Political Faith
A few days ago, I received a discount coupon from a vendor for use in their store. I’d not asked for this coupon, mind you, and was surprised to discover that it offered me a rather large discount on a future purchase – one I’d not intended to make, but now might. Such is the lure of a bargain! And it came from a bookstore, for Pete’s sake; they knew my weakness, no doubt because they are compiling a computerized record of my monetary sins of commission with each new transaction I’ve made there over recent years.
For some reason, I decided to read the fine print only to discover what I already knew: that the exclusions would take a long paragraph to enumerate, since it was invalid for “all electronics,” periodicals, gift cards, and even comics. (All of these must have a smaller profit margin than the standard book purchase.) But then, at the very bottom, came a curious piece of information: “Cash value: .01 cent. Not redeemable for cash.”
What was I to make of this, that something could have cash value, if admittedly of a negligible amount, and yet not be “redeemable”? What could have a stated cash value but be at the same time irredeemable for cash? It all seemed like a twisted logic which my small mind could not manage to decipher; numbering the angels dancing on the head of a pin made much more sense.
But perhaps that is the very point of it: that in the marketplace, something could have a value but not be redeemable for that value. This monetary fallacy seems a clear enough indictment of the current economy, since much that has some stated financial value may not be redeemable “for cash.” One thinks of the perilous housing market, or the rising mountain of national debt we are creating in order to fund (among other good things) the violent madness of war – all based on assumed values for which there may be no immediate or even foreseeable return of cash.
Anything theological here, I wondered? Is it plausible that God is in the business of making things that have a value – if, in this case, an admittedly unnoticeable one – which, however, are not finally redeemable? Perhaps this is an absurd analogy, and one that finally collapses under the weight of trivial comparison. But it did provoke me to think about redemption, and wonder if our inability to imagine it coming to some “other” – our enemies? those who threaten to hurt us, or have already done so? – has more to do with our own deficit of holy imagination than with the one we claim to be the giver of all life.
Perhaps we cannot imagine, in theoretical terms, putting a value (however small) on life and then claiming that it is not redeemable. Our toleration of “death row,” looking away from this administration’s public sanctioning of torture under the ruse of calling it “alternate methods of interrogation,” our building of walls to keep future immigrants out: these tolerations, at least, give the lie to such a presumption.
And, perhaps, such incongruities should encourage us to resist, as an act of faith in this all-redeeming God, such measures – if, that is, we trust the “minority report” in scripture and in the church’s tradition, one that will not give way to the louder (majority) voice calling for vengeance, punishment, and even annihilation for the “enemy” (see Deut. 20. 17 ff. – and, for Canaanites, read in the updated parlance: Palestinians). “You have heard that it was said. . ., but I say to you”: yes, faith is this unavoidably political, or it is not faith in the God of Jesus but in some other deity (the god of national security, executive privilege, or convenient greed).
The choice is ours: we can choose to succumb to the market madness, accept the violence undergirding the global commodity exchange, and support – in action or inaction, by sins of commission or omission – the revoking of even the stated value for those who have little enough to begin with, at least, in our eyes. Or we can choose to stand with Jesus and the prophets, with Julian and the mystics, and, yes, with Martin King and the activists, and remember the moral and political obligation for the vulnerable among us that calls us to love our neighbors with the same love we have for ourselves. One Love, in this one world.
Can we live in such a way that, with Jesus, we presume the redeemable value of every human being –friends and enemies alike, gifted as all are by the one God with life? And bearing, as we hear in The Text, nothing less than the divine image itself? And, if so, what else can we do but commit ourselves, in and beyond our churches, to incarnating this One Love rooted in Jesus’ vision of a new empire (“basileia”) – which is to come on earth as it apparently already is in heaven?
Faith is just this political, as is the question of redemption – which is to say, it has to do with how we relate to the real lives of all created in God’s image, enemy and friend alike. And, last I checked, there were no exemptions stated in The Book.
Mark S. Burrows
Professor of the History of Christianity and
Theologian-in-Residence at Old South Church
For some reason, I decided to read the fine print only to discover what I already knew: that the exclusions would take a long paragraph to enumerate, since it was invalid for “all electronics,” periodicals, gift cards, and even comics. (All of these must have a smaller profit margin than the standard book purchase.) But then, at the very bottom, came a curious piece of information: “Cash value: .01 cent. Not redeemable for cash.”
What was I to make of this, that something could have cash value, if admittedly of a negligible amount, and yet not be “redeemable”? What could have a stated cash value but be at the same time irredeemable for cash? It all seemed like a twisted logic which my small mind could not manage to decipher; numbering the angels dancing on the head of a pin made much more sense.
But perhaps that is the very point of it: that in the marketplace, something could have a value but not be redeemable for that value. This monetary fallacy seems a clear enough indictment of the current economy, since much that has some stated financial value may not be redeemable “for cash.” One thinks of the perilous housing market, or the rising mountain of national debt we are creating in order to fund (among other good things) the violent madness of war – all based on assumed values for which there may be no immediate or even foreseeable return of cash.
Anything theological here, I wondered? Is it plausible that God is in the business of making things that have a value – if, in this case, an admittedly unnoticeable one – which, however, are not finally redeemable? Perhaps this is an absurd analogy, and one that finally collapses under the weight of trivial comparison. But it did provoke me to think about redemption, and wonder if our inability to imagine it coming to some “other” – our enemies? those who threaten to hurt us, or have already done so? – has more to do with our own deficit of holy imagination than with the one we claim to be the giver of all life.
Perhaps we cannot imagine, in theoretical terms, putting a value (however small) on life and then claiming that it is not redeemable. Our toleration of “death row,” looking away from this administration’s public sanctioning of torture under the ruse of calling it “alternate methods of interrogation,” our building of walls to keep future immigrants out: these tolerations, at least, give the lie to such a presumption.
And, perhaps, such incongruities should encourage us to resist, as an act of faith in this all-redeeming God, such measures – if, that is, we trust the “minority report” in scripture and in the church’s tradition, one that will not give way to the louder (majority) voice calling for vengeance, punishment, and even annihilation for the “enemy” (see Deut. 20. 17 ff. – and, for Canaanites, read in the updated parlance: Palestinians). “You have heard that it was said. . ., but I say to you”: yes, faith is this unavoidably political, or it is not faith in the God of Jesus but in some other deity (the god of national security, executive privilege, or convenient greed).
The choice is ours: we can choose to succumb to the market madness, accept the violence undergirding the global commodity exchange, and support – in action or inaction, by sins of commission or omission – the revoking of even the stated value for those who have little enough to begin with, at least, in our eyes. Or we can choose to stand with Jesus and the prophets, with Julian and the mystics, and, yes, with Martin King and the activists, and remember the moral and political obligation for the vulnerable among us that calls us to love our neighbors with the same love we have for ourselves. One Love, in this one world.
Can we live in such a way that, with Jesus, we presume the redeemable value of every human being –friends and enemies alike, gifted as all are by the one God with life? And bearing, as we hear in The Text, nothing less than the divine image itself? And, if so, what else can we do but commit ourselves, in and beyond our churches, to incarnating this One Love rooted in Jesus’ vision of a new empire (“basileia”) – which is to come on earth as it apparently already is in heaven?
Faith is just this political, as is the question of redemption – which is to say, it has to do with how we relate to the real lives of all created in God’s image, enemy and friend alike. And, last I checked, there were no exemptions stated in The Book.
Mark S. Burrows
Professor of the History of Christianity and
Theologian-in-Residence at Old South Church
posted by Andover Newton News at
1:18 PM
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