America's Spiritual Problem

Summary

In this episode of Speaking of Faith, Bishop DeDe dives into what she believes is the spiritual problems facing America today, emphasizing the importance of love, justice, and dignity for all individuals. She explores how opinions and political affiliations can distort our understanding of faith and the teachings of Jesus. The conversation also touches on the role of parents in teaching children about dignity and the connection between the Eucharist and justice.

Takeaways

-Our real spiritual problem is that we have allowed opinions to distort our faith.
-We must prioritize our relationship with God above all else.
-Loving our neighbor is a fundamental commandment of our faith.
-Justice is essential to the Christian calling and should not be politicized.
-Children learn about dignity through our actions, not just our words.
-Modeling compassion and respect is crucial in teaching kids about dignity.
-The Eucharist symbolizes our call to be broken and given for others.
-We must reflect the values of Jesus in a world that often contradicts them.
-Being a Christian means embodying the teachings of Jesus in our daily lives.
-We are called to be agents of transformation and love in our communities.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Faith and Spiritual Problems
08:07 The Call for Justice and Dignity
12:00 Teaching Dignity to the Next Generation
16:01 Eucharist and Justice Connection
19:01 Conclusion and Future Conversations

AI Disclosure: To support our staff in their limited time, many of our episode summaries are first generated by AI and then edited by the Communications Director to accurately reflect and preview our podcast episodes.

Transcript

Bishop DeDe (00:00.046)
Hey friends, welcome to the podcast, Speaking of Faith. In this podcast, we talk about our faith, we think about our faith, and together we reason out how our core beliefs impact our lives and how we live. My name is DeDe Duncan-Probe. I am the Episcopal Bishop of Central New York. I'm joined by Adam Eichelberger. He is our Communications Director. And today we're gonna talk about our faith.

And we're going to talk about something specific that may be kind of new to you as a listener. I want to talk about the spiritual problem that America is having right now. And when I say spiritual problem, some of us may be thinking, well, our problem really is about parties and opinions and who we think is right and who we think is wrong. And those things are part of the spiritual problem. But our real spiritual problem is that we have allowed opinions

and parties and persons and outside forces to get in the way and to change how we understand our relationship with God, the primacy of our relationship with God. One of the realities of our Christian faith is that in knowing God, we will be changed, we will be transformed. And so what we believe and think is changed by knowing and believing God. So when we look at a neighbor or we look at

someone in America and we see them as other, as less than, as not as good or as needing to change, then we are convicted by our faith that that is not acceptable as a person of faith. Our baptismal covenant, what we covenant at baptism, that we will seek and serve Christ in all persons, that we will work for justice and the dignity of all persons is essential to our faith.

Jesus commands us to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and to love our neighbor as ourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and all the prophets. We have to get those things right before we can go into anything else. And as I look at America right now, we are not getting that right. We are struggling with that. We have put our faith in a person or a party or a platform.

Bishop DeDe (02:25.58)
We are fighting over other things and we're allowing ourselves to see one another in dehumanized ways as somehow we're not all part of the same team. We are struggling to understand that God has created us as we are, that God creates the world as it is. And sometimes we don't actually get that. I I love to point to celery and French fries and you may wonder what...

her and I just took. But let me just say, if I were God, I would say that you can eat French fries as much as you want and you could actually starve to death eating French fries, which is, as we know, not true. But if you eat celery, it takes more calories to eat celery than celery actually possesses. Now, I do happen to like celery, but not nearly as much as French fries. And I'm just saying that often

Our opinion or what we want to be true or what we like is different than God creates things to be. We're always called to forgive and sometimes that is so painful and deep and wounding. We're always called to be transformed by love and to set down our opinions and take up the redemption and grace of God. First John tells us, how can you say you love God who you cannot see?

when you do not love your neighbor who you can see. Our calling as Christians is to love other people. And when we allow our faith to be conscripted into ways of being that are not in align with the faith of Jesus, then we're lying to ourselves and others. And that's a real spiritual problem. The idea that someone could call themselves a Christian and approve of and be willing to be part of

denigrating entire groups of people is blasphemous. God has created all. And so our spiritual problem is to think that somehow how we feel, our emotions, what we prefer, our opinions are more important than God's commandment to us about how to live. That our opinions are more comfortable to us than the willingness to be transformed by the love of God.

Bishop DeDe (04:47.106)
that makes things new every day. And when we think about things being made new every day, we think, we love that. Except the way things often are made new is by our looking at our brokenness, repenting, literally changing our mind and doing something that may at first feel very uncomfortable to us. Embracing someone that we like to hate, forgiving someone we like to resent.

looking in our own hearts and our own eyes to see if the log in our eye is greater than the splinter in our neighbors. These teachings and these truths of Jesus for us as Christians are fundamental. And yet in this time I hear Christians setting them aside. I actually saw a poster the other day at a church that said Trump is God. Now I have to tell you that is blasphemous.

