Contemplative Grounding for Social Policy
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by Tilden Edwards
Over the years, I have been impressed by the active social concern of most people who come to Shalem. I have found this concern growing in the past year, not only among Shalem participants but among those in workshops and retreats I have led around the country. Action from a contemplative grounding is desperately needed in the world today. It's the deeper grounding to which many of us are being impelled by the world's turbulence and the radical turns of American policies.One of those policies is overwhelming reliance on military force as a way to assert and maintain American dominance in the world and presumably protect American interests. Psalm 33 challenges any undue optimism about the fruits of a policy based so much on force. The psalmist says that "the war horse is a vain hope for deliverance; for all its strength, it cannot save." We rather will be saved by turning in trust to the divine loving power that lives in us and in the heart of all that is.
To me this says that the world will not change much for the better without being grounded in authentic spiritual conversion. Conversion leads to a new social compassion. Among other things, contemplatively grounded conversion from self- to God-centeredness shifts our understanding of the "we" that we want to be saved. The contemplative has tasted that "we" as God's "we," which knows no national, ethnic, or religious boundaries. The contemplative sees but one human family born of God and therefore prays, "God bless the world," not just "God bless America." That blessing is asked both for spiritual conversion and societal well-being.
From this sense of God's inclusive concern, we could deduce that our long-term security finally depends on everyone's assurance in the world's security and also in a sense of mutual belonging. Military force could then be used to support such a purpose, rather than the much more short-sighted and exclusive purpose of national hegemony.
Such a view means that a contemplative orientation to the world inevitably is a prophetic orientation. It is subversive of whatever is born of fear and greed in the social fabric of our lives. It is supportive of what the contemplative Jesus calls the Kingdom of God growing like a mustard seed in our midst. Jesus' vision of the Kingdom grew from his immediate intimacy with our divine Wellspring. He invites us to share this intimacy and vision with him.
Jesus doesn't offer us a static social vision; it's not a neat blueprint. Rather, it's an ever-evolving vision revealed and lived out in the moment's intimacy with God. There are certain steady signs of the Kingdom, however, such as Jesus' Beatitudes. Good news is given to the oppressed poor, and that good news is the revelation of God's personal presence for them, both for their spiritual and earthly well-being. All of us can see ourselves as part of the poor in the spiritual sense, but now as in Jesus' day, there are many materially and socially impoverished people who feel God's particular concern-a concern for what finally is the divine call for justice in a shared, human community.
Jim Wallis of the Sojourner's Community says that every budget is a moral document. Thus one question that needs to be asked of every governmental appropriation bill is: what effect will it have on the poor? As I write this article, Congress is about to approve, with very little scheduled debate, a massive $399 billion military budget (scheduled to rise dramatically further in coming years). This budget surpasses the military budgets of the next 20 largest nations combined and surpasses all other areas of federal discretionary spending combined. According to the Defense Monitor (started by retired military officers who were concerned for waste in military spending), very little of this money is going for homeland defense, for the transformation of the military's effectiveness, or for the Iraqi war (for which there is supplementary spending). The budget continues to waste huge sums for Cold War weapons systems that the Administration once admitted should be ended.
Especially in this time of a sluggish economy, large federal and state deficits, and tax cuts, we can guess what impact this budget will have on monies available for the poor, as well as for infrastructure and other societal needs of the nation and the world. The federal budget as a whole can only be called an unbiblical budget, with massive over-reliance on the warhorse and faint concern for the roots of poverty, injustice, and environmental degradation that Jesus and the prophets identified as crucial to God's peace.
I cannot advise you how specifically to respond to such social realities, but I can tell you that a contemplative response begins with a trust that God's radiant presence is in our midst, wanting to shape the world's true peace-in, through and among us. That trust can draw us to a direct and regular turning to God in listening prayer.
When we go into such prayer, we likely share a desire to see the beauty and preciousness of life through God's compassionate eyes and share a yearning to be energetic and willing vessels of God's shalom. Our own death becomes less frightening when we have tasted the deathless reality of the divine loving light out of which we are made. When we lose the fear of death, we are freed for more imaginative, Spirit-grounded responses to oppression in the world.
© 2008 The Shalem Institute.