natural laws and ‘holds all things together’. The God of miracles and resurrection is also the God of science and rationality. The Spirit who some times acts or speaks in powerful surprising ways is the same Spirit who most of the time acts or speaks through nature, law, conscience, reason, quantum mechanics and intuition.

Relational prayer, then, is not just about whether it ‘works’ or not. It’s simply what a person does in relationship to God. Whether frustrated shouts at God, passionate prayers of adoration to God, or humble sitting in the shame with God; we pray. Whether we say Wow, Help, Thanks (the more familiar ones) or Why or Sorry (the ones that balance the others out); we pray.

entirely devoted

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The King James version of 2 Chronicles 16:9 reads like this:

For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him.

It’s a famous little verse, wrapped in the middle of a critique that the prophet Hanani issues to king Asa for relying on human strength instead of divine strength. Asa had a heart problem.

But what about that little word ‘perfect’? What’s going on there? Does God require ‘perfection’ in matters like this, or in general? Why would someone with a perfect heart need God to be strong for them? Aren’t they already perfect?

We could rightly point out that this is not some kind of unattainable Greek, mathematical, mechanical ‘perfection’ that is in view here. It is instead the complete, total and absolute orientation to God. Like when an Olympic athlete, skilled woodworker, tailor or electrician puts aside all distractions and focuses ‘entirely’ on the difficult task they are doing.

There are three components to the verse: The searching eyes of the Lord, the state of human hearts, and the resulting strength from God. Other translations swap out the word ‘perfect’ for ‘fully committed’, ‘blameless’, ‘fully devoted’, ‘loyal’ or ‘completely his’.

Some things in life are a spectrum like a dimmer switch, and other things are either/or, like a on/off switch. When a carpenter strikes a nail with a hammer, they either hit it or they miss (note: a miss also includes hitting it wrongly and bending the nail!). Careful, diligent focus on the nail head is required for the nail to be driven. With that kind of ‘perfect’ focus, the power of the hammer can be effective.

So then, this is less about some kind of ‘make sure you’re good so that God will love you’ kind of moralism or legalism. This is about the spiritual law that there is no transformation without our participation.

The 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous touch on this principle in step 6: “(we) Were entirely ready to have God remove from us all these defects of character.” For God to do the removing of the defects (discovered through the inventory of step 4 and disclosed to God, self and another in step 5), I must be ‘entirely ready’; and my actions must show this. God moves mountains, but I must bring a shovel.

God’s power to protect or transform is never forced upon us. It is released when we position ourselves in alignment to God and his loving purposes for his world. As Augustine said, without God, we ‘cannot’. But God ‘will not’ without us.

praying to God as friend and foe (& everything in between)?

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I just read Job 19 for my morning devotions.

It’s a profound combination of doubt and faith. In the same chapter, Job accuses God and expresses profound hope in his Redeemer. It’s astounding.

Check out the stark protests against the Almighty…

8 He has blocked my way so I cannot pass;
    he has shrouded my paths in darkness.
9 He has stripped me of my honor
    and removed the crown from my head.
10 He tears me down on every side till I am gone;
    he uproots my hope like a tree.
11 His anger burns against me;
    he counts me among his enemies.
12 His troops advance in force;
    they build a siege ramp against me
    and encamp around my tent.

And contrast this with the profound hope – dare I say Resurrection hope! – later in the chapter…

25 I know that my redeemer lives,
    and that in the end he will stand on the earth.
26 And after my skin has been destroyed,
    yet in my flesh I will see God;

This is a breathtaking combination. Even putting to one side the questions of how specific terms from v25-26 are to be translated… however they should be translated they speak of seeing God after the flesh, skin or body has been destroyed. Seeing God “with my own eyes—I, and not another.” (v.27)

I wish I had a faith as resilient and honest as Job’s. I feel very disrespectful accusing God. But maybe this language is there in Scripture for us all to express all of life, toxic, tragic, triumphant and technical, to our Father.

Maybe we are given resources in Scripture to pray to God, no matter how we may feel he is relating to us. With the tender intimacy of ‘Abba’ Father, or the relentless punishing violence of a cold-hearted enemy. Or any of the options in between these extremes. He may feel like a mother or a mercenary. Defense attorney or prosecuting attorney. The judge or indeed… the one taking the punishment of the guilty.

the explanation for everything, but not every thing

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One of the common misconceptions of God is that belief in God is in some way contrary to science.

