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“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father who is in heaven.”—Matthew 7:21

Show me your faith without deeds and I will show you my faith by what I do.—James 2:18

From time immemorial men have lived by the principle that “self-preservation is the first law of life.” But this is a false assumption. I would say that other-preservation is the first law of life. It is the first law precisely because we cannot preserve self without being concerned about preserving other selves… ‘I’ cannot reach fulfillment without ‘thou.’—Martin Luther King, Jr. Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?

In 1973, looking back on the withdrawal of American combat troops from Vietnam, Rabbi Abraham Heschel wrote The Reasons for My Involvement in the Peace Movement. I think it’s worth quoting in some length:

For many years I lived by the conviction that my destiny is to serve in the realm of privacy, to be concerned with the ultimate issues and involved in attempting to clarify them in thought and in word. Loneliness was both a burden and a blessing, and above all indispensable for achieving a kind of stillness in which perplexities could be faced without fear.

Three events changed my attitude. One was the countless onslaughts upon my inner life, depriving me of the ability to sustain inner stillness. The second event was the discovery that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself. Even the high worth of reflection in the cultivation of inner truth cannot justify remaining calm in the face of cruelties that make the hope of effectiveness of pure intellectual endeavors seem grotesque. Isolationism is frequently all unconscious pretext for carelessness, whether among statesmen or among scholars.

The most wicked men must be regarded as great teachers, for they often set forth precisely an example of that which is unqualifiedly evil. Cain’s question “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9) and his implied negative response must be regarded among the great fundamental evil maxims of the world.

The third event that changed my attitude was my study of the prophets of ancient Israel… From them I learned the niggardliness of our moral comprehension, the incapacity to sense the depth of misery caused by our own failures. It became quite clear to me that while our eyes are witness to the callousness and cruelty of man, our heart tries to obliterate the memories, to calm the nerves, and to silence our conscience. There is immense silent agony in the world, and the task of man is to be a voice for the plundered poor, to prevent the desecration of the soul and the violation of our dream of honesty.

The more deeply immersed I became in the thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the prophets sought to convey: that morally speaking there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings. It also became clear to me that in regard to cruelties committed in the name of a free society, some are guilty, while all are responsible. I did not feel guilty as an individual American for the bloodshed in Vietnam, but I felt deeply responsible. “Thou shalt not stand idly by the blood of thy neighbor” (Leviticus 19:15). This is not a recommendation but an imperative, a supreme commandment.¹

These are the kind of words which, for years, I admired other people for saying. And, often, as I observed the evil and suffering about me, they were words I wanted to say.

But I didn’t.

I could make excuses. I am, by nature, an introvert, extroverted when I need to be but because my default reaction to most anything is to read about it, typically preferring the solace of a book in a comfortable chair behind a closed door. I also spent the first 20 years or so of my vocational life in academia, a professor trained to cultivate the life of the mind and tenured for doing so.

Even once I answered the call to ministry, I went to seminary where the curriculum gave voice to an assumption otherwise unspoken that ministry was first and foremost about acquiring biblical, theological, and ecclesiastical literacy. As Rabbi Heschel says, clarifying the ultimate issues via thought and words.

Rabbi Heschel’s words, therefore, easily resonate with me. For much of my early years in ministry, I tip-toed perilously close to the edge of James’ warning about the chasm of a faith discussed rather than a faith lived.

Yet, also like Rabbi Heschel, the solace of books and closed doors became untenable thanks to what I could no longer look away from. For me, it wasn’t Vietnam. It was working side-by-side with Palestinian peacemakers in the West Bank and Mexican pastors on the border, people not only living their faith but risking their lives for their faith. I saw firsthand the consequences of knowing the presence of evil yet remaining indifferent to it, of cultivating inner truth in the name of remaining calm—and safe—without taking action in the face of cruelty and suffering.

Well I remember the day I sat in the lobby of a Palestinian school in Bethlehem staring at a large photograph on the wall of a young Palestinian woman in the midst of the rubble that was once her neighborhood. I became overwhelmed, as had Rabbi Heschel, by the realization that, indeed, morally speaking there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings. While some are guilty of perpetrating cruelties in the name of a free society, all of us are responsible for them.

Jesus has much to say to those talking the talk about the necessity of walking the walk, not only in what we know as the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount but in other places as well—the Great Commandment, the sheep and goats of Matthew 25, the admonition that whoever wishes to be greatest in the Kingdom must be the least.

And he looked his disciples in the eye and asked them, “Why do you call me Lord yet not do what I say?”

The collective weight of a society not doing what he says has consequences, not the least of which is injustice, people denied not just basic material well-being but dignity, security, and the possibility that life can be better, people whom Howard Thurman called the “disinherited.”

This is why the work of Beloved Community is so important—creating a community rooted in justice, in peace and non-violence, where all are loved, valued, respected, and have opportunity to flourish is doing what Jesus says.

It requires soul work of the first order, so solace with a book (the Bible works for me) in a comfortable chair and a fair amount of contemplation and prayerful conversation with Jesus (or however you understand God to be) is not an avoidance of action but an ongoing necessity.

And…

We must remember that soul work is in service to something bigger than our souls.

Soul work, ultimately, is in service to others. As Dr. King would put it, self-preservation in service to other-preservation, acknowledgment that there is no I for any one of us without the thou of all of us.

And what, precisely, is this service to others? Creating a community rooted in justice, in peace and non-violence, where all are loved, valued, respected, and have opportunity to flourish sounds wonderful, but how?

Tony Hunt, a pastor in Baltimore and practitioner of Kingian nonviolence, lists ten specific ways that communities can begin to build Beloved Community:²

1. Support and develop community-wide plans aimed at expanding economic opportunities for racial-ethnic persons and women specifically in the areas of housing, banking, and employment practices.

2. Actively participate in programs that reach out to help those in the most need—the hungry, the homeless, and the unemployed.

3. Do your part to assure that every inner city and rural young person can look forward to an adequate education. Adopt an inner-city or rural school. Offer your skills where appropriate.

4. Encourage schools, colleges, and universities in your area to include the teachings of Dr. King and other freedom fighters in their curricula and programs.

5. Take specific actions to deal with the problems of drugs, alcohol dependency, teenage pregnancy, and family violence in your community.

6. Advocate for the removal of all weapons from our streets, homes, and schools. Support causes that promote freedom, justice, and peace abroad.

7. Help extend human rights, dignity, health, and economic well-being to all persons.

8. Actively oppose groups that promote hatred and violence. Vigilantly oppose racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and other forms of hatred in our communities.

9. Sponsor and participate in programs that encourage interracial, intercultural, and inter-religious goodwill and unity.

10. Read the Social Principles of your faith denomination and strive to make them an integral part of your life and the life of your place of worship and community.

I, and others in Longmont, Colorado, just finished a two-day intensive training in Kingian nonviolence and creating Beloved Community with Dr. Vonnetta West of the King Center in Atlanta (you can read more about her work here). We are now debriefing and, mindful of examples such as those from Rev. Hunt, beginning the process of discerning the specific actions we will undertake in the name of Beloved Community in this beautiful place we call home at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.

I will continue to blog about our work in the months ahead (you can also keep abreast of what we’re doing here).

I invite you to join us in the soul work, in walking the walk, in living I in terms of thou, to begin to create Beloved Community wherever you call home, one family, one street, one neighborhood at a time.

Working for Thou

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