Calm in Danger, Disorder and Confusion?

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If you’re at all tuned into Holy Week, reading or hearing the passages about the cruel and inhumane treatment endured by Jesus, you will be amazed at the apparent calm with which he suffered his torments.

Most Christians believe that Jesus was human as well as divine, however, so there were cracks in his calm, such as when he quoted Psalm 22 from the cross, “God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Hearing or reading those lines leads me to think about all those people who, ironically, can relate to those words if nothing else in the Christian Bible. For me, it’s a reminder that faith is no reliable shield from doubt, that if you expect faith to save you from uncertainty, you’re likely to be bitterly disappointed.

Self-Confidence

And, I believe, that’s why the author of Mathew’s gospel recorded those words of Jesus, even though it may have confused some early – and late - Christians. Yes, even the God/man had to rely on faith, which provided Jesus, and can provide us, with an enormous amount of self-confidence and calm but by its nature, doesn’t erase the uncertainty of belief.

In my view, that doesn’t mean that faith is irrational. There are good reasons, often unacknowledged by even the wisest of us, to believe. Still, most of us, most of the time, experience a God who seems absent, who seems to have forsaken us.

So how do we maintain any sense of calm – the calm that was the norm for Jesus – in a dangerous, confusing, disordered world? Social media and TV are filled with advice on this subject and, let’s face it, we need all the help we can get. But I believe it requires a certain “toughness” in trying to see things as they are. And for those searching for God, an unceasing appeal to God for help.

Reinhold Niebuhr
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Several times in these blogs I’ve quoted the famous “Serenity Prayer,” said to have been written by Reinhold Niebuhr, an American theologian, ethicist, and professor at Union Theological Seminary for more than 30 years. Wikipedia described Niebuhr, who died in 1971, as “one of America's leading public intellectuals for several decades of the 20th century.”

Honestly, I’m not sure that “serenity” is the right word for what we should strive for. According to the dictionary, it’s “the quality or state of being serene,” and serene is defined as “marked by or suggestive of utter calm and unruffled repose or quietude.”

Achieving that seems to be beyond human capabilities. And, you could ask, do we really want what seems to be a zombie-like existence? Not me. But the rest of the prayer seems to me to be right on. And I’m not alone in thinking so. It’s probably one of the best-known of prayers in English, so meaningful to so many – especially those dealing with chronic problems – that Alcoholics Anonymous adopted it early in its infancy.

The part of the prayer with which most of us are familiar is simply,

God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

But there’s more to the prayer, a part with which we may not be familiar:

Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is, not as I would have it,
Trusting that you will make all things right,
If I surrender to your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with you forever in the next.