Our Battle is Not with Flesh and Blood

Westboro Baptist Church has been issued a permit to protest next Monday in front of the high school and college from which I graduated. The latter is a Quaker college where my husband now teaches. The former is a public high school, and I’m hard-pressed to imagine how they’ve drawn the ire of this hate-proclaiming organization.

As I was praying this morning, I watched my balanced, even-tempered internal response to this unwelcome intrusion. I lifted up the incredible opportunity for education about non-violence in general and when facing hate and persecution in specific. And, at the same time, I watched a pitched battle unfolding in my mind with another person over something objectively trivial. I could see it. I wanted to let it go and could even begin to see the hook catching me. And that, this morning, was the best I could do. In the long run, the capacity to see and watch such thoughts will transform the sense of battle so I can engage this person more freely and authentically.

A line from scripture kept coming to mind as I reflected on both of these situations: “For our battle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Eph 6:12).” Our battle is not with flesh and blood. We are not enemies with one another. When we fight with each other, whether in our minds or in our families or on a national or world level, the powers-that-be win. When we see Republicans or Democrats as the enemy; when we see the president as evil personified, whether the current one or his predecessor, we are fueling the powers-that-be. The powers-that-be are not on anyone’s side. Feeding them is not in anyone’s best interest. And we do it all the time.

Over and over Paul proclaims our unity with God and all of creation. The above passage comes after he likens this unity to a human body wherein we are all parts with unique gifts, the body of Christ. Indeed, our gifting gives us different viewpoints and actually creates, if we’re not attuned to it, many of our disagreements, especially as we operate out of the belief in our inherent separation from one another and from God. Think of how differently the nose, elbows, knees, and toes each view the world. If we’re not operating out of a sense of our unity, it’s easy to see how difficulties might arise. Add to that our various needs for power or control or security and let the battles begin.

When we fight with one another, when we take potshots at or display contempt for THOSE people, when we see other people as the enemy we’re fighting, we set the body of Christ against itself. Fighting one another creates an auto-immune response in Christ’s body. Fighting each other hurts all of us. It doesn’t get us what we want. It destroys the body of Christ. Our enemy is not flesh and blood. Which also means our own bodies are not the enemy either as they cease to function in ways we used to take for granted. Loving our own aging bodies is excellent practice for loving the body the Christ.

Divide and conquer is an age-old strategy. Exploiting our fears, our greed, our base desires, as well as our most sacred tender feelings, many things vie for our attention and our loyalty. Pitting us against one another as if we are not all one, these energies may well appear to be good at times. If we are being manipulated, it isn’t God. If it can’t be questioned, if it operates by fear and dominance, if we’re required to give up our power to choose, it is definitely not God. The church has often chosen the temptations to power and authority that Jesus himself refused.

When we’re fighting with other people, we weaken the body. We undercut our capacity to perceive reality and to be grounded in God, to be able to stand and hold onto the truth of our union with God, with one another and with all of creation. As we fight with one another we come to believe we’re separate from God. We don’t want to have anything to do with THOSE people. They can’t be like us. We forget we are all beloved children of God, all gifted and called for God’s purposes, whatever we choose to do with those gifts. All our suffering stems from the illusion that we’re separate. If we see ourselves as separate, we can demonize THOSE people or pollute the streams others count on for drinking water or make laws saying that THOSE people, whichever THOSE people we’re talking about at a given time, don’t deserve the basic human rights we do. We are all beloved children of God and in union with God, whether we ever acknowledge it or feel it or not. All distortion, all that we might call sin, arises from this illusion.

I have come to see a facet of these powers-that-be as the parts of ourselves we disown and project out there. I see that projected energy gathering and taking on a life of its own out in the world. That’s not the sum total of what they are, but it’s the part we can do something about. It matters whether we feed them or starve them. Taking back our projections robs them of power. When we don’t own our fear or anger, for example, that energy goes out into the world and does damage.

The Jesus I know and follow calls us to do our own inner work so that we will withdraw more and more energy from the powers-that-be and fill the world with God’s creating, redeeming, and healing Love. Where we own and take before God our anger or our fear or our self-righteousness or our entitlement or our despair, there is suddenly space for new things to happen. There we step into reality, into the present where God always is and step out of our often well-practiced defensive positions and allow Spirit to move.

We are not separate from the people of Westboro Baptist, however much we might like to draw lines. Their anger toward those they perceive to be different is no different from our own anger. We don’t build the body by fighting one another, but by allowing the anger or contempt or disdain or whatever we want to direct toward another person to be transformed within us. Many tell us contemplative practices are essential to this process, but we can begin by simply asking if the hate or anger we see out there is mirrored anywhere within. We can begin where we are by simply seeing what is within us and lifting that awareness into the Light of Sacred Presence.