A long one for Christmas Eve. Sorry.
I've got to admit it. I agree with the PM. We disagree about many things but this time I think he's right.
Jesus would stand for doing this thing, as far as one is able and as far as people do not have medical reasons not to. It's part of love for self and others. Just like mask wearing, as far as not exempt, is part of love for others.
If God can be said to be anything, God is love. God is acts of love. Theopraxy teaches that God is the good we do. I write as a nontheist but feel free to read a theistic God.
There's no place in love, kindness or mercy for horrific and anti-human teachings like the dangerous delusions of preachers calling on their followers to not wear a mask or be jabbed or to do anything that might protect them and others. I think Jesus would do more than overturn tables in their churches.
"Love one another" is pure Jesus. It's the "mandatum," the command that Maundy Thursday is named after. I'm not so sure that constant lies, making political choices for poverty, corruption, certain laws currently being passed, racist comments and homophobic insults are aligned to the teaching of Jesus. In fact I'm sure they're not.
Neither is the unjust lack of sharing of vaccines across the world or the way money has been put above human lives so frequently. Not being jabbed won't help anyone or improve justice so do get jabbed but we all know of the global vaccine equity.
The sentiment from Boris Johnson falls flat, even solely within the subject at hand, coming from a man who refused even to mask up at Hexham hospital recently and whose delays last year are said to have caused 30,000 extra deaths. Or from someone who doesn't keep the rules he sets and lies about not keeping them. None of that is anything like any interpretation of Jesus.
Then again, not one of us perfectly lives out that massive radical way of love. I definitely don't. To go with that teaching ascribed to Jesus, I don't just have one coat. I don't have two. I have quite a few, including some I don't even wear now.
But that's a bit too literalist and takes no account of life in first century Palestine. Having multiple coats wasn't really pointing at you or me - knowing the people who may have read this. To have multiple coats then was a sign of being rich, not being poor of one of the millions who are "just about managing."
Yes, I don't walk the way of love anything like I'd want to even with all the mental health fun. That's not just being hard on myself or hating myself. There's plenty of truth there too. There are things I do and things I leave undone. I definitely don't love myself as I should either. I'm nontheist but that part of the confession still stands, as it does for all of us.
Most of us don't love ourselves enough either. These days the question is often asked, "Would you think about someone else the way you think about yourself?" Most of us honestly answer with a no.
The words ascribed to Jesus are of justice, freedom, inclusion, equity, mercy, and all the other things many governments and powerful people often remove. They are an aspiration, not an excuse for poorer people to beat themselves up for not being quite poor enough or for the dissociative to punish herself for her limitations.
Those with two coats in our society include those who go to Eton, splaff cash on champagne while not knowing how much bread costs, tear up money in front of homeless people, and make themselves richer while not thinking it would be possible for them to live on the income most people have.
Jesus said to love your enemy. The way teaches that somewhere at the core of Boris Johnson is that theistic or nontheistic God. That BJ has "divine" splendour too even while lying about parties, alcohol and much much more serious things. The lies deny that core and for that he is to be pitied. For he gained the world but perhaps lost his soul in privilege, power, and being allowed to get away with so much for so long. I hope he awakens to more teachings of the Jesus of love. Preferably in a progressive way rather than the ultra-regressive ways of the religious right.
Sometimes the way of love is very difficult!
I want to learn to walk it better though, as far as I am able. That seems a good intention no matter how many times I fall from it.
Dropping a juggling ball is reason to keep juggling, not to give up. And loving Boris Johnson is never giving the Prime Minister or the government a free rein to commit evils far from the way of love. Love calls out injustice.
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