NOVEMBER 16, SUNDAY

FALLING APART

Three things happened today which shook me. These are my problem, I realize, not anyone else’s.

The first was that on the way to church it suddenly popped into my head that the central figure in Christianity, Jesus, who referred to God, as his father and himself as the son of God, who was crucified, dead and buried and then arose from the dead, who healed the sick of deadly diseases, would be considered by people from another culture as deluded boaster and a little bit nuts and something of a con man with his followers having drunk the koolaid. I don’t know where that idea came from, it just occured to me that if I met anyone else down the street who claimed to be the son of God and was going to come to life after he died that I would think he was cuckoo.

The second thing that shook me was that this Sunday just happened to be commitment and dedication Sunday when the congregation was asked to pledge their lives and their money to God But suddenly I wondered if most of the money pledged would go to supporting the church, to pay for the staff and the social events at the church with just a small percentage going to feed the sick and the poor. I wondered if I was in a cult and being conned into something, this was after I had filled out my pledge card, partly to support the church and partly in honor of my wife Kathe whose social life centered on the church. I felt awful for thinking this.

Looking around me in church no one else seemed to be disturbed by either thought, it was just me flipping out and I felt a little ashamed of myself.

On top of this the Bible reading for the day was about Zacharias, the reviled tax collector, who was befriended by Jesus, whose presence led him to pledge to give half his money to the poor which Jesus approved of. I have just sold my house for a fortune and wasn’t about to give half of it away, with, according to Jesus, as little chance of getting into heaven as a camel passing through the eye of a needle. So my earlier questioning of the church being a cult was amplified by my being a rich hypocrite, unconcerned about my fellow man.

Both of these sudden flashes disturbed me and made me feel like a terrible hypocrite. No one else in the church felt this way. I felt like a stupid heretic.

The third thing that disturbed me was when Vicky Collins, my former next door neighbor, announced from the pulpit that ICE was said to be coming to Asheville and that the large illegal immigrant community in Swannanoa was scared to death. She was asking for help in delivering food to these people so that they wouldn’t have to leave their homes, where they were relatively safe, while outside they could be scooped up by ICE patrols and shipped off in two days to Mexico or another distant place. Vickie is doing something about this. I am doing nothing. I am even more of a hypocrite.

While at church I heard there was going to be a protest against the presence of ICE at 2 p.m. in the center of Asheville. I went and met Susie there. The large crowd had made protest signs. We were led by young people with a bullhorn who led chants that we all repeated, promising to stand up to ICE and show ICE how terrible they were. But even as we chanted I thought how hollow our chants were. They made us feel better, made us feel as if we were doing something. But by and large ICE was simply following the law and removing people who are here illegally. ICE wouldn’t be doing anything illegal, they would just be following the law and if it meant separating children who were born US citizens in America from their illegal parents, the parents would be give a chance to take their children back with them or leave them here. ICE wasn’t separating them.

This left me feeling flattened again. We were protesting too late. The real issue was the state of the world which made those people flee violence and poverty in their countries to come to a place where they hoped to be safe. It is the law we make in the United States that makes them illegal. The deepest problem is the world wide apartheid separates the well to do from those most in danger in Africa or Latin America. This larger problem isn’t something that Americans are willing to deal with.

It wasn’t a good day and completely unsettled me.