Love Notes

by Bill Love

When I was in seminary, I went to Central Presbyterian Church in Atlanta. It had been founded by abolitionists, who had been asked to leave First Presbyterian Church. Walk out the front door of the sanctuary, and you face the State Capitol. Look right, and in the next block was Atlanta City Hall. Behind the church was inner city Atlanta. The congregation made the conscious decision to stay there and commute in to church, so they could minister to those in their neighborhood, including state legislators and the needy of the city. They had been doing Well Baby Clinics since the 1920’s.

One summer, as part of my Supervised Ministry quarter, I worked with the Urban Training Organization of Atlanta and Panke Bradley, the first woman elected to Atlanta’s City Council. That summer, the City of Atlanta was declared unconstitutional, and Alberta Williams King, mother of Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot to death during a Sunday morning worship service as she sat at the organ of Ebenezer Baptist Church.

Central’s pastor was Randy Taylor, the first moderator of the reunited Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). As I sat under Randy’s preaching, I spent my time being fed by his preaching rather than taking copious notes on how he did it and what he said, for which I would later kick myself. The one thing Randy said that still remains with me is: Consult your faith, not your fears.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was returning from getting a CT scan when I heard the news about the planes flying into the World Trade Center. I coped in my own way. It was so horrific that I dissociated from the sheer tragedy of it. One person, who is trained in Bowen Family Systems Theory, told me he did genograms of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. He noted that both were emotionally cutoff from their fathers.

In the days following, I saw American flags appear on almost every house in my neighborhood through which I took a walk every day as I recovered from heart surgery. I saw flag window decals and bumper stickers appear on cars and flags flying from car windows.

I was living in a suburb of St. Louis. The Rams made the playoffs that year. Their first playoff opponent was the Green Bay Packers. As the playoffs were to begin, I saw the American flags flying from car windows give way to Rams’ flags. Apparently, some feared Bret Favre and Green Bay more than they feared Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

The response was fear. What I have learned of the human brain tells me that the part of the brain that responds to real or perceived threats is the reptile brain. The limbic brain, where our ability to bond is located, and the reptile brain, which functions to preserve safety and self-preservation, form our emotional brain. They are instinctive, automatic, and not the best analysts and decision-makers.

This year during Lent, the congregation I now serve had a series of Lenten lunches with speakers around the theme of “In the Name of God.”

One week, we talked about prayer and what we ask in the name of God. Another week, a social worker looked at our social fabric and how that compared with God’s will. The third week, the speaker was a local attorney, who is a Muslim and whose family settled here over 100 years ago. His wife is a Christian. He told a story about her helping a Muslim family out of the kindness of her heart and the imperative of her faith. Local Muslims said of her that she made them want to be better people.

In the question and answer period after his presentation, he faced what seemed to me to be anxious and accusatory questioning from one person in particular. The questioner seemed to want to hold all Muslims and all Arabs responsible for 9/11. The Muslim observed that religion and nationalism are the two great rallying points for polarized peoples.

It occurred to me that, in our anxiety after 9/11, our fear led us to seek safety in numbers by rallying as Americans, displaying our flags, and to seek the security of claiming God is wholly on our side.

In the Old Testament times, people believed that, when a blessing or curse was invoked, it became effective and the god was obligated to carry it out when the name was pronounced. That’s why the Jews didn’t pronounce the name of God (Yahweh). They recognized that they didn’t have power over God. I believe that, when we make claims about whose side God is on, we reveal more about our own anxiety than we do in obligating God to any position.

A Jew followed the Muslim.

A religion professor from a local college spoke about televangelists, who seem to be saying that, if you ask for prosperity in God’s name, it will be granted and, if you send seed money, it will be returned many times over. That seems to turn “if you ask anything in my name” into a formula for a magical incantation which gives the one who prays power to obligate God to grant the request.

I had the final week to put the presentations in perspective. I talked about how the human brain functions and leads us to use the name of God out of fear.

I also talked about the scene in Shadowlands, where a colleague says to C. S. Lewis, whose wife’s cancer had gone into remission, “your prayers have been answered.” Lewis replied that he didn’t pray to change God but to change himself.

I concluded that the only authentic prayer we could make in the name of God could be summarized as: Thy will be done. God’s will for me, for us, for America, for the world is good enough.

On this side of Pentecost, when we have been given the Holy Spirit, the very power and presence of God, we can consult our faith, not our fears. And in doing that, we can become better people.