Well, the political conventions have ended, and the "real" campaign begins.  What will it hold?  Though it's hard to say, specifically, we can be confident that it will undoubtedly involve hyperbole, invective, lies, and slander, all of which will be aimed at the other side.  Unfortunately, I fear that the bulk of such things will emanate from the party that claims (or at least wants to convince people that it does) to have God on its side.

     Why?  Power is a dangerous thing.  As I was noting last week, power needs religion much more than religion needs power.  When religion employs power in the pursuit of its goals, it stumbles badly, very badly.  Similarly, when power employs religion in the service of its worldly objectives, it misses the point, usually deliberately.

     The frequently cited evidence that Pope Pius XII systematically ignored or failed to respond to the Holocaust during World War II is a case in point.  Preserving the Church's power, it seemed, was more important than saving Jewish lives.  In our present day, the equation has not changed.  Is theological preservation more important than personal integrity?

     Ah, August.  As this most glorious month winds to its conclusion, I think occasionally of some words of writer Patricia Hampl.  In talking about her younger years, she asked, "Is this a happy childhood--the unfettered experience of the strangeness of existence, the pleasure of being caught up in the arms of creation?"

     In many ways, August evinces the "strangeness" of existence.  Its effusiveness of life belies its silent and underlying prelude to and anticipation of the coming autumnal "death."  But existence cannot be any other way.  Even Eden had days and nights.  We love the shimmering glow of August even as we may cower before what follows it.

     Yet August's demise is hardly cause for alarm.  It is rather a call to rejoice.  To rejoice in the incredible rhythms of a simultaneously strange and wondrous creation.  To rejoice in a creation which could only have been set into motion by an equally befuddling and wondrous God.

     That's the glory, that's the mystery.  And that's the vexation.  But would we really want it any other way?

      Most historians of religion know that, the world over, most cultures have entertained the legitimacy of a story that seeks to explain why human beings, amazing and magnificent as they are, persist in doing harm to themselves, each other, and the world.  The most well known is likely Christianity's account of the Fall, the moment in time when Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

     In reflecting on this story many centuries after it was written down, the American writer and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that, "It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the discovery we have made that we exist.  That discovery is called the Fall of Man."  In his own way, Emerson has reworked a line from seventeenth century British writer John Milton who, talking about the aftermath of the Fall in his Paradise Lost, notes that Adam and Eve now "possess a paradise" within themselves for the life ahead.  In other words, yes, Adam and Eve have discovered their "dark side."  On the other hand, in so doing, per Milton, they have come into and engendered a more profound knowledge of who they are.

     Each and every day we moderns wrestle with who we are.  We daily balance the light of our created glory with darkness of our folly.  We learn much about ourselves, only to discover that we do not always like what we see.  But we keep trying to learn more.  It's like Pandora's box:  we continue to unleash the terrors of existence, but we also continue to render ourselves ever more capable of learning from them.

     Like it or not, in the story of Adam and Eve we see the path for us to find out, guided and undergirded in natural and supernatural ways, who we most are. 

     In a speech he gave at Dordt College in January of 2016, Donald Trump told his audience, nearly all of whom were evangelical Christians, that, if they elected him as president, Christianity "will have power."

     But what's true power?  It's not to dominate, socially, culturally, politically, or even religiously.  It's not to engage in aggrandizement.  And it's not to win or finish first.

     Besides, what does finishing "first" really mean?  As Zeno, the Greek Stoic, observed in one of his famous paradoxes many millennia ago, even if the hare finishes first, he really does not:  the infinitude of the division of the space between start and finish guarantees it.  The tortoise will still prevail.

     True power is to serve.  At the height of a physical affliction from which he was suffering, the apostle Paul received a message from God.  It said that God's favor, God's grace was sufficient for him, that "power is perfected in weakness."  It is when we humble ourselves to serve others, when we recognize and acknowledge our faults and limitations, when we set aside our own needs and ambitions to ensure the same for others:  it is at this point that we are most powerful.  In weakness is strength.

     American Christianity will never browbeat or politically overwhelm anyone into agreeing with it.  That's a fool's errand.  Jesus didn't beat people over the head with his message.  He served them.

     Religious power is a misguided delusion.  In the end, final purpose eludes us all.

     As some readers know, last week and this week have/will feature the quadrennial political conventions of the Democratic and Republican parties in the U.S.  From these gatherings (which, due to Covid restrictions, are largely virtual) the parties' presidential nominees will emerge.  And the election campaign will commence in earnest.

     I suspect that readers, at home and abroad, have a wide range of opinion regarding which candidate will be the most suitable president.  That's fine:  we're all different.  And we all have varying convictions, wants, and desires.  

After all, we're only human.  

     That's the point.  We're only humans, humans who are living in a world suspended between forces, natural and supernatural, well beyond our control.  We delude ourselves if we think we know, always and absolutely, who the "right" candidate is.  For what is "right" is often no more than the product of our individual confirmation biases.  Although some of us claim to have a transcendent standard of morality, we interpret that standard in immanence:  we are not clairvoyant.

     When Israel's God chose David to be the nation's next king, he didn't look at exterior success or appearance.  He looked at the heart.

     Faith is hard.  Perhaps you've heard of the recent passing of Marvin Creamer, who died earlier this week at the age of 104.  A long time professor of geography at Glassboro State College in New York, Creamer is most famous for making a circumnavigation of the globe without map or compass.  How did he do it?  Equipped with an immense and highly precise knowledge of patterns and colors in water and waves, the feel and flow of the wind, and the activity of ocean currents, Creamer was able to use subtleties in such things to detect, at all times, exactly where he was and, trusting in his knowledge, keep going.

     That was the key:  trust.  Creamer trusted in what he knew to see him through. And return safely.  Not that he used religious faith; perhaps he did, but I have no idea.  In his own way, however, Creamer is a picture of faith:  he trusted in what he knew to make his way through what he couldn't fully see.

     Whether one has faith in herself, her family, her abilities, her wealth, or even, gasp, God, faith is faith:  believing and trusting in the fact of goodness when we cannot see.

     It's the hardest thing, yes, but in a capricious and unpredictable world, it's the only thing.  Especially if there is a God.

     For if there is not, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

      Over the last few days, a couple of anniversaries happened.  One was remembered by the world, the other remembered in America.  As any student of world history knows, August 15 marked the 75th anniversary of "V-J Day," the day in 1945 on which Japan surrendered to the Allies, thereby ending World War II.  Even though this surrender was undoubtedly accelerated by the horror of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the entire planet nonetheless rejoiced.  War, at least for a moment, was over.

     In America, August 18 marked the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  Although most of us know that, unfortunately, it was to be many more decades before all women were actually able to physically vote, the amendment's passage was nonetheless a signal achievement.  It recognized that, surprise, surprise, women were equal to men and entirely capable of voting in a rational way.

     Theologically speaking, whether the amendment's proponents knew it or not, they were affirming the fact of all humanity's creation in the image of God.  Why?  They were arguing that each person has fundamental worth, a worth exceeding what anyone else might decide it is.  Similarly, in ending World War II (although we can debate almost ad infinitum the ethics of the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan), those involved agreed, again, whether they knew it or not, that humanity had worth exceeding what anyone might assign to it.  Why?  Once more:  people are made in the image of God.

     Remove God and we have only ourselves to measure our worth.  And as World War II amply demonstrates, this rarely ends well.  Likewise, absent God, we really have no reason to give women the vote other than our own biases and predilections.  That's in part in why the men of America took so long to agree otherwise.