A recent article in the New York Times spoke of the “Modesty Squads” in certain Hasidic neighborhoods in NYC who have taken a form of vigilante justice on themselves in order to establish what they deem as “modesty” in their neighborhood. These informal groups make no pretense of their agenda … to enforce through direct coercion the maintenance of what they hold as the proper standards of modesty, down to even asking several stores, with veiled threats just underneath the surface, to remove mannequins from their windows.
This is pat of the sad legacy of most faiths including Christianity … a toxic element within bent on some sort of enforced purity that it mistakenly believes appeases God. They act darkly, as one commenter noted, out of a a belief that they are “protecting God and have to do this kind of stuff, and that is sickening and gives us all a black eye.” Such a faith is attractive to a certain type of marginalized outlier but proves to many, unfortunately, the very achilles heal and hypocrisy embedded in organized religion. Religion is seen much more as “rules” than as “grace.”
And grace is where the power of faith, I would hold, lies. In a recent survey, it was the top word people who like religion used to describe their faith. Grace-in-action is captured in these moving words by Anne Voscamp.
That thundering question of Where is God?
Is best answered when the people of God offer a hand and whisper: Here I am.
That thundering question of Where is God?
Is best answered when the people of God tear everything else away and take the time to show it: Here’s His love for you – beating right here, right here in me, right here for you.
Such reaching moves lovingly away from rules to grace.
