We often ask ourselves, “Why am I here?” or, “Why do I exist?” But, beginning with “I” frames the question in the wrong way. Focusing on why “I” exist can only lead to follow up questions like “Why did God do this to me” and “Why is God testing me” and “When will God answer my prayers?” Such questions concern themselves with the individual’s plight in life, weigh God’s supposed blessings in terms of the type of job that you have, how much wealth you have accumulated, and whether or not God has deemed you worthy of answering your prayers. But, God does not reward people with wealth, jobs, home runs, new cars, and the like. Statements like, “Sell all that you own and follow me and you will have treasure in heaven (Mark 10:21), “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it (Mark 8:34-35),” and “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (Luke 4:18).” Such passages dispel the myth that God rewards humanity based on their worth. In fact, Jesus’ words suggest that faith in him and the life that ensues will be difficult, not the opposite. And, if Jesus died for the forgiveness of the sins of all people, then all people are inherently worth the same thing because all people have been given access to the greatest gift of all – reconciliation with God!
A better question to ask might be, “Why did God make other people other than myself?” You were not created by God alone. God certainly could have made only one person, but God did not. “Why did God make other people than myself?” This question is more focused on the central message of Christianity – community restoration. This is a question that the bible answers again and again. Consider Genesis 2:18, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” Each of us are part of a community. But, as “one-on-one” “face-to-face” interaction decline, each of us struggles to fully grasp the depth and power of the communities that we now inhabit but have lost touch with. God made other people because people need each other. The interconnectivity between people is love. “God is love,” says 1 John 4:16. And, love can only exist when there is more than one person. You cannot love an object or thing (idolatry). Love is directed towards people. If God is love, and there is more than one person, then the thing that binds people together is love. And, since God is love, then the thing that binds people together is God. All people are bound together in and by God. 1 John 4:16 continues, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them.” The love of God is not contingent on anything. The love of God does not expect anything in return. It does not judge, it simply is. If people are connected at all, it is because of God’s love. This means that experiencing God’s love is not contingent on anything other than the ability to love and connect with others. And, since God made other people and we are connected by love, our purpose is to love.
As I said above, our ability to connect with others today seems to be decreasing rather than increasing. Such a phenomenon is paradoxical given the availability of technologies that purport to increase connectivity – like social media, 24 hour news cycles, greater percentages of people graduating from High School and College etc… Community organizations are on the decline that exist for the benefit of others or society at large. This is likely due to a rise in emphasis on individuality, increasing hours spent at work, and the division between the spheres of the religious and the secular, or Church and State.
I will focus on the division between the religious and the secular for the rest of this article. The separation of “Church and State” has essentially relegated the Church’s message to dealing with matters that are supposedly “spiritual,” like death and heaven. Such a division has divorced the individual from the whole community. What I mean by that is that individuals are “spiritual,” and as such they can make decisions whose impact only affects the individual in relation to God but no one else. “Stealing” is confined to whether or not a single person decides to take a candy bar off the shelf of a grocery store. “Adultery” is secluded to the realm of marriage. “Bearing false witness” and “coveting your neighbor’s goods” are, as far as the Christian is concerned, nearly culturally irrelevant because, while we profess that individuals are “innocent until proven guilty,” the news tells us otherwise when the presumption of guilt is the headline of just about every story. Thus, the news, especially as it relates to reporting crime, bears false witness everyday. And, “coveting your neighbor’s goods” is the impulse and fuel of capitalism and the marketing machine that propels it. Such is the world of hypocrisy that the Church inhabits.
None the less, the “Separation of Church and State,” or the Establishment and Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment have been misinterpreted since its inception and have led to a distinct theology in the United States which has inculcated a spirit of quietism among church goers, engenders petty moralism, and perpetuates a cult of individuality. I am less concerned here with the intent of the Founding Fathers and more concerned with the cultural misinterpretation of Jefferson’s “wall of separation.” The misinterpretation of the wall of separation leads to a reductionist understanding of what the Church is. For most Americans, the Church is a building that you go to on Sunday. It is where you go to worship God. The Church is where individuals come together and express similar convictions in various culturally conditioned forms of liturgy. The Church is free from the State (except for American Flags). According to the cultural misinterpretation the State is everything else. The State is the public – it is the place where we work, the place where our families are, our schools, the military, and all forms of entertainment. So the Church is the building we go to with the symbols of our faith and the State is the world we live in. This dichotomy produces an “inside/outside” feeling for the congregant. “I feel like when I goto church I am in the presence of the holy (not outside the Church),” is often said of experiencing worship in a building. “It is where I go to experience God.” “It is where I go to refuel for the week (outside the church).” Assuming this schema, if the Church is the gas station that gives us fuel for the week, then the State, or the world, is the place where our lives our carried out. The State is the place that empties our tanks and we need to go back to the building with the cross to recharge.
It should be said at this point that with an understanding of the Church as “the place you go on Sundays” and the “State as the place where we live our lives,” it was only a matter of time before secularization’s power would take hold on the public. This was likely the intent of those who framed the constitution. Any “wall of separation” is a restriction on religion in both the Establishment and Free Exercise understandings of the First Amendment. This, coupled with a restriction on Church’s from expressing political views is a sure way to make religion culturally irrelevant because the lives of people are dictated by the State/public and the Church, in the view of it being a place you go, has very little to say about “politics” because of the misunderstanding of the separation of “Church and State.” Further, if we are forgiven for our sins and we will reap the benefits of such forgiveness after death, then the Church’s message does not concern the daily goings on of society. Justice is only carried out after death. Mercy is only carried out after death. The conscious is pacified because the fear of hell, which is after death, is located in the distant future. All of this makes religion irrelevant and open to the charge of hypocrisy.
