When
have you “put your body on the line” to protest some social evil?
(Serendipity Bible 10th Anniversary Edition, page 1159).
…Then
your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
(Matthew 6:6)
In
America we are the victims of the notion of full and public
disclosure. Sometimes this reaches absurd proportions. The other
day I responded to the offer for a credit card. The card came in the
mail a few days later and was accompanied by 14 pages of small print
disclosure. Our faith that the god of disclosure ensures
righteousness is fundamentally wrong—being public about greed does
not make it right.
I
have deeply admired such people as Martin Luther King Jr. who have
bravely demonstrated on the streets for social and economic justice.
It may well have been his public assertiveness on the streets that
enraged MLK’s assassin. I have been throughout my life pretty much
a weenie in this regard. Perhaps it relates to an enduring timidity
and discomfort in being the focus of attention. Most often I have
chosen rather to scurry relatively unseen backstage in the darkness
doing there what I took to be God’s will. In this regard I can
admittedly be disparagingly labeled an “undercover Christian.” I
hesitantly affirm that I’m a believer in the notion that righteous
acts need not be validated by publicity—however full of pitfalls
this point of view can also hold.
In
America we hold as principle that others’ religious faith—or lack
of it—requires absolute respect. Most especially I am not to
inundate fellow citizens with propaganda they cannot in good
conscience agree with. Most American’s are completely onboard with
this disinclination and mutual reserve. Personal faith and
convictions are inherently within a category quite unlike the
plethora of ads seen for soap and beer where preference has little
relation to convictional integrity. In the end Jesus’s call for
secrecy in the implementation of righteousness can be seen to be
deeply embedded within the American ethos. We prefer to attribute
our actions to pragmatism rather than righteousness.
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