Faith Works 8-8-20
Jeff Gill
Whom Do You Trust?
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Any time period has its moments of testing and trial. Ancient history, current events, living memory, the day before yesterday: they all have turning points and challenges for those who live in them to make a decision, even by not choosing.
Since the death of John Lewis, I've been taken back to reading Taylor Branch's three volumes on "America in the King Years," with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as the hinge on which the whole narrative swings, but with a solid door of civil rights activism opening up across the decade and more it spans.
The third book, "At Canaan's Edge," starts with Selma and the pivotal role John Lewis had in getting to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, before he and King and so many others finally cross it, and then makes the longer sad journey through Chicago and Vietnam to the sacrifice in Memphis of King's life to an assassin's bullet, so from 1965 to 1968.
I won't claim to remember those years well, but I remember them; hence, I'd argue it's not that long ago (indulge me). I've also read this particular book three times now, and each time, I'm confronted with different aspects of how far we've come as a nation, and where we've yet fallen short.
From the lies LBJ felt he had to tell about how the war in Southeast Asia was going, to the falsehoods sworn in court by a legal system committed to sustaining segregation, it is both wrenching and necessary to confront how untruth has been used for supporting assumptions left untested, how willful misrepresentations have been used to keep some in the darkness, and avoid the light shining on the acts of favored others. Can you trust the FBI? Not in 1966, that's quite clear. Can you trust a President when their re-election is at stake? Not entirely, that's for certain. Can you trust the New York Times, the Washington Post, even the National Council of Churches when they're asked to speak against self-interest? History says not always.
It's not a long jump to the apparent likelihood of having two Speakers of the House in Ohio politics break the law to line their own pockets, and in a short period of time. Promises made and commitments offered, sometimes right to your face . . . well, this is where I have the advantage of at least enough years to know they wouldn't be the first politicians to lie to me directly. I nod and smile, and hedge my own expectations when it comes to political support and plans for the future. As a politician said (ironically), trust but verify. Which is to say don't trust at all until you have independent confirmation.
Today, 75 years ago, the second and we pray last nuclear weapon was used to kill in warfare, the bomb at Nagasaki following by a few days the first A-bomb at Hiroshima. I have known people, family and fellow worshipers, who saw the flash of nuclear fission and felt the impact in their lives if not their senses, all of whom have said "it had to be." I take them at their word, and I read and hear of other perspectives, and I wonder: if only to ask how we can not create such necessity again.
Racism, and nuclear weapons, and . . . wearing masks. Maintaining distance. Taking care to use caution to reduce the spread of a microscopic agent which can't be seen until it registers on a thermometer or triggers pain and discomfort within. If you've not seen a full ICU for yourself, or been around an intubation, let alone an extubation, this all might seem very abstract, hypothetical even.
And it all comes down to the question, a question at the heart of religious faith and practice in any era: whom do you trust? If someone dares try to tell us about how our actions today have meaning a millennia from now, or what two thousand year old acts might impact our lives today, can you believe them? Should you live and work and act based on the testimony of another, and if so, which one? (Especially if they're just a name in a book, and an old one at that.)
Trust, but verify. Listen, assess, balance out your understandings, but then we all have to act. Or not act. As we do, we have a chance to ask ourselves where our trust is being put. And in whom.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; his trust is in the Lord, who made the heavens and the earth. Tell him in whom you put your trust, and why, at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
