"The Christian must discover in contemplation, and in the giving of his life, those symbolic actions which will ignite the people's faith to resist injustice with their whole lives, lives coming together as a united force of truth and thus releasing the liberating power of the God within them." - James Douglass, Contemplation and Resistance.

Saturday, August 13, 2005

Pray For George W. Bush

As followers of Jesus, we believe in the power of prayer to change lives. Inside of George W. Bush lie sparks of truth and goodness, and I prefer to believe in his sincerity when he admires the philosopher Jesus Christ. The sickness that lies in all of us who profess Christ is our reluctance to admit sin, the tendency to take on the mask of innocence before our inner mirror. It is quite easy to believe in our status as peacemakers since we so constantly work out the kinks in the narrative. George is our brother in this as well, but he labors under a burden that most of us will never experience - to be constantly surrounded by some of the most skillful minders in the world who assure him of his rightness and reinforce that sense of power which must in many respects be so foreign to him. This is a curse, but not one that he cannot resist if only he had not surrendered to it so constantly, because it is so natural to do so, and, after all, he is just a regular guy. But I will never cease to believe that at the core of him and such as he lies the will to accept the cross, to put to death the violent exclusion from humanity of those he caricatures as "evildoers". Let us increase our faith in the power of God's love, to extend even as far as him.

1 comment:

Darrell Grizzle said...

I'm grateful for your much-needed post about the sparks of truth and goodness inside W. It's easy for liberals like myself to demonize W., to speak ill of him and to never see the good.

W.'s famous line about Jesus being his favorite philosopher is quite telling. If W. can regard Jesus as a philosopher, he can avoid seeing Jesus as Lord. He can view those troublesome teachings of Jesus (like the sermon on the mount) more academically, as one might study a philosopher's writings, rather than actually following them...