The Way

When cruelty becomes normal, compassion looks radical. 

I'm an author, and I've often wondered in my life what I was truly supposed to be writing. I'm not entirely certain of it still, but at this juncture I know that it's not supposed to be fictional tales, unless they serve a higher purpose. Right now, myself and many like me are meant to use our voices as a mouthpiece for justice. Even though it's scary. In fact, especially when it's scary. That is what I feel called to do with all my heart, and so I choose to listen.

Did you know that after Jesus died, the early church called itself The Way?

When Jesus walked the earth, the conservatives of his time, especially the religious conservatives, called him a heretic and a blasphemer. He was a demon in their eyes. They screamed how he was leading souls astray, away from God. He chose to be homeless, to be poor, to spend all his time with those society considered unclean, sinful, outsiders, unwelcome, criminals. He refused to shun them - rather, he traveled with them, broke bread with them, loved them. And it was this love that won them over. He preached again, and again, and again, and again, and again about his most important commandment for existing. He said to love God, and to love others as yourself. 100, 1,000 times he preached a gospel rooted in his love of the poor, hungry, the homeless, the sick, the imprisoned, the stranger in a strange land. Again and again he railed out loud against the greed of the powerful and the wealthy calling themselves people of God while neglecting and villainizing the poor and opressed around them. He made no secret of his loathing of such hypocrisy and yelled it from literal mountain tops. It was his obsession, his passion, and his purpose to be a radical, to change hearts and minds, to sway them to the way of compassion and mercy, humility and even poverty, because he knew that it was 1,000 times easier to follow The Way when you did not have to battle the overwhelming desire to worship money and power, and do every corrupt thing to justify and keep it, over following the deeply compassionate will of God.

This was his way. This, as documented in multiple repeated accounts of his life by his own apostles, was his command. It was not slipped in suddenly, it was not one small part of his teachings, it was the foundation of it all. 

American Christianity, I will say it again and again, has lost its way. It's wrapped the cross in an American flag, when individual Christians should have wrapped themselves in the cross. They have been taken in by an anti gospel, one that flies in the face of Jesus himself. One that flips all of Christ's teachings backwards, villainizing the poor as lazy, weak and lacking in virtue, and idolizing the wealthy as the pinnacle of virtue. The wealthy must deserve it, God gave them all that money. The poor and suffering must be evil, God is punishing them with misfortune. The same thing the Pharisees claimed, by the way. 

Oh, but if Jesus walked the Earth in the flesh today, he would turn over tables, and bellow his dismay at such a manipulative teaching - one that seeks to justify human vice in the name of God. One that, sneakily, brilliantly, appeals to the natural greed of man in order to control their hearts, their consciences padded in the false security of what a preacher has told them, a wolf in sheep's clothing holding a bible.

The question is, will enough of them wake up, remove the blinders from their eyes, and realize what they've done before it's too late to stem the horrific fruits of their own foolishness?