Deliver Us

In my book, Where The Grace Lives, the most difficult chapters to write were the ones about the Stations of the Cross. The detainment and dehumanization of Jesus leading up to his execution intersects with the very darkest parts of our human story. Spending months living with those movements while I wrote poems and reflections about them felt so heavy that I struggled with intense depression. 

The chapter on the first Station of the Cross is drawn from Jerusalem’s Church of the Flagellation on the Via Dolorosa. (The photo below is one I took at the entrance to that building.) It's also located wherever and whenever people find themselves having to make difficult decisions about participating in systems that harm others. What I’ve come see is that when the Way of Jesus is embodied, it’s not only liberation for the oppressed, but also for those enslaved by obedience to directives that destroy the dignity and wellbeing of other people. 

I’m reprinting that chapter’s poem here for anyone who might be wrestling with some of these very issues today.

About Just Following Orders

You don’t have to obey.

You don’t have to ignore

what your soul keeps shouting.

You are more than an instrument

in someone else’s toolbox.

Anyone who demands surrender

of your humanity is only trying to

sell you something, or scrambling

to stay on top.

No cause, no duty, no safety, no reward

is worth the cost of becoming a cruel 

machine in Satan’s factory of horrors.

And there is no such thing 

as dark things done in service 

of justice. There’s just dark things 

alone. And solitary, calloused hands

weaving a crown of thorns.

I heard you once saved a child from drowning.

I heard you walked away from promotion based on lies.

Imagine all that you’re capable of. That light,

which God placed inside you, is your superior

chain of command.

You don’t have to comply.

You don’t have to obey.

You don’t have to ignore

the stabs of your conscience.

You are more than an instrument

in someone else’s toolbox.