Donald Trump has been blessed, a blessing that began long before an assassination attempt that nearly took his life. Joe Biden has been blessed, long before he made the announcement that he will end his Presidential campaign for President. Kamala Harris has been blessed, long before she assumed the mantle of being the likely Democratic nominee for President. JD Vance has been blessed, long before he worked his way through poverty and family dysfunction to become a Vice-Presidential candidate.
We have all been blessed – long before we had our first bad thought, uttered our first curse word, or engaged in our first sin. And we continue to be blessed, regardless of what we have done or not done. The blessing is always offered. We may deny it, run away from it, disavow it – or let our obsession with sin taint it or erase the notion of blessing altogether.
I read Original Blessing by Matthew Fox shortly after it was published in 1983. It marked a pivot point in my journey in faith. Like many, I was formed with the concept of original sin, an existential stain that I would never be able to overcome, and which caused me to live in a perpetual fear of divine punishment. In contrast, Matthew Fox claimed that we were created as imago dei, in God’s image, an original blessing that would never be taken away. As I embraced his proposal, it enabled me to live with a new level of spiritual freedom.
A Dominican friar, Fox gave lectures and wrote books – all the while paying close attention to biblical texts. As far as the Catholic Church was concerned, Fox was dangerously unorthodox– to the degree that then Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict) silenced him in 1991; and when Fox continued to speak and write, the Dominican order expelled him from their ranks due to his disobedience. He was received into the Episcopal Church as a priest in 1994. In the thirty years since, Matthew Fox has explored worship, creation, human relationships – opening up new ways of thinking, believing and living; and being unfailingly creative. Some of his creativity escapes me, but the concept of original blessing has been foundational to how I look at the world and one another.
As powerful and life-changing the concept of original blessing has been for me, there is embedded in it a temptation to think that I/we own the blessing, rather than being humbled by a divine presence that confers it. In the aftermath of the attempt on Trump’s life, many have said that it was God/Divine Providence/ Jesus who spared him. Trump himself said that God was on his side. I don’t know if Joe Biden has ever said that – or Kamala Harris or JD Vance, but I can imagine that they hoped they were. I don’t recall my ever having said that God is on my side, but I certainly have thought it. I want God to be on my side.
But it doesn’t work that way. The only side that God has ever been on is God’s side.
When we reduce the mystery of God’s presence to fit our desire or agenda we breach the third commandment: “Do Not Take the Name of the Lord in Vain”. In other words, don’t use God as a tool to reinforce your belief. Did God cause the bullet to merely graze Donald Trump’s ear? Maybe. God certainly could. But to say with certainty that God did is to fall into spiritual vanity, and it reduces God to a puppet who serves us rather than the other way around.
There are times when I struggle with original blessing. Do I deserve it? Will I lose it? Yet the more I wrestle with a gift that often feels too ephemeral to get my head and heart around, the more I trust it. And the more I realize that the blessing is not just offered to me, but to everyone. Everyone. All the time. And with the blessing comes the expectation that we will bear witness to the blessing, be witnesses of the blessing, and seek to pass the blessing on to others, even those – especially those, we think don’t deserve it.
The blessing isn’t earned. It is a gift for each of us to receive.
