Salvation as human liberation

The way to peace, liberation and happiness is to seek the freedom that Christ offers through his Cross.

Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger

Who am I? What am I called to be? Age-old questions. Human questions. Ageless questions. What do I want or desire? What do I want to do and become? Different questions. What we desire may not be what we are or can become, though we may desire it anyway. Even passionately. We share wants, desires and hungers with other species, though only humans seem even to ask these questions. 

Secular responses today on all sides of the socio-political spectrum propose, sometimes impose theories upon us, not always welcoming questions or discourse. Without parental consultation, school children are bombarded with ideologies, often not age appropriate. Social media are rampant with bots mocking dissenters. You know the names and labels. Pursuit of truth, however, requires a free exchange of ideas, deliberation, analysis, and the freedom to question.

Full disclosure. Not long after I arrived in Albany, rumors came to my attention of inquirers asking, “Is he liberal or conservative?” If asked directly, I confess, my gut response would be: “do I have any other choice?” I have no partisan affiliation. For years I have been independent. My heart and mind are focused on building community, not fostering contention. Something, however, we all need to be aware of. We are inundated with ideologies alien to what we are as humans and what brings happiness: liberation from anything suppressing or oppressing the divine spark in us all as human beings. This is one way of viewing salvation. Secular ideologies have seeped into and poisoned our social and political discourse. They disrupt families. They are not new and they go right back to the Garden of Eden.

“Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains!” So cried idealists, following a Hegelian-Marxist vision, that led to communist revolutions of the early 20th century. Believing humans found their identity not as persons but as cogs in a collective machine, an oppressed, amorphous mass or “class” of humanity, they could find their humanity by overthrowing a “class” of oppressors. 

National Socialism (Nazism) and Fascism appeal to kindred passions. Filtered through the philosophy of Nietzsche, Hitlerism championed collective identity in hierarchical terms, following a calculus of racial superiority (Aryans vs. Jews), and, like Marxist ideologues, marshaled the arts and sciences in to defend the ideology, as we also witnessed in Soviet states. It’s not just a “left” or “right” thing. The ideological root is the same: every person is defined and determined by their presumed or assigned class.

Echoes of these 20th century social experiments appear in the “isms” that would divide us into groups, gangs, mobs, classes: racisms, ageisms, genderisms, religionisms, to name a few. The ideologies have two things in common. The first, philosophical, views the identity of every human being as determined, subsumed by a larger collective. The class soon becomes an idol, a god, a tyrant in itself that eventually oppresses the person identifying with it. It becomes an orthodoxy, a religion, intolerant of heretical thoughts and actions, to be censored or repressed. This is a logical consequence of the second ideological component: no room for God or any source of authority outside itself. The class, in effect, is god, the ultimate reality. Identifying with it one may be convinced they are free or have chosen their identity, but just try to cross the line. Soon a human soul awakens to discover this is not liberation at all. History bears witness to the misery and chaos to which such ideologies have led. Often then it is too late.

Who wants to be a slave, the plaything of tyrants? These 19th century ideologies possessed enough appeal to rouse masses to overthrow the elite deemed to be the cause of their oppression, only to be dominated by a new elite. In Europe, Germany and Russia in particular, millions of human beings were exterminated as members of a class labeled variously as oppressors, useless lives, inferior humans or otherwise obstacles to the superior class. Not to mention genocides that erupted in Asia and the various revolutions in Latin and South America. All bear an ideological commonality: the amorphous collective is the ideal, not the human person. In the end, it plays in control and power struggles, usually military, to enforce it. God cannot be tolerated, let alone be part of this design. By the late 20th century it becomes clear those ideals were far from being realized. In different ways, some horrific, people did what people do: noticed they were not freer, happier or closer to their ideals at all.

Is there an alternative to endless class struggle, which the ideologues of historical determinism deem inevitable? History and literature tell stories of the brave who dared to buck the system. It is part of the romantic appeal of every revolt and revolution, to slough off the chains of oppression and disempower the elite or ruling class. Christians in every era have been persecuted for doing precisely that: living freely in the midst of tyranny and oppressive regimes. Just being themselves. 

Christianity offers an alternative, rooted in its Judeo-biblical foundations. To wit, we are created, male and female, in the image and likeness of God. That is the truth of our humanity. As images of God, who is a Trinity of persons, each sharing one divinity, equal yet different, it follows that the human person is more than an individual, isolated from a social nature. God is, it can be said, an ideal family and the human family, with its unity in conjugal love, free and open to bearing new life, derives its beauty and holiness from God. Satan saw that coming and, unable to own God, set his eyes on the next best thing: to destroy God’s beloved humanity. “I own you,” is his motto, as is that of every abuser: to dominate the victim. Lies and fear are his tactics, like that of every other tyrant. Wherever tyranny reigns, Satan gloats.

God does not want to own us, because we are created free. God is love and love can only be free. We are made for love. While the Evil One enslaved us, Christ came to redeem us. In his cross we are saved, if we hang onto it, and give him permission to free us. We cannot save ourselves. If we believe the lies of Satan and his surrogates, we fall into misery and perish. Nothing new about this if we have eyes to see.

Satan’s game is to seduce us by the lie that we define ourselves or find our identity by melding into a class that magically empowers us. Power is the seduction but also the fall. Liberation does not come fighting fire with fire, by becoming our oppressor, or by subsuming ourselves, pining for some saving identity, in a group, a gang, a collective, a mob, a class — or some pharmacologically or medically altered state. We cannot find our identity by putting on makeup, a mask, a costume, a persona we are not by nature. Unless God is the one who adorns us with his love and grace, our identity will elude us, tragically.

Returning to our first questions, who I am, is something we begin learning by discovery. We are there before we are aware. Biologically, it starts at conception. Our chromosomes and our ancestry are received, not chosen. We discover our parents, sex, race, ethnicity, nation or native place. Our humanity is formed in relationship with others. Nothing changes that. So long as the process is not violently interrupted, naturally or intentionally, we stay alive, thrive and are born. Even before birth, we were living, feeding from our mother and, as we grew, hearing sounds, sensing movement and moving around ourselves.

Christianity does not label or value by status: race, sex, gender, age, nationality, health, wealth and so forth. Undoubtedly some who call themselves Christians have done terrible things at times, usually in league with some military, political or national collective, to advance what can really never be advanced by force or oppression: a belief in a God who frees us radically from all oppression, tyranny and enslavement. Why? Because God IS love, by nature a communion of three persons, different but equal, who creates all human beings in that image and likeness so all of us can join in the divine dance.

Judeo-Christian vision sees a human person both as individual and social, in a relationship with God and all humanity — not a pre-determined class. Therefore, all human beings are respected and to be protected as equal. Constitutional republics rest on this principle and, if we pay history any heed, so does civilization itself. Right, not might, makes right. The way to peace, liberation and happiness is to seek the freedom that Christ offers through his Cross, the grace that saves humanity from the tyranny that would enslave us by any ideology, class branding, or idol promising power. Christ is our liberator. In God we find our true humanity.

 @AlbanyDiocese