He's many things. He's a child of God and I pray for him all the time. But I pray for him every day that God will work in his lives in the way I pray for all people. But we are created beings and God is God. And when we supplant God with opinions or viewpoints, then we're blaspheming and we have a spiritual issue. And this isn't new. Down through the ages, all across the world, not just America, humans are very good.

at not seeing our spiritual problem, whether it's slavery or indigenous persons or how women have been treated or elderly persons or the poor, when we aren't aware of how God is calling us to be compassionately with empathy toward our neighbors, then we have supplanted the gospel of Jesus and we're on the wrong path. This week, we also lost a really dedicated faithful person.

Pope Francis died. And I love one of his quotes that where he says, justice upholds the fundamental human right to a dignified life. The fundamental right to a dignified life. We are Christians and you may have a faith of your own. I don't mean to presume listener. I know I have listeners who have other faiths, but when our faith is corrupted,

Bishop DeDe (07:12.94)
By seeing our temporal realm as greater than God's eternal calling, all of us need to stop and wonder and take a moment and really, I think, repent. In this Easter season, we're called to the redemption of Jesus Christ, a love that is greater than death, a redemption that's greater than the worst thing we've ever done, and a God who always, always, always is seeking to heal and renew us.

So when we speak of our faith, I think we must begin with the spiritual issue that America and the world is having right now, where we're looking at our neighbors as less than and undeserving. So I've said a lot of things, Adam, I'm gonna welcome you into this conversation now, serious topic about dignity and justice. And I welcome questions or your inputs.

think it's really important that I be mindful that the pursuit of justice for everyone is not a political issue. And I think that all too often people will use buzzwords like it's a woke or that this is some sort of fad. And I'm constantly reminded when I pay attention to what it says in the Bible, what Jesus actually says, that justice is paramount.

And it's one of those things that Jesus talks about the most. A lot of times I have found the things that we have put emphasis on as believers in America that have worked their way into how like our politics work and the things that we are prioritizing are the things that he didn't seem to talk about a lot. Jesus is very, very concerned with the dignity of the human person and we as the church should be. And I wanted to.

Right.

Bishop DeDe (09:04.046)
Absolutely.

Give that as a preface because listeners, you have been busy in the question form and we've got a slew of them today. If we don't get to yours this week, I guarantee you I will save them and we will talk about them in a future episode. But I wanted to start with one. This one comes from a listener named Rebecca who says they're from Courtland. And Rebecca asks, Bishop, how can we uphold the dignity of every human person when the world around us often does

Good tech.

Adam (09:36.738)
the opposite.

such a good question. Such a good question and so essential because that is our calling. When the world around us is not doing these things, one of the things that Jesus says is they will know you're my disciples by your love. You're gonna look different. You're gonna walk different. You're gonna act differently because you're my disciples. That's what Jesus tells us in scripture. And so in the time of Jesus, we need to understand dignity and justice were not in

culturally either, but we are called to be the people that pray for that. We're called to be the people who work for that. We're called to be the people whose main purpose is to uphold the teachings of Jesus. If we say we love Jesus, it will change how we act. If we say we follow Jesus, it will change how we act. And keep in mind that even the term Christians, we often take on this term.

as if it's our right. Like I'm a Christian, I go to church, I claim this title. But let's keep in mind that in the time after the resurrection, that was a derogatory term given to the followers of Jesus. And it was said more like those are those people who act like that, Jesus, the one who was killed, their little Christ. It was derogatory. I think we have to earn that monoc...

I want to be so much like Jesus that when people see me, they're reminded of Jesus. Now that hasn't happened yet, but I work on it because we are called to embody the gospel of Jesus in such a way that it is radically different from the way the world is. We're people who love and the face of hate. Jesus commands us to love our enemies. Who does that? But Jesus commands us to love our enemies that nothing

Bishop DeDe (11:30.464)
is outside of God's redemption. No one is outside God's mercy and grace because Jesus died once and for all. That is what we do. And so in this world, we're not gonna see our values reflected because we are to reflect our values to the world.

That's so true. Those things that Jesus commands us to do and teaches us to do, those need to be the central point of how we live and inform everything that we do.

Absolutely. Paul even says that we're going to look foolish. know, that the wisdom of God is foolish to men. So there are times when we're going to look a little like we're not paying attention and that's because we're following Jesus. What we're following is something that is beyond this moment, greater than the moment.

All right, so our next question comes from Monica from Syracuse and Monica is a parent and she wants to know how can I teach my kids about the dignity of every person in a way that sticks?

great question, Monica. And listener, you probably have answers that are percolating in your head. So I encourage you to think about how you'd answer this question too. Yeah, and get in the comments. Because I have to say, you know, the kids learn from what we do. They sometimes learn from what we say, but really more they learn from what we do. And so when we can talk until we're blue in the face about dignity and things, but when they see us respecting the person whose society would say is the lowest around us.