There have been a variety of voices that have sought to counteract secularism’s march – public outcry over the legitimization of gay marriage, abortion, the lack of prayer in schools, the removal of religious symbols from government property, Christian holidays getting less emphasis, and the restriction of “God talk” in public/the State. But, even if these items were undone – if prayer was back in schools and the government celebrated the display of the ten commandments for example – the United States would not be more “Christian.” Just as God does not love us according to our “works,” God does not love us based on our ability to goto Church or keep God’s commandments – c.f. the book of Isaiah. In doing this, in adorning our “State” or public with signs of Christianity, we will simply be making the “State” into another place that we go. Then, after praying in school, restricting marriage to heterosexuals, posting the Ten Commandments in public, the State will look like a Church. But, going to Church does not make someone a Christian, and neither will observing any of these symbols which are carried forward under the banner of “religion.” Thus, a misinterpretation of the “separation of Church and State” produces both a misunderstanding of what the Church is, a place you go, as well as what the State is, a place you live. And, even if the State is dressed up like a Church, just like God does not love us contingent on our going to Church God does not love us for making the State a costumed Church.
The problem with such thinking is that the Church is not a place you go and the State is not a place you live. The Church is a living-breathing entity comprised of individual people. The Church is not something that you leave. You (all ->Y’all) are the Church, and the Church is anywhere love is. And love is defined by Jesus Christ’s relationship to humanity and God the Father and Holy Spirit (Trinity). Our first example of love is Baptism, God claiming us before we can do anything, and the second is Communion, which is an open invitation to any sinner to receive love – forgiveness, restoration, wholeness, community. There is a reason that the Church calls Baptism and Holy Communion sacraments, it is because they are experiences of God’s love in tangible forms and ritual acts.
I said earlier that God is love where love is the connective tissue of all humanity bound up and given expression in the person (the Jesus of the Gospels, his life) and work (forgiveness and restoration with God) of Jesus Christ. According to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Only he who knows God knows what love is: it is not the other way around; it is not that we first of all by nature know what love is and therefore know what God is. No one knows God unless God reveals Himself to him. And so no one knows what love is except in the self-revelation of God. Love, then, is the revelation of God. And the revelation of God is Jesus Christ (Bonhoeffer’s Ethics, pg. 53).” For Jesus, love meant enduring the scorn of the most religious people of his time (Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes etc…) for fraternizing with drunks, prostitutes, sinners, thieves, liars, adulterers, gluttons, demon possessed, broken, imprisoned, hungry, homeless, children, and the worthless. For such a love Jesus was condemned to death as a blasphemer. For Jesus, love meant enduring the scorn of the State – the public – for prophesying against the State’s neglect of all those whom he spent time with and loved. Consequently, he was killed for his love. Love expects nothing in return and love is not contingent. Such an expression of love as defined by Jesus is the connective tissue of hope for a humanity unbroken by petty morality and the politics of fear. The Church is a people born in the image of Christ. It exists to love unrelentingly. And the definition of such a love is given meaning by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And, Jesus loved those who could not love him back.
The Church’s message has been distorted by the artificial separation of Church and State, but not in the sense of transforming the State into a Church so we don’t have to goto Church on Sunday mornings to experience God. Such a view, that a public adorned with Christian symbols will create Christian people is as superstitious and as anti-Christ as thinking that going to a place, the Church, makes you a Christian. If God is love, a love that loves even in the face of death, the purpose of the Church is to worship the God who has gifted you with love, a love which you did not know existed before because apart from the love of God we wouldn’t know what love is. Marriage, Prayer, the Obeying of or Displaying of the Ten Commandments do not convey divinity on the person who performs them. They are not Sacraments and nor are they magic. Sacraments convey divinity through faith because they are signs of God’s LOVE for you. Denying marriage to someone based on their gender is not consonant with love. Making others pray or hear your prayers against their will is not consonant with love. Making people observe Christian holidays will not make them or you a Christian. All of these acts go against God because God is love. Love, Godly Love, overcomes any presumptive character defects and loves anyway. So, if you feel as though someone were deficient because they are not Christian, Jesus would say love them anyway, die for them anyway because it is love that defines Jesus’ disciples and nothing else, not even praying. If someone doesn’t want to hear your prayers, then do not pray. If someone is struggling with wether or not to have an abortion, listen to them and love them no matter what they decide as Jesus did for you. If you would like to experience God, bear all things with someone, forgive someone who does not expect it, help out those whom no one else will help, visit those who are lonely, work for justice for the oppressed, stand up for the dignity of ALL people – LGBTQ people, black people, latino people, children, seniors, felons (is forgiveness culturally irrelevant or are all of us reducible to the worst decision we have ever made?), Muslims, Jews, immigrants and all the marginalized. In short, love all and be willing to endure the charge of blasphemy and insurrection by the “religious” and the “State” for doing so. If Jesus endured such slander, why would his disciples expect anything less?
Lastly, and most importantly, if love permeated the world over and all people were accepted everywhere in every land, then we could not possibly have a conversation concerning the separation of Church and State because such a conversation simply wouldn’t make any sense. If the Church is nothing other than people gathering together to celebrate the love they share for God and neighbor, then wouldn’t any place be a Church in such a hypothetical world? You are the Church because you have been loved by God through Jesus Christ and God’s children in all lands are crying out for love and acceptance. Be the Church.
Grace and peace,
Pastor Pernini
