Dreaming the World

Today was a glorious late summer day. This morning we went for a fine sojourn on one of the local bike paths that travel alongside the water. The local osprey seem to be doing better than their counterparts in our former digs, a discovery that brought us joy. We’ve had a wet summer and the beach roses are still blooming, not just one or two, but in mild profusion. A highlight of our outing was the discovery of several tiny diving ducks, no larger than my fist. We assume they were immatures, but have no idea immature what.

The last couple of weeks have brought much news about run away AI and a host of environmental and social concerns. Several incidents have prompted many in the AI field to call for immediate rules to limit the danger. Knowledgeable people in an array of other fields have raised alarms about the state of the world. These concerns have been met with near total disregard by the wealthy men driving the development of AI, and social and environmental destruction.

Their total disregard for the outcomes of their actions reminded me of Jesus’ insistence that it is nearly impossible for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. I imagine he was thinking about the ways great wealth entraps one in an endless cycle of amassing more wealth and power, while protecting ones treasures against all comers. Great wealth also creates the need to justify accruing ever more wealth through war, social collapse, and environmental destruction, through the creation of immense suffering.

We find ourselves in an epoch in which a few inconceivably wealthy persons, mostly men, are willing to destroy the planet in order to enrich themselves further. Sadly, they have banded together in order to make holding them responsible for their actions nearly impossible. Of course, their reign will end, but not before unimaginable harm is done.

One of the oddest responses to their mad scramble to acquire ever more wealth and power has been the support they have often received from Christian churches. Perhaps those Christians who stand by them imagine they, too, can become impossibly wealthy, or, maybe, they believe the destruction of the environment, culture, and social structure that seems to be the inevitable outcome of that scramble, will force the “second Coming”. I simply don’t know.

Of course, it is very difficult to challenge wealth in these United States, although there have been periods when excessive wealth was reigned in and used to create a more egalitarian country. Still, over the course of our history the accumulation of wealth has largely been unchecked. Too often, the church has utilized a Christianity widely divergent from Jesus’ teachings to justify environmental destruction, slavery, the theft of Native and Spanish lands, genocide here and abroad, and depriving large segments of our populace food, clean water and air, education, and health care. When contemporary Supreme Court justices speak of forcing us to become a more Christian nation they are speaking of a Christianity devoid of Jesus’ teachings.

Growing up in Evangelical churches I often heard calls for a revival of Christian values. Yet those very values stood in clear opposition to Jesus’ teaching. Jesus insisted that being humble, kind, and generous were essential actions for those wishing to enter Heaven. He also held up the peacekeeper and those with pure hearts as exemplary. Like the Buddha, he wanted us to simply do our best.

I am reminded of the many Quakers, and others, who have refused to call themselves “Christian”, preferring, instead, to be know as “followers of Jesus”. Usually this has put them at odds with the country at large, and, often, as Jesus prophesized, they have paid a heavy price for their adherence to his words.

In the end, Jesus insisted, we will know all we need to know about people by watching their actions. We just have to look rather than turning away. That is not easy.