You might remember the story of Elijah in 1 Kings 19. This is the story when Elijah runs for his life after defeating (by God’s doing) the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel. The story of the battle is quite dramatic, but right after prevailing, Elijah is running for his life and he is depressed. A rather harsh detail of the story is that after Elijah wins the victory, he demands that the prophets of Baal be seized and then has them slaughtered. Do you like that part? I don’t.
Many preachers and others have used this story to speak about the dangers of being let down after a spiritual high. I’ve struggled somewhat with this, as it seems to imply that the killing of enemies occasions a spiritual high. The story says that not long after his victory, Elijah was on the run for his life and he told God that he wanted to die. Elijah’s complaint to God included a note that he was no better than people of previous generations. In one of the most tender scenes in scripture, God cares for Elijah in his pain miraculously providing food. Elijah keeps running for 40 days and winds up at Sinai, the very same mountain where the 10 Commandments were received. Once again, he complains to God, this time saying that he was the only one left who cared about God at all.
If you know the story then you know that what happens next is that Elijah encounters a great storm, and then an earthquake and then a fire. God is not in any of the spectacular manifestations, but God is in what comes next, a quiet voice like a peaceful breeze. This was the voice of God. Elijah tells God again that he is “the only one left.” God does not directly respond to this contention, but does care for Elijah and tells him that he will have a co-worker from now on, he won’t be alone. God also tells him, contrary to Elijah’s claim that he is the only one left, that there are 7,000 others.
I thought of this story last week when I read a news article about a group in the United States called “Moms for Liberty.” This group has been around for only three years, but it has already become highly influential in Republican political circles. Leading Republican candidates (yes, including that one) spoke recently at the Moms for Liberty political gathering.
Last year around this time, I recalled, in Evangelically Departed, that when I was a young pastor, there was a prayer group at a local highschool called “Moms Who Care.” I knew that the intent of the name was positive, but I also picked up on the unfortunate implication that Moms who weren’t part of the group did not care. I thought that maybe there should be a group called “Moms Who Don’t Give a Shit.”
The name “Moms Who Care” is a kind of Elijah-complaining-to-God mistake.
Often in religious circles, in my experience very often in evangelical circles, there was the idea that virtue was with us and not necessarily with others. It was certainly not with our opponents or our enemies. In developmental psychology, this is a juvenile stage of growth. We ought to grow past thinking that we are the good ones and others are the bad ones.
Elijah’s complaint that he is “the only one left” comes both from an overinflated sense of personal virtue and from personal pain. Pain, by its very nature, often makes us self-focused. This is not to blame the person in pain, but simply to note that this can happen. A sense that we are fighting for good, whether our cause is seen as political or conservative, can do the same.
It is easy to note that Moms for Liberty engages in the banning of books. That alone makes the name somewhat inaccurate. It is easy to note that, whatever we believe, we should not want public schools to be churches. This would be detrimental to schools and to church.
My interest in the name of the group, for this post however, is that it can act as a reminder of a tendency that we all must face. We tend to think that we are alone, either as a person, or as a group, in suffering and in virtue. This is not true.
Most often, our opponents are also arguing for virtue and most often our opponents face pain and suffering and loss.
Elijah had a distorted view not only of himself, but of others. God cared for him and reminded him that he was not alone. Evangelically Departed, as the name gives away, often identifies troubling and even damaging ideas or tendencies within evangelicalism. One troubling tendency that is present in evangelicalism and present outside of evangelicalism, including among people like me who identify somewhat as “exvangelical,” is the tendency to overlook the virtue in people with whom we disagree. We can even sometimes fail to see that pain and sorrow are common among us.
The prayer then, would not be against Moms for Liberty, even as I stand against most of their ideas. The prayer would be that we would have the maturity to not count ourselves as the only virtuous ones, or the only ones in pain.
So very true!