Response to a Careless Patriot

(Letter written to some students who voiced thier allegiance to the President of Iran for his bravery in standing up to the United States)

While you were praising the President of Iran, I couldn’t help think that you were only lifting him up to put others down. You said that you don’t know what you believe about this man, but that you respect his desire to challenge the United States’ assertion that it has the right to be the world power. You seemed to be aligning yourself with anyone that is willing to challenge the United States.

I will follow your lead and assert myself that I don’t know what I believe about Iran, or even the United State’s place in the world. But What I do know is that your manner in approaching this subject troubled me. I don’t want you to believe I am making any rebuttal because of any uncomfort over my own beliefs. What I do believe, and believe more strongly than any position I have on any of these issues, is that what you did say in class is far from what your heart is longing to say. I don’t want you to gloss over injustice or ignore your greater sensitivity to what the Holy Spirit is saying to you. I want you to want more.

I don’t believe it is enough to fix the problems of the world. I think this would only lead to mediocrity, as fixing something that is bad only makes it “not bad”. I believe how we live into the resurrection of Christ is that we dream of heaven here on earth and align our hearts with the message that says it can happen and it can happen while we are alive. There is nothing more beautiful to me than the sight of someone who has sold her soul for the hope that the Kingdom of God can be created on earth, even though she is aware how impossible this dream really is. I want to be a man like this, naively trusting that I can be worker, a co-creator in building a Kingdom of Love, Freedom and Relationship, that will fail miserably almost every day I join in.

What I bring to you, then, is that you are setting your sights way to low. Instead of setting your mind against something you don’t believe in, why don’t you open your soul for something you believe in. Living into the incarnation is not aligning yourself with people who challenge the proud and powerful, any more than it is to join those who oppress others. Living into the incarnation is going to both the weak and powerful, both Iran and the United States, and painting a picture of a better world. Living into the incarnation is living under the rules of the Kingdom of God, a kingdom that shames the powerful not by attacking them but by elevating the weak. The Kingdom of God doesn’t have to convince people that they are wrong, does not have to shame, or argue. Even the smallest true glimpse of the outworking of the Glory of Heaven on Earth blazes with such Extravagant Grace that tears a hole in mankind. Paint the picture of heaven, live a life that turns the rules of the world on its head and it will shame a system more than any debate or refutation, more than and war or sanction.

As you talked I realized you were just as distant from your opinions as I was from you. In your life, where is the cost to you? It costs nothing to label and dismiss. Where are you abandoning yourself and your need to be right to bring the incarnation to a fallen world? You were made to long for something so fantastic and beautiful the world could not even fathom. Please hear this, please hear the excitement I have in believing you will become great, and hear my sadness that you are settling for fighting for mediocrity.