For the moment, presuming Mark’s gospel was written in the aftermath of the Roman re-occupation of Palestine/Israel and its scorched-earth policy attended its army’s march to sack and salt Jerusalem and, along the way, untold numbers of Galileans and Judeans were enslaved or killed—what new gospel is now needed, in a time of another American pre-civil war, that will surface a common point of healing, lest we simply change one empire for yet another?
This long-winded sentence (if that is what it is) sets a challenge large enough to ask about our enthrallment with bigger barns and how Mammon’s material blessings keep stopping a larger honoring of each gift brought by a human or other-than-human experience.
What is the usual calculus we do to set artificial limits on what is real and easily shunted into categories of irrelevance, invisibility, and worthlessness?
If such becomes discernible, able to be turned to a story without an artificial pausing point that blocks its flow, there will be an even more difficult question of assisting one another through consistent disciplines that change our DNA from genetic survivalism to mutual appreciation and individual satisfaction. Included in this is how to evaluate and deal with mutations—some of which run counter to either or both communal and individual expressions of thankfulness and purpose, some of which are not immediately discernable.
What partnership story (rather than that of a single hero) will assist us in countering an intentional rush to civil war so insisted upon by some while dreaded by others who have no analysis or strategy to deal with the drumbeat of division and malice.