The logic seems to go like:
if a) I believe God is the explanation for X,
then b) there is no real motivation for ‘doing science’ to explain X.

This however collapses explanation into one level.

Aristotle, for example, talked about four causes for things. For example, for a coffee cup there would be:

  • a material cause – the materials that explain or cause this cup would be clay.
  • an efficient cause – the process that caused this cup to be was what we call pottery.
  • a formal cause – the identity or form of the object that resulted from materials and the process is a coffee cup.
  • a final cause – the purpose or goal of having a coffee cup is drinking coffee.

So there are many different ways to look at any particular thing (e.g. a computer), and different ways to look at the collection of things that we call ‘everything’ (e.g. Nature).

The belief that God is the explanation for ‘everything’ (e.g. existence itself) is not logically connected in any way to a belief that God is the efficient cause (so to speak) for every single thing that happens (e.g. every bank robbery, every tsunami, etc.). You can, in other words, be a theist and a criminologist; or a theist and a meteorologist. You can believe that Italian designers wanted to drink coffee from really nice cups, and still have plenty of reason to research what their coffee cups are made of, the processes involved, and why they chose the particular form or design.

Science is not in conflict with belief in God, just as a material or efficient cause cannot be in conflict with a formal or final cause. The problem comes when a material or efficient cause is mis-framed as a final cause; e.g. when ‘science’ is absolutely and dogmatically elevated ‘ to ultimate levels; in other words, to believe that everything can be explained by science (i.e. ‘Scientism‘).

So then, even if Scientism may have a problem with God, God has no problem with Science.
Indeed, God would be understood to be the final cause for all Nature – all creation; and the formal cause for the lawful and ‘scientific’ nature of Nature.

– – –

after-thought:
Note: in Pantheism (e.g. God is all; and all is God), which I do not hold, God is also the material and efficient cause for all things. Which gets very tricky making God materially and mechanically responsible for evil and suffering. God can only be ‘good’ within a worldview that makes a distinction between the eternally Free Creator and the purposefully free creation.

from the bondage of self

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When an alcoholic is working the 12 steps using the guidance of the ‘Big Book’ of Alcoholics Anonymous, I am told that it is traditional to pray the “Third Step Prayer” found in Chapter 5 ‘How It Works’. Here is the full prayer:

“God, I offer myself to Thee—to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life. May I do Thy will always!’’

There is clearly much to appreciate about this prayer, but in this blog I want to do two things. First, I want to zero in on the significance of one line “Relieve me of the bondage of self”; and Second, I want to use the Lord’s Prayer to demonstrate how it is a prayer that asks the same thing.

The Self

The AA Big Book has a lot to say about an addictive focus on ‘self’. “Selfishness-self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows…” (bold and italics not in original) It says “the alcoholic is an example of self-will run riot.” In one of the appendices, there is a quote from Dr. W. W. Bauer, who observes that helping other fellow alcoholics creates an atmosphere in which “the alcoholic often overcomes his excessive concentration upon himself.”

Modern psychologists may sometimes take issue with what could seem like a negative view of the self in such language. But if we are read these quotes as intended, we can see that it is not the self, as such, that is being critiqued, but the ‘excessive’ focus upon self. ‘Self’ is not the problem, but selfishness. The AA Big Book wants the alcoholic to see that even when trying to be ‘good’ their self-will is at play. Such is the description of the ‘actor’ trying to ‘run the whole show’: “Is he not really a self-seeker even when trying to be kind?”

This wisdom about a counter-productive self-focus is behind one of my favourite lines in the prayer: “Relieve me of the bondage of self.” Through the spiritual programme of action outline in the 12-steps, the alcoholic or addict is guided through a process by which their excessive focus on themselves is relieved by the aid of a Power greater than (who?) themselves.

The Lord’s Prayer

I’d now like to translate this wisdom into Christian key. Of course, it is well known that the Christian faith was the spiritual garden out of which the principles of AA were harvested. Frank Buchman, the Lutheran minister, had his transformational experience with resentment, which led to him establishing the ‘First Century Christian Fellowship’ later known as the ‘Oxford Group’, whose 6 principles were expanded into 12 steps by Bill Wilson and the early AA fellowship.

