Epilogue
When I was in Thailand, the music video to Lady Gaga’s song Judas was released. The music video, like the song itself is a contradiction. It is both a song praising our human nature and Judas, while at the same time lamenting our human nature and condemning Judas. And though I acknowledge that might not be exactly what Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (Lady Gaga’s birth name) had going with the song, it is what I took away from the song:
I couldn't love a man so purely
Even prophets forgave his crooked way
I've learned love is like a brick, you can
Build a house or sink a dead body
Judas is an interesting figure in the Bible. He was like all of us humans, he made choices, he made mistakes, but he is still is a child of God. We may not like that prospect, that one of the most reviled people in Bible can still be loved by God, but the surest sign of God’s love is freedom, and we can choose to use that to build a better world or wreck it. But you know what, God still forgives, God still loves, and that love transcends even the most wicked evil. Jesus still loved Judas.
We all want people to love us, we want to love people, and yet it does not always turn out that way. For even among the best of us, we still find prejudices, old hates, and other signs of our own shortcomings. It is the sad reality of our lives. Often times we are blind or ignorant to the affects of our actions. And then there are times that we are aware of it, and we don’t care if we hurt someone. We may even couch it in terms of “love.” And when we hurt somebody, there is no way you can wrap enough love around that hurt to make it less painful to the person we’ve hurt, in fact it makes it worse. I’ve had people do that to me, say something hurtful and couch it in terms of love, and it sucks, it is hurtful, cruel, and almost seemingly a joke. But then I realize that I have probably done the same thing as well.
We have a choice to use love and freedom to help or hurt people. And really, that was the big thing that I learned in Thailand. It is something we know already, something that is so simple, and yet we seem to keep choosing the latter, not the former. We believe ourselves to be special, different, better than others. This is the beginning of evil. But this world truly changes when we love someone, not because we are different, but because we are the same. We are human; we have hurts, fears, desires, joys, and challenges. We must love people, not to make them become us, but to unite us. And in the end of the mission trip, that is what I learned.
Christianity is NOT about Heaven or Hell; Salvation or Damnation; or things eternal and out of this world. Instead, it is about love, service, and reconciliation, which is the stuff of this world. Jesus came as a model, a teacher, and a bridge builder. Jesus showed us how to connect with one another by reconnecting us with God. We do this by serving one another. And we do this not to make converts, not to make people become like us (for if we do that, the work becomes tainted by our hubris and presumption.) In this journey called life, we are constantly moving forward, changing, and hopefully making this world a better place. That is the Gospel call; it is about the journey to engage in the restoration and redemption of this world like Christ, not the destination of our souls after we die.
Though there is still many ideas and concepts that I am still exploring and understanding from Thailand, this is the lesson I learned from Thailand. And for good or for ill, that is what I learned, through our work together, the reality of the fullness of God can emerge in this world.
So in the end, I am just a holy fool.
James
P.S. So right now I am in New Haven, CT taking part in the Episcopal Service Corps. I am living along side of 18 really cool people working at Christ Church and in the city. If you want to follow that blog, here is the link for it: http://jamesinnewhaven.blogspot.com/
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