Adam (12:40.59)
And get in the comments

Bishop DeDe (13:01.474)
that when we walk into a building and the janitor is there and we speak with dignity to the person who's cleaning, or we speak with dignity to the person who's the CEO, when we treat people alike, when we're compassionate, then they learn from our example and they learn how to do things. I remind of a story that may sound tangential, but there was a man and his new bride and they went to a cabin for their honeymoon.

and a bat got in the room and the husband jumped up, got a paper bag in a broom, swept the bat into the bag, went out and released it into the woods and came back inside and his new bride said, how did you know to do that? And the man stopped and said, oh, I didn't even think about it. That's just what my grandmother used to do. We learn by the example of the people around us. And our kids are so amazing because sometimes we think they're not paying any attention at all.

to what we're doing because, they're talking back and they're doing the things that kids do. And we think this just isn't getting through. But then there are those moments when you realize, they were listening the whole time. And they especially can pick up when we're being hypocritical. We're telling them you really have to love all persons and be compassionate. And then they hear us talking about the next door neighbor. We tell them, you really have to be thoughtful about all people. And then they see how we treat the waiter at the restaurant.

So the best thing we can do is model and be what we want them to become.

That's really good. And it's a good reminder to us that it starts in the smallest of ways and it filters upwards. Especially when, like in my own circumstances, when I don't know what it's like to have somebody else's lived experience, it just is a reminder that like, not even to be glib and say like, I got to put on other people, I got to walk a mile in somebody else's shoes. But when I don't understand the things, the struggles, the hardships that somebody else may be experiencing.

Adam (15:04.206)
to kind of stay out of it and not make it my problem. Not because, and I don't think I'm phrasing that correctly because I'm not saying like, don't be involved for matters of justice, but like, maybe I just don't weigh in. Maybe I don't impose my worldview on other people's lived experiences. I think that's what I'm trying to say is don't impose my worldview on other people's experiences because I don't understand. And like you said before in previous podcast, Bishop, be curious and listen when I don't understand.

That's right. We got two more for this episode. This is from a listener named Naomi. Naomi writes from Oswego and Naomi has a love of the Eucharist. She actually shares that she is a Catholic. And so it's pretty apropos that you quoted Pope Francis earlier in the podcast. And she actually writes, because I think that maybe she shares a little bit of our Episcopal spirituality in this question. How can the Eucharist and justice be connected?

in the way we live as a church and as Christians.

so good, Naomi. Well, I'm going to go off a little. Dom Gregory Dix is a theologian and a person who wrote about these things. And he talked about take him blessed, broken, given, that these are the actions of the Eucharist. And our Eucharistic theology really is based on the road to Emmaus story, the resurrection narrative that'll come up in a few weeks in our lectionary and our services where Jesus, you may remember there's

two people walking on the road talking about the crucifixion, Jesus appears to them and walks with them and then starts teaching them and they kind of get offended. They sit down to a dinner, Jesus breaks the bread and they recognize him as the risen Lord. And then they jump up from the table and rush back to Jerusalem to tell the followers that they've seen the Lord. This idea that we come into our lives that God has blessed us.

Bishop DeDe (17:02.506)
and that we are broken as an offering for the world. That means we give of our time. It means we allow ourselves to be part of God's redeeming grace for someone, which may require us to be kind when we don't want to be kind or to work in ways that raise up other people and that we're given out and that God is constantly taking us and blessing us and breaking open our self-sufficiency that we may be given to the world.

as healed and redeemed people. And so that movement of the Eucharist all through our lives is replicated all the time. It may be in calling the friend, it may be in forgiving the partner, it may be in changing how we speak to someone that we are called to being taken, blessed, broken, given that people may know the redemption of love that we become even in our own lives.

much like the sacrament of Eucharist that we are being taken and given out.

It reminds me, I don't know where the quote comes from, but it says that we become what we receive.

That's right. I actually often when I give the bread out, I'll say become what you received the body of Christ. I don't do this all the time because people have their own piety and they're coming to the altar and I don't want to change the words on them. But I do think it's a powerful symbol of what we're doing in Eucharist that we receive the body of Christ and become the body of

Adam (18:33.338)
Well, I know listeners there's been a lot that we discussed in this one and I think sometimes it's important for us to have these big conversations about big things that can be a little heavy. So not to necessarily call it a palette cleanser, but to end on a little bit of a different note, Bishop Deedee, Matt from Tully wrote a question and I think this is a good one because we are in the Easter season. We just celebrated Easter Sunday. Matt wants to know what is the favorite candy?

that you found in your Easter basket this Easter.

Matt, what a great question. And shout out to my husband who is the Easter basket person for our family. I had dark chocolate covered almonds and I thought that was awesome. And so listener, you know, maybe sharing with your loved ones, what was your favorite candy in your Easter basket?

Nobody wants to know my opinions, but it's Cadbury eggs for me.

look, well, you know, that's reason they have them. There's a reason they make so many of them. Well, listener, it's been great to have this time with you. Next week, we're gonna pick the conversation up and dive into this a little further. Where we're talking about the spiritual issues of America and much like the question from some of our listeners, how do we live in this time? And regardless of partisan affiliation, I don't care who people voted for or what they're thinking. We're talking about Jesus in this length.

Bishop DeDe (19:57.578)
And so we're going to continue to talk about our faith. We're going to continue to delve into that. That all of us may speak of our faith and be that voice in this world proclaiming the redemptive grace and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So may you be blessed and be a blessing and we'll speak more soon. Take good care.