So, although, it is not needed to re-translate any of this back into Christian faith, it might at least be interesting or useful to show how the Lord’s Prayer relates to this line from the Third Step prayer (indeed the entire prayer!); particularly given that the early AA groups used to open or close their meetings with the Lord’s Prayer (and some still do).

  • Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.
    • Right from the start, my focus on self is violently interrupted by shifting and lifting my spiritual gaze off of my self and onto another. Not just any ‘other’, but the ultimate Other. Consider how the same shift can at least be somewhat attempted in the practice of someone who does not believe in any traditional Monotheistic God. Take a practitioner of yoga (which I am neither criticizing nor commending here). Through their practice of breathing, exercise, community and spiritual worldview, they also shift their focus from their individual self onto their body, the others they might be exercising with, and indeed the Universe. Stresses and difficult mental states are at least temporarily put aside as one focuses on higher and wider things than their self. Monotheism simply takes this as far as the logic can lead – to an ultimate Other, the un-caused Cause behind all causality, the One Creator of all things.
  • Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
    • In contrast to the self-will that wants to run the whole show of life, and aggressively or passive-aggressively trying to get others to do what we think they ought to do, this part of the prayer acknowledges that there are higher laws and higher wills and a higher order of things than mine. I do not need to, and indeed I cannot live well if I persist in trying to, play God. Even the agnostic can at least sense a comparable shift when they acknowledge the vast order of natural law in the Universe. We are but a small part in the whole. Monotheism simply recognises that this higher order is not the an order characterised by ‘blind, pitiless, indifference’ as Richard Dawkins famously wrote, but rather by a purposeful, creational and ‘kingly’ or royal will.
  • Give us this day our daily bread
    • One of the basic fears that a fragile self can have is around the fear of financial insecurity. We fear not being able to secure means for ourselves, and for those who may depend on us. Food security experts talk about the difference between a ‘scarcity’ or ‘abundance’ mindset. One can base their positive affirmation of abundance on factual appreciations of the wealth of resources available to us. This prayer just rests this confidence on the ground of a generous God.
  • And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
    • One of the most profound contributions of the AA Big Book is the focus on cleaning one’s own side of the street. We have many resentments against the wrongs others have done. Sometimes these resentments are essentially justified and we have truly been harmed. However, the wisdom here, is that even an innocent victim can get stuck in justified resentment. As the saying goes, “holding onto resentment is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies.” I cannot change the other person who hurt me (in my case, as a young child). I can only focus on changing myself, particularly the ways that I nourish my sense of victimhood and keep the fires of resentment enflamed. Forgiveness, in this context, has nothing to do with absolving or excusing or minimising the harm done to me; nor should it keep me from taking any appropriate action to protect myself or others from present or future harm. It is simply ‘giving’ them up out of my death grip of judgment. The wisdom here is very challenging, because never does the self feel more righteous than when criticizing another for legitimate harms done (think of Israel or Hamas). Whatever forgiveness may do for the one who is forgiven, it is undeniably transformative for the one doing the forgiving.
  • And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the Evil One.
    • Here the prayer follows on directly from the previous line. Unforgiving and merciless criticism of another person, and most of all the victim mentality too often leads to various forms of verbal, physical or military retaliation or vengeance. For others, it could lead to various forms of escapism as we feel entitled to a mental or moral holiday. We’ve been harmed, mis-represented, ignored, abandoned, so “Screw ‘them’; they have it coming.” Or “Screw ‘it’, I’m going to numb out…” with food, work, sex, drink or self-harm. Such escalations or self-harm are named here as temptations driven by a force that is malevolent, destructive, anti-creational, counter-productive, distorting, enslaving and thus ‘Evil’.
  • For Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever, Amen.
    • My life, my future, my past and present; and the history and activities in the whole world, are all subsumed within a higher order that will be ‘just fine’. This is not the well-meaning distant dualism of hoping that ‘God is watching us… from a distance.’ It is the dogged, insistent hope in the reality of a loving Father who can sort out the baddies ‘out there’, and who is constantly and compassionately available to help me with my fearful and vulnerable badness ‘in here’. God is the one who provides, rules, understands, judges and heals. I need that every day.

So then,
Father of all Creation,
today and every day,
relieve me of the bondage of self.
Make me a vessel of reconciling love
to some of your children today.
